“We're in the Endgame Now”: Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame as Contemporary Absurdism

By titling their epic Avengers conclusion Endgame, the Russo Brothers, perhaps inadvertently, almost demand that viewers draw comparisons between the film and Samuel Beckett's 1957 play with the same title (and by extension, 1953's Waiting for Godot). In her review of the film for Slate, Dana Stevens calls attention to the similarities, writing “Avengers: Endgame is like Samuel Beckett with superheroes,” and asking, “Whether you're a bickering old couple stuck in a pair of garbage cans or a gang of bickering superheroes trying yet again to save the cosmos, how are you supposed to confront loss, the ineluctably sad fact that the people and institutions and, yes, even movie franchises you care about are always in the process of changing, disappearing, and dying?”. Indeed, beyond the title, there are many interesting parallels between Avengers: Endgame and Beckett's plays, including their emphases on circular structure; the protagonists' sense of existential entrapment; waiting as an activity to pass the time; contrasts between light and dark; a meaningless, seemingly godless wasteland; and the notion that death, unlike in tragedy where it is a fate characters fear, is a release, a time for rest. Importantly, when Doctor Strange declares that they are “in the endgame now,” we learn that there is only one outcome for the Avengers if they are to emerge victoriously. This is reminiscent of the entrapment that plagues Hamm and Clov or Didi and Gogo in a Beckett play, except that here, this absurdist construct symbolizes positivity. “The end is in the beginning, yet we go on” in both cases, but the Avengers must maintain hope, even in the face of loss. Further, as Tony Stark makes peace with both his father and his daughter—as Hamm calls for both progenitor and offspring as he reaches his own end—viewers are reminded of the futility of the human condition and of its potential empowerment. Like Stark, viewers have “time to grow old”; they can ensure that their lives and sacrifices matter. The cyclical quality of human existence is even reinforced in Peter Parker's survival as he inherits Tony Stark's entrapment in the cyclical existence of a hero. Comparing Beckett's two major plays and the Russo Brothers' two-part Marvel film, this article argues that Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame function as twenty-first century reimaginings of the Theater of the Absurd. Death remains inevitable, and yet, its presence makes heroes. Hence, these recent Avengers film