Captain America’s Endgame Ending Makes Him A Hypocrite

Captain America’s big decision at the end of Avengers: Endgame makes him a hypocrite when it comes to moving on. The fourth Avengers movie – which was Steve Rogers’ seventh and final adventure in the MCU – gave him a happy ending with his first love, but it contradicted comments that he made earlier in the film.

During the time travel portion of Avengers: Endgame, Captain America (Chris Evans) was paired off with Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) for a trip to 1970 where they were to retrieve Hank Pym’s Pym Particles and the Space Stone. While there, Steve caught a glimpse of Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell), his primary love interest from Captain America: The First Avenger. Seeing Peggy made Steve realize he could use the Quantum Realm to finally have what he always wanted. And after Thanos (Josh Brolin) was defeated, Steve used time travel to put all the Stones back, but decided not to return to the present day. Instead, he remained in the past so he could live out the rest of his life with Peggy. After becoming an elderly man, Steve passed on his iconic Captain America shield and mantle to Falcon (Anthony Mackie).

Being with Peggy was the fate he had long been denied. The events of The First Avenger forced them apart and prevented the two – who deeply loved each other — from ever having their first date. Steve pined over Peggy in The Avengers but eventually tried to move on with his life. “Moving on” was also an important topic at the beginning of Avengers: Endgame, when Cap held a meeting of people who had lost loved ones from Thanos’ snap in Avengers: Infinity War. The message he gave to those present was one that he hoped would help them accept what had happened and learn to cope with the loss of the people they cared about. Apparently, he was unable to heed his own advice.

Steve talked a lot about the importance of moving on, but if he truly followed that mindset, he would have accepted that the life he had with Peggy ended in 1945. Instead, Steve refused to let go of the past. As soon as he realized it was possible to be with Peggy again, he gave up on the notion of moving forward, which was something he had tried to do in Captain America: Civil War when he kissed Peggy’s niece, Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp).

The idea that Steve’s approach to moving on is a bit hypocritical was actually acknowledged by the character himself during a conversation with Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) in Endgame. When addressing the meeting, Steve said, “I keep telling everyone that they should move on, grow, and some do, but not us.” Here, Steve is talking about the snap. He, along with all of the other remaining Avengers, went so far as to break the rules of time to undo what Thanos did. But Steve’s comments here could also apply to his lingering feelings for Peggy, and in a way they even foreshadowed his fateful decision.

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