Avengers: Endgame: Celebrating the Unsung Savior of the World

The most important player in the outcome of Avengers: Endgame might not be who you think...

By Rob Leane | April 29, 2019 | | 0

This article comes from Den of Geek UK.

This article consists of nothing but massive Avengers: Endgame spoilers. You’ve been warned. We have a completely spoiler free review right here.

Avengers: Endgame overflows with heroes. Despite the fact that half of the MCU’s super-roster was wiped out by Thanos’ snap at the end of Avengers: Infinity War, there are still costumed do-gooders spilling out from basically every frame in the new film.

All of the original Avengers were left untouched by the snap, for one thing, meaning that Chris Evan’s Captain America, Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man, Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow, Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk, and Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye are all in this epic crossover flick. As are roughly 50 percent of the friends they’ve made over the years. That’s a whole lot of heroes, and most of them are beloved by fans.

There’s one savior of the world that isn’t likely to get the credit they deserve, though, so we’re going to celebrate them in this article. If you haven’t seen the film, beware: we are going to discuss Avengers: Endgame spoilers here. Click away now if you haven’t seen the film yet and don’t want to be spoiled. But if you’ve seen the film and want to join us in celebrating an unsung hero of the MCU, read on…

Okay, here we go. The hero that we’re here to celebrate is… a rat! If we were able to put spoilers in our headlines, this article would be called something like “Avengers: Endgame – the rat that saved the world.”

And no, we’re not kidding. Please don’t click away. Stick with us here!

Remember that bit in the first act of Endgame, where a rat walks across the control panel in Ant-Man’s Quantum Realm van? The rat presses some sort of undo button, which pulls Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang out of the Quantum Realm and plonks him back in the here and now.

Until this long-tailed rodent came along and did what needed to be done, Scott’s van had been removed from the roof where he left it (in the post-credits scene to Ant-Man & The Wasp) and plonked into a storage facility manned by Community‘s Ken Jeong (a facility which must be doing absolute gangbusters in this post-snap world). In the process of moving and storing the van, nobody thought to press a few buttons on the dashboard to see what would happen. Scott could’ve come back through the Quantum Tunnel a lot sooner if anyone had done that.

But they didn’t. Five years went by, and the world continued to mourn. The Snap stayed snapped, and trillions of living beings remained dead. It was a bleak time, for the Avengers and for everyone else in the universe. It took a new sort of hero to kickstart our hearts and set Earth’s Mightiest Heroes on a path to saving the day, and that new sort of hero turned to be a rat.

If it wasn’t for this ambling rodent, who knows if Scott would’ve ever emerged from the Quantum Realm? Judging by the fact that he stayed in there for five years of normal time, it seems safe to assume that there wasn’t a timer or a power limitation on the van that would’ve ever forced him to return. And if Ant-Man never comes out of the Quantum Realm and starts babbling about time vortexes and Back To The Future, it’s hard to imagine the Avengers ever deciding to try their hands at a Time Heist.

After all, in those five years, the Avengers tried their best to adjust to the new normal. They may not have moved on emotionally, but they all found things to do: Tony Stark started a family with Pepper Potts, Black Widow bossed what was left of the Avengers, the Hulk and Bruce Banner morphed into one, Captain America ran support groups, Thor drowned his sorrows in booze and Fortnite, and Hawkeye went to a very dark place (and we’re not just talking about the dimly lit alleyway in Japan).

It may not have known what it was doing, but the rat in the storage facility stepped on the one button in the world that could start to put things right, bringing Scott Lang back into the normal-sized world and setting in motion the events that would eventually lead to the de-snappening of those trillions of long-lost lives.

It may not appear among the Hollywood heartthrobs on the Avengers: Endgame posters, but this rat is the hero the Marvel Cinematic Universe desperately needed. They don’t know it, but everyone in the MCU owes this tiny grey mammal a huge debt of gratitude.

You could dismiss this rat’s moment in the film as a convenient bit of storytelling, but we like to call a spade a spade here on Den of Geek, and one thing is clear to us right now: that rat deserves to be recognized as one of the most important beings in the multiverse.

The revived heroes of the MCU should put that rat in an Avengers suit, dammit! Or, at the very least, kit the rat out with a comfy new abode and a life-long supply of tasty treats. And, next time you watch Endgame, don’t forget to raise a glass to this tiny hero and let your immense gratitude show. Without this cute little critter, the MCU may never have been saved…

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