The original Avengers' reactions to Thanos' snap in Avengers: Endgame revealed each of their biggest weaknesses... And how they'd later use them.

In Avengers:Endgame, every one of the original Avenger's reactions to Thanos' Snap revealed their single biggest weakness. The original Avengers all survived Thanos' decimation of the universe - as well as Rocket Raccoon, War Machine, Okoye, and newcomer Captain Marvel - but each of the six Phase One heroes was, understandably, hugely changed by what happened.

The start of Endgame obviously dealt with survivor's guilt and how the original Avengers coped with the loss not only of their friends and allies but of half of known existence and the unprecedented, unthinkable fallout of such a mass-scale extinction event. Even though the entire MCU had, up to that point, been largely defined by ideas of cause and effect, the sins of the father and accountability, Thanos' use of the Infinity Gauntlet to "rebalance the universe" in his grim image was a step beyond anything yet seen. And one of the most interesting parts of the narrative was watching how each of the heroes used that trauma to inform their actions.

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Crucially, each of them reacted differently, splintering the group. Some retired, some sought self-improvement, others were destroyed or transformed by grief. But in every single case, their reactions in Endgameplayed into weaknesses already explored in previous MCU films. Here's how the reactions of each Avenger were informed by their existing weak points and how they came to define how they came back together to defeat Thanos.

Captain America's biggest weakness was perfectionism or more importantly, his own fallibility. He had been created out of largely nothing, but the one thing that made him the ideal candidate to be a super-soldier test subject was also what would become a weak spot for him. He always wanted to be the one to "make the sacrifice play" to the point that he was blinkered in his reaction to discovering Bucky was The Winter Soldierwhen informing his fellow Avengers would have been far better as an idea. Cap believed that he was the best man for the job, but that he was the only one for it, so it's somewhat natural that his response to being defeated by Thanos was to seek to fix himself.

In actual fact, Steve Rogers looking tobetter himself - which manifests in him attending post-Snap therapy and retiring from active hero duty -is one of the most healthy responses to any hero recognizing their weakness. While it is entirely unfair to level any blame at Cap for the way Infinity Warends, his response seemingly confirms that he needed to change in its wake. And actually, by the end of Endgame, it is his apparent weakness that helps save the day when he stands up to Thanos.

While Thor's downfall in Endgame was wrongly seen as a comedy writing decision, the so-called Fat Thor storyline after Infinity War is a tragic one that reinforces Thor's oldest weakness, his arrogance. Rather than that being a criticism of the God Of Thunder, it's a statement on his drive and his upbringing, which presented him as the prodigal son gifted with singular powers (at least his command over Mjolnir) and God-like status. Even after he was forced to confront his worthiness in his MCU debut,Thor, his opinion of himself remained lofty (as his dynamic with the Guardians Of The Galaxy later proved). And strictly speaking, it's Thor's fear of being considered worthy and living up to his father that drove that arrogance in the first place.

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When Thor becomes "Fat Thor" in Endgame, he is essentially becoming everything he believes is the opposite of what he should be. He is glutinous, unmotivated, and has abandoned his duty to his people and the Nine Realms but everything he puts himself through is punishment for failing to live up to his expectations. That weight is such that when he fails to stop the Snap the first time, his own ideas of infallibility are challenged, hot on the trail of him failing to find the Infinity Stones and then failing to stop Thanos wiping out half of Asgard's surviving population in the Infinity War prologue.

On paper, it would appear that Tony Stark's reaction to the Snap is retirement and settling down with a family, but the reality is that his personal growth is still entirely weighed down by his biggest weakness. Ever since his vision in Avengers: Age of Ultron, Tony was driven by the devastating fear that the world would end, his friends and family would die and he would have no way of stopping it. His reaction to that was always an extreme one, usually culminating in his own heroic demise. Even in Infinity War, he intended to go on a suicide mission to stop Thanos, until Spider-Man's involvement derailed his plan. He was so drawn in by his need to protect that it didn't matter what happened to himself.

That weakness - which would end up being his strength in his final moments - continued in the wake of the Snap in Endgamedespite Tony's retirement and apparent loss of all hope. And the confirmation comes in the form of what he gives to Pepper as a present: the Rescue armor she'd wear in the Endgame final battle. That armor was Tony's most powerful creation, made with skills and knowledge honed over tens of other suits, and strengthened by Tony's fear that he would need to protect Pepper from a threat he could no longer even identify. Tony didn't learn from Infinity War's end, he was just robbed of knowing what apocalypse to expect and the fact that he made Pepper an armor suggested he feared he wouldn't be able to protect her himself. Those old fears and that single, devastating weakness remained.

The most efficiently tuned Avenger in terms of knowing what his weakness was was, of course, Bruce Banner, because he had a habit of transforming into a walking, smashing personification of his internal conflict whenever he was faced with conflict of any source. Banner's weakness, though, was not that he turned into the Hulk, but that his raging conflict with the two sides of his identity were distracting him from the value of finding balance. He may have had to surrender some of what he had been - his "normal" looks, for instance - but the benefits in identifying his own commitment to remaining "puny Banner" were vast, so he became Smart Hulk. Given his intellect, it should come as no surprise that he dealt with his weakness completely and a little too efficiently (given that it all happened off-screen and almost incidentally).

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Though Black Widow's most interesting sub-plot - the idea that Nat was running an organization looking after orphans in Endgame - was cut in the planning stages, her reaction to the Snap spoke to the same mentality. Endgame finds her essentially still trying to fix what is left of the world, running the Avengers in the absence of her more senior former colleagues and liaising with every other still-active hero. She was, essentially, the leader ofwhat replaced the Avengers, still committed to doing what she could to protect the Earth.

But Natasha's continued commitment to heroism wasn't born from the same obsession as Tony's: her need to continue to help was the same reason she ultimately chose to sacrifice herself on Vormir. She was, after all of those years, still trying to get rid of the red in her ledger. As her Age Of Ultron vision confirmed (and her upcoming prequel will further explore), Black Widow couldn't escape the trauma of her past,both in terms of her origin and what she did in the name of the Red Room. Her only answerwhen the world fell apart in the wake of Infinity War's stunning end was to look for any way to atone for her own past. While that could have been used to torment her further, her weakness actually became her drive.

Hawkeye's situation is slightly different to the rest of the heroes, in that his weakness is not something within himself that he can address. His weakness is the most tragic of all because it's his family. Unlike the rest of the Avengers at the point of the Snap, Clint Barton had a family (Scott Lang doesn't count in the same terms, because of his unique circumstances) and their being killed off in one fell swoop completely broke him. WhenAge of Ultron introduced the idea of Barton as a paternal figure (to the twins as much as to his own kids), it also introduced his vulnerability and Infinity War's devastating end followed through that set-up.

It was inevitable, then, that Hawkeye's reaction would be so emotional. He had lost everything to the point that his otherwise unwavering commitment to his duty was cast aside in the name of a more visceral attack on the injustices of the world. Driven to an extreme version of his training, Hawkeye's murderous rage - as the not-openly-acknowledged Ronin - was Avengers:Endgame's confirmation that he always had a weak spot in allowing himself some form of conventional happiness. That was the cruelest blow of the Snap and while Clint will have to live with his kill count in the future, in his grief, he was entirely justified.

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Fundamentally, in every case, the Avengers adopted their weaknesses as part of their response to the Snap and into Avengers: Endgameand in every single case, it was what they learned from their weaknesses and also the value of their weaknesses themselves that helped take down Thanos and restore the countless lost souls killed when the Infinity Stones were used the first time. As with the Guardians Of The Galaxy, the supposed weak points of each hero would become their strength.

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Endgame: Each Avenger's Reaction To The Snap Revealed Their Key Weakness - Screen Rant