vampires, spaceships, and fantastical worlds—the tales of L.E. Teetzel

I will start this off by saying if you don’t like Steve’s ending, that’s fine. I’m not trying to say anyone is wrong, but I think most of the critiques of and posts/TikToks about not liking Steve’s ending never talk about some aspects of his character and his background that I think are important to his choice at the end of Endgame. As I said in my previous blog post about Steve Rogers, he’s one of my favourite characters of all time, and I, like many, get annoyed when I feel my fave has been mischaracterized.

I will also say this isn’t an anti-Stucky post. I’m working with the on-screen canon. Headcanons, while awesome and fun, are not coming into play here. I will be more than happy to tell you my headcanons if you ask, but this post is 100% about on-screen canon.

Okay! Let’s get to it.

The ending Steve Rogers was given in Endgame wasn’t out of character. It wasn’t poorly written (outside of the writers and directors not agreeing on how time travel works, but that’s okay because it honestly doesn’t matter and is not a plot hole), and it wasn’t a bad way to end his story. As a massive fan of Steve Rogers, a writer, an MCU fan, and a fan of storytelling in general, I felt it was a wholly satisfying ending, especially on an emotional level. I sobbed all the way through the credits after the movie ended, and then for a good time afterwards, as my friend and I waited for the theatre to empty. I cry every time I see it now.

But let’s get into why I don’t think it was out of character.

Most of the claims I’ve seen—certainly the loudest ones—have all centred around how Steve would never leave Bucky and how “I’m with you until the end of the line” was a lie or made into a lie by his decision to go back to Peggy and live out his life with her.

First of all, Steve comes back. “‘Til the end of the line” most obviously means “until death” and Steve is likely not dead. In fact, we haven’t seen his death on screen and no one has said he was dead. Throughout Falcon and the Winter Soldier, they only say he’s gone. Even in Eternals, Sprite says he’s gone, she doesn’t say dead. It would be foolish to assume he’s dead until we get on-screen confirmation. In the comics when Sam took over as Captain America, Steve was still around to provide man-in-the-chair support (in a wonderfully sassy way), and I don’t think they want to write that possibility out. Just because Steve comes back when he’s old, that doesn’t negate his and Bucky’s friendship. They will still be together “‘til the end of the line.”

And, regardless of Steve’s status, “‘til the end of the line” is also a symbol of their friendship and how much they’ve been there for each other throughout their lives. Were they robbed of a great deal of time together in the 1940s? Yes, of course. Could they have had more time together if Steve hadn’t gone back to be with Peggy? Technically, yes, but I’m not sure they would have. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

Because if you think Bucky didn’t know what Steve was going to do and hadn’t given his blessing, I don’t think you’re characterizing either of them correctly.

The scene when Steve goes back to return the stones and Mjolnir happens some time after the final battle—I would say a week or two afterwards, based on Tony’s funeral having taken place, everyone going off on their own, and clean-up having begun on the destroyed Avengers compound.

In the background, you can clearly see construction equipment sifting through the mess and a helicopter moving something. Also, time would have been needed to set up the makeshift lab in the forest (which I love, by the way). There would have been plenty of time for Bucky and Steve to talk about time travelling, and Steve going back to be with Peggy—because of course they would talk about it.

Both of these men lost out on the lives they would have had—the lives they wanted and planned for. Both of them have never stopped thinking about their pasts, albeit mostly for different reasons. They would have had a long conversation—or multiple long conversations—about the possibilities presented by time travel. They would have talked about Steve going back, about them both going back, about what they would do, who they would see… They would have talked about it all, especially because it’s so soon after the second snap brought Bucky, and everyone else, back.

How am I so confident that they talked?

“Don’t do anything stupid until I get back.”
”How can I? You’re taking all the stupid with you.”
They hug.
”Gonna miss you, buddy.”
”It’s gonna be okay, Buck.”

Not only would there be no reason for Bucky to say he’ll miss Steve if he didn’t know, since Steve would only be gone for a few seconds, but the looks on their faces when they hug say more than just “see you in a few” or “good luck, don’t die” to me. Bucky absolutely knew what Steve was planning, and he wouldn’t have told anyone else if Steve asked him not to, which is something Steve would do.

He’s not a man who likes goodbyes.

Bucky also supported this decision, because he and Steve are best friends, because they are soulmates. Steve would never have gone if Bucky asked him to stay or said he needed Steve to stay. He would have known Steve would be back, and that he would still have his friend after he got to live the life that was thought to him. Steve also would never, never have just taken off without telling Bucky about his plan. Do I wish we’d seen that conversation? Absolutely I do. Did seeing that conversation matter to the plot? Not at all. It’s inferred that they talked about this through their history and their actions in the moment we have of them together. Endgame relies on the viewers having seen most, if not all, of the previous installments to fill in a lot of the narrative moments that weren’t explicitly needed on screen to understand what’s happened off-screen. Most movies do this. Most movies also don’t have the amount of material to cover that Endgame did.

Now, let’s circle back to my saying Bucky and Steve may not have spent a lot of time together in the way they—and the audience—would have wanted (them) to. He also wouldn’t have gone back to the past with Steve, though I’m sure he wanted to and I’m sure they talked about what it would be like. Both of these have a lot to do with Bucky not being the same person he was when he became the Winter Soldier and Steve being fundamentally unchanged; Bucky not getting the shield also ties into this.

While both of them have been through traumatic experiences, I don’t think anyone would argue when I say that Bucky has been through more than Steve. Dozens of years as a mind-controlled mass murderer is not something one gets over easily, as we’ve seen. James Buchanan Barnes doesn’t exist as a whole man anymore. He is still there, but parts of him have been chipped away and stolen from him and replaced to the point where, if he went back to the world he left behind, I don’t think he’d know what to do or how to fit in. Bucky is no longer a creature of that world, and he needs to figure out who he is now, and a way to live with all he’s been forced to do, rather than trying to find his way back to who he was. This is why Sam gets the shield, and why he says in 2023.

On the other hand, Steven Grant Rogers never let go of the past. He adjusts to the time he finds himself in eventually, and even finds ways to blend in, but he never fully moves on from the time he gave up, and he remains the same person. Bucky’s time was stolen, but Steve’s was frozen. He didn’t lose anything of who he was, and he clung to his memories, continuously lamenting the loss of Peggy and what they could have had. We see this is literally every movie he’s in. Even after Peggy dies in Civil War, Steve still holds onto the past, and nearly destroys everything he’s built to protect Bucky. It would be easy for him to slip back into the 1940s and, except for the odd thing (like adjusting to the lack of internet), feel like no time had passed.

By the time Bucky comes back after the snap, they are very, very different people than they were when they were younger. Yes, they spent some time together while Bucky was healing in Wakanda, but I think after losing almost everyone he cared about in the snap and seeing others move on and start families, and then going into the past and seeing Peggy before him once more, Steve would have been missing the past even more; I think the idea to go back to Peggy formed the minute he saw her in her office in the 70s. While they would have and will always be friends, I don’t think they would have been as close after Bucky came back, just because of the loss Steve was feeling.

Again, Steve would have stayed if Bucky asked him to. The man has never done anything soley for himself before the end of Endgame—which is why I think Bucky would have encouraged him to go once he was aware of the idea.

Another critique I’ve seen of Steve’s decision to go back is that it’s selfish, and that’s out of character for him. And yes, it would be. If it was selfish. From the minute we meet Steve, he’s putting himself on the line in defense of others. It doesn’t matter if it’s on a larger scale—like defending the war effort and repeatedly trying to enlist even though he’d more than likely die because of his horrible health—or a smaller one—jumping on the grenade at camp—Steve literally always puts others before himself. He has never done anything solely for himself that we’ve seen on screen, and there is no evidence of him doing anything for himself off-screen either.

I want you to imagine first the horribleness of living the 1940s as a disabled man who wants nothing more than to stand up to bullies big and small, and being unable to do it well because of the body you were born into. Followed by the pressure of being turned into an icon of American patriotism and democracy and of the good meant to triumph over one of the greatest evils the world has ever seen. And then imagine you can finally take control of your life by throwing yourself on the front lines of combat and being made responsible for the lives of the men under your command. When you think you’re finally triumphing over the evil of HYDRA, you sacrifice yourself and the future you want to save millions of lives, and then you wake up seventy years in the future to a world you don’t recognize or understand. And you’ve become a legend. An icon of the past. Of all that’s good. And you end up saving the world again and again and again.

And you never have a life of your own.

All of the other original six Avengers, and many of the newer ones, have families (either their own or ones they’ve been adopted into [like Nat]) and friends and they fall in love and start families or have a place they belong. Sure, Steve has friends, all of whom are either in or related to the Avengers, but he doesn’t fall in love with anyone in the future, and he doesn’t start a family of his own. Even during the five-year timeskip, he helps others with their grief, but never really processes his own. This is why I think he starts to realize that Tony’s jabs about getting a life are warranted because, outside of the Avengers, he doesn’t have one.

Obviously everyone goes through horrible, unimaginable trauma during the five-year skip and reflects on their lives. We’ve seen bits and pieces of this in the movies and TV shows that have come out since Endgame. Those who survived are dealing with their trauma in many different ways. For Steve, that meant finding a life and, when it became clear that going back to the past was an option, he knew he could get the life he’d thought he’d lost.

It so clearly wasn’t an easy decision for him to make. Could he have had a life in 2023? Yes. He would have found one that likely would have involved endless fighting against bigger and stranger threats. Steve would have fought until he died on some battlefield. That would have been in his life if he stayed. When they go to space before the timeskip, we get a close-up of Steve’s eyes reflecting the stars and nebulae. This is our sign that Steve has seen it all; he’s had enough. He wants to rest.

And he definitely goes into the final fight against Thanos expecting not to survive. And when he does? He does what he can to be happy and to, for the first time, live for himself. And, as the internet keeps telling me, putting yourself first sometimes is not selfish and, if anyone deserved it, it was Steve.

So I will love the scene of him and Peggy dancing, love clear in their body language and on their faces. I will take solace in knowing that my fave got to have his happy ending, and then also come back to be there for his closest friends as they become the next versions of themselves. (He’s not dead until they say he’s dead explicitly, okay?) Steve’s ending was the best way to wrap up his story—especially considering Chris Evans’s contract was up—and was the perfect end to a movie that was a love letter to the fans who had been with the MCU from the beginning.

As I said at the beginning, it’s fine if you don’t like it. It’s fine if you don’t like Endgame, and if you agree with none of my points. You’re allowed to have your opinion and to have wanted something different, something you would have considered better.

When we’re talking canon, I couldn’t be happier.

And if we’re talking my fanfiction, well, I obviously get the ending I want there. 😉

Thanks for reading and congrats for making it to the end! I don’t know how cohesive this is, but I’ve wanted to write this for a while. I love Steven Grant Rogers with my whole heart and no, I will never actually shut up about it.

Take it easy, hot dogs!