This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost Australia, which closed in 2021.

Marvel Lied To Us About 'Avengers: Infinity War'

Marvel Lied To Us About 'Avengers: Infinity War'

Warning! If you do not want to know who dies in “Avengers: Infinity War,” do not keep reading. You have been warned.

What. Just. Happened?

For fans of the Marvel universe, death has never really meant death. We’ve seen Loki “die” and come back plenty of times. Bucky Barnes and Nick Fury have been assumed dead at various points, only to spring back into existence in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as well.

But this time, it was supposed to be different.

Leading up to the release of “Avengers: Infinity War,” the directors of the film spoke about the movie as a “final chapter.” Marvel boss Kevin Feige talked about the deaths in the movie being “real” this time. In an interview on April 22, one day before the premiere, I asked writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely to define what death means in their recent project.

“Death is death,” McFeely said. “I mean, we’re sensitive to that, and certainly the Marvel universe played with taking characters away and then giving them back to you in some other form. If we say goodbye to some characters, we will say it permanently.”

He continued: “The idea is that this movie’s going to be different and has a potential to be really good is because the stakes are real and choices are real and we know that we’ve cried wolf a little bit on that, so I suppose some audience members might look at that skeptically, but trust us.”

Did you get all that? “Permanent,” he said. “Trust us,” he said.

So I audibly gasped in the theater when certain characters bit the dust. Loki in the film’s first minutes. (Are you kidding me?) Gamora just halfway through the movie. (Holy what?) That is, until the very end, when Spider-Man, most of the Guardians of the Galaxy and Black Panther ― yes, even T’Challa ― crumbled to ash at the snap of Thanos’ fingers, thus rendering everything Marvel said to be pretty much baloney.

As my colleague Matt Jacobs pointed out, these characters are coming back.

New movies are already in the works for “Spider-Man,” “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Black Panther.” Is the third “Guardians” going to be about Rocket living life as a raccoon on Earth? Is “Spider-Man 2″ going to just focus on Ned putting that Lego Death Star he broke back together?