What should you watch before Avengers: Endgame? This is an easy question with a complicated answer.
I would argue, on the one hand, that you should watch everything from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to get the full experience. You’re going to be so hopelessly lost about certain characters, plot developments, and, heck, minor background details, that you’ll end up in a theater full of people chuckling and nodding their heads and crying and you’ll have no earthly idea what any of them are responding to.
It’s also sort of impossible at this point to recommend just a few of these movies, since there are so many characters, and each of them has his or her own story threads to navigate. For example, you might want to know everything there is to know about Thor. Well, that’s the three Thor films at minimum, along with the other movies he appears in (which if you include cameos, means eight movies in total). And that’s one character out of dozens.
Of course, you could read a cheat sheet to get caught up. A year ago at this time, I wrote a significant amount of word salad trying to catch folks up on all of main plot beats and characters of the MCU in advance of Avengers: Infinity War. If you’ve missed some (most? all?) of the movies along the way, or if you’ve just forgotten some of the details, it’s still a decent guide. You can read it here.
But really, where I ended up, after all of that, was to recommend a short refresher to anyone who was at all already familiar with the series. For Infinity War, I recommended watching Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America: Civil War, and Thor: Ragnarok to make sure you were caught up (I stand by that recommendation.).
I feel like an abbreviated refresher this time around is good too. I mean, if you’re new, watch ALL the movies or read a guide like the one I linked to above. If you’ve been around for awhile, however, picking and choosing just some of the movies to revisit should suffice.
But which ones should you pick?
Well, for the purposes of this exercise, we can assume you’re either all the way caught up or at least mostly caught up. That pretty much makes my above recommendation, centered around plot, mostly useless. Sure, you could think, well, let’s review the most recent events, and watch Infinity War, Ant-Man and the Wasp, and Captain Marvel, and call it good. It would give you everything leading up to and immediately following the snap. As an added bonus, all three of the movies are entertaining, each making my Top 30 list for comic book movies.
But I think there’s a better way.
Thinking back to Infinity War, in retrospect, I had no way of knowing for sure that Thor would essentially be a co-protagonist with Thanos in that movie, though several interviews suggested each character would have a significant role. In the case of the latter, it was safe to assume both he and the Infinity Stones were going to be central to the story. So Guardians was a great recommendation. Likewise, Thor: Ragnarok led us straight into the beginning of Infinity War in terms of the timeline.
BUT, Ragnarok also gave us important character beats for Thor, who as I said figured prominently in Infinity War. So while trying to get people caught up/refreshed on the more pertinent story events leading into that movie, I also inadvertently stumbled onto some of the biggest emotional beats as well … particularly for the characters who would end up “owning” that film, Thor and Thanos.
This time around, we’re in a different scenario entirely, thanks to this movie being presented to us by the filmmakers as being the final chapter in this story. Just how final a story it will be is completely up in the air, but we are being promised a measure of conclusion to this story arc that has now spanned 20-plus films. Add in the economic reality of its stars getting ever more expensive and emerging free of their multi-picture deals, and also factor in the “clearing of the slate” in Infinity War designed to give the original stars more screen time this time around, and we’re left with basically one conclusion:
This movie will belong to Ironman and Captain America, and it may be the movie in which we say goodbye to one or even both of them.
So, this is how I’m choosing to frame it. The story arc of these two characters, including how they’ve bounced off of each other, is how I’d like to spend the last several days leading into Endgame.
What should you watch before Avengers: Endgame?
Ironman
Ironman 2
Captain America: The First Avenger
The Avengers
Ironman 3
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
The Avengers: Age of Ultron
Captain America: Civil War
The Avengers: Infinity War
You’ll get to see Tony Stark progress from an irresponsible playboy into the kind of person who believes in responsibility and accountability to a ridiculous degree (unless those tenets apply to him personally … he remains, after all, exceedingly flawed).
You’ll get to see Steve Rogers never flinch from his ideals, having to sacrifice everything he loves — including his association with powerful institutions at every stage of his story — to do what he believes is right.
You’ll get to see their friendship blossom and then disintegrate, ultimately leading to their eventual defeat in Infinity War.
You’ll get to see them at their best and at their worst.
And you’ll get to see a bunch of kick-ass movies in the process.
Need more? Add the Guardians films and Ragnarok since we know Nebula, Thanos and Thor will continue to be major characters. Or do the thing where you include all the newest movies (Captain Marvel and Ant-Man and the Wasp). Want less? Shave off a couple of your least favorites (perhaps Ironman 2 & 3?).
But in all honesty, that list looks pretty much perfect to me as is.
I’m going to embrace these characters — and their relationship with each other — while we still have them. (It may not be much longer.)