saying steve has been quietly suffering to justify endgame is so funny like SURE his trauma is not waved in front of your face and the mcu doesn’t delve into it as much as they could but it IS there
ofc the only scenes in the avengers are the deleted scenes where he’s wandering around and just looking so lost and out of place (but let’s remember he was out of place in the 40s too, and he gets used to the present and lived in it for twelve years!!!! no one would wanna go back after all that time)
in catws, we see his conversations with sam, how he doesn’t know what to do with himself besides superhero-ing (but finding out bucky is alive gives him a newfound purpose here, his friendships with sam and nat and others very much give him reason to be happy in this new life), we see him sad at the museum, missing bucky and peggy and the howlies, but immediately after that is the scene with peggy where she tells him she wants him to live his life! which, following that scene……he does in fact start to, with his friends AND with the hint that he and sharon would get together (it didn’t interest me, but if we’re talking canon here, then sharon IS part of it, which only made endgame’s ending more insane). most of his pain later in catws is his guilt over what happened to bucky, about not saving him, the pain he feels over bucky not being able to remember him……none of that is about missing the past. even the flashback scene, it’s purpose is to show the devotion between steve and bucky and so later steve can say “i’m with you till the end of the line” as bucky said to him, not to show that steve still wishes he lived in the previous century
most of aou kinda just……..ignores catws, but if we have to accept it as canon, then sure we see some of steve’s nostalgia, he seems sad not having that married with kids life or whatever i hate joss whedon his version of steve is Weird (but again…….we’re already set up for steve/sharon in cacw, so like there is potential for him to have that life later on with her or someone else). sure, there’s the dance scene but somehow people never remember that’s a NIGHTMARE, not steve wishing he could go back and dance with peggy. and at the end of the movie, he says “i’m home” (and he again refers to the avengers compound as home in iw!!)
cacw and iw don’t even show ANY indications of him missing the past. in cacw he’s leading the avengers, he’s still close with nat and sam, he’s become close with wanda, he’s still searching for bucky, and the whole movie is in fact about protecting bucky and how the two of them reconnect in this different time they’ve both ended up in. again, his grief is there though, over peggy’s death, but it’s not a thing of wishing he had his chance with her, since ya know, the canon love interest of that movie is sharon. he even tells tony in his letter at the end that he never fit in anywhere, so why would the 40s be a better place for him than the present, where nearly all the people he cares for are?
again in iw, he’s still got his closest friends, he’s still on good terms with the other avengers even after the events of civil war. his screen time is very limited of course, so the only grief we see is at the very end when the snap happens. how do you reconcile the horror on steve’s face, touching the ground where bucky just turned to dust, with the movie following, where bucky isn’t mentioned at all
steve’s grief is RIGHT THERE, time and time again, we see his pain in every single movie over his losses, his guilt, his displacement. he didn’t push it all down and hide how much he missed peggy, where he would decide he couldn’t live without her and take the opportunity to go back in time, leaving everyone else in his life behind. that was never there in canon, even when we saw bits of his sadness over her and their relationship. if he truly wanted to go back, we would’ve seen it before endgame. and because that wasn’t the case, that’s the exact reason they couldn’t get into his grief over the snap, and had to pretend peggy is the only thing he’s cared about this whole time, even though it’s not the least bit true
#i think many people often forget that teh biggest victim of the way endgame treated steve rogers’ character is in fact steve rogers himself#because that ending and the morally dubious choice is complete ooc writing doesn’t fit in with any of the movies in his trilogy#and that is the end all be all of that character in canon#THAT’S HOW THEY DECIDED TO PUT A FULL STOP ON HIS STORY AND CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT#i’ll forever be salty about this because#steve rogers deserved better (k347)
#how do you reconcile the horror on steve’s face touching the ground where bucky just turned to dust#with the movie following where bucky isn’t mentioned at all#oof that part is-#i’m so disproportionately angry at this#and i will forever mourn how they ruined my favorite character#steve is the biggest victim of this because they took a character that had eveything#so human and flawed yet never not willing to do the right thing#and they fucked it up thoroughly#fucked *him* up#grieving seems like too big of a word but that’s what i’ve been feeling for two years (for-bucks-sake)
Just want to add to this that there was also, in Endgame, a perfectly believable and in-character way to have Steve step away from being Captain America full-time or entirely, because there were millions of people suddenly displaced from time as a result of the way the Avengers chose to use the gauntlet once they got all the stones. Millions of people now experiencing a trauma with which Steve is intimately familiar. And the movie starts out showing us Steve running a support group. It’s just not that difficult to imagine Steve finding his purpose in helping the people who came back and found out five years had passed. It was right there, but the Russos lacked even the mid-level imagination to make it work. I’ll also be salty about it forever.
#long post#mcu#this right there is the reason I was absolutely enraged with the ending#how can you write something that shitty and ooc and pretend it is good#not to mention the movie itself was absolutely horrible#it wasn’t even bad in a good way but just absolutely bad#I was bored the entire time#and then the ending came up#and it absolutely enraged me#they destroyed a character in what; ten minutes?#he finally has all of his close friends back amd then decides to be like ‘nope I’m gonna live in the past now sorry guys’#like what the fuck#shitty writing#god this still makes mad#only because he was a character I really liked since the beginning#and I liked his story#and they go and do that#that’s why I chose to forget Endgame exists (pinkandgreenroom)
#EXACTLY all of this#honestly endgame doesn’t make any logical sense as a story all in all#they ruined the chances of it being a good movie once they decided to do a 5 year flashforward#literally not one moment of this movie makes sense if you think about it#it all falls apart#and steve wasn’t himself from start to finish of this circus#the way he talked the way he dressed his hair nothing about him was steve rogers#not even close#but that ending jesus fucking christ the ending ruined everything#steve most of all#but his relationship with bucky with sam with nat with wanda with peggy herself#it destroyed EVERYTHING#ten years of movies#two seasons of peggy’s show#more than one character#like it’s just such a mess#and none of it makes sense even by the movie logic??#like the time travel rules are broken because if steve created parallel timeline he should have appeared on the platform after that as young#as he was while he left#and if it’s the same timeline which his age indicated (i’m not even gonna mention that he’s NOT supposed to age as a normal person)#then he literally wiped away peggy’s children from existence which should have brought HORRIBLE consequences#it didn’t make sense narratively#it didn’t make sense for the character#it was bad writing all around#that’s why i can’t watch anything marvel after endgame cause i can’t accept this stupidity and everything after as part of the story#steve means too much#and also good point about wanda showing him his WORST NIGHTMARE going back into the past to retire from constant fighting#to dance with peggy was HIS BIGGEST NIGHTMARE#and now it’s suddenly his happy ending?#is nat’s happy ending is going back to people who taught her and experimented on her then?
I could only watch FATWS by pretending that the story Sam and Bucky told the public was true.
