Agent N: Yes, it certainly was. Made a great cliffhanger though. I've heard that theory and, respectfully, I don't buy it. Natasha is unable to have children due to the Red Room sterilizing her, so the theory doesn't have a whole lot of solid ground.
Watson Smith: Suicide jokes, not cool man.
Titan irrelevant: The Avengers needed to be together to stop Thanos. Even if Strange had left the moment after he saw those futures, Tony would not have gone with him because he was determined to face Thanos on Titan. Without Strange, Tony, Peter and the Guardians would have then died and there would have been no hope of stopping Thanos. The moment Tony made the decision to go fight Thanos rather than return to Earth, there was only one future where they won.
Green Hal37: Yeah, it did feel like that, didn't it? Yep, yep, and yep.
Previous: That same UN decided it was a great idea to pass a document like The Accords and to put Ross in charge of the UN backed Avengers. So clearly, The UN in the MCU is not the UN we know. If anything, it's even more corrupt and useless.
Jinero: The Accords are already in the making for months, so they can't be stopped. Everything else, yeah.
Guest 1: Honestly, Zemo was consumed by revenge, he was going to kill himself after he was dead. I really don't think he cared, if he survived that is.
Guest 2: Don't worry, I'm not.
Guest 3: I'm pretty sure that's copyright and can get me reported. So no, I won't be doing that.
The future Avengers led them all down the hall, each of them consumed with their own thoughts. They had lost, all of them. Thanos had won. They had failed.
"I-I need to know something," Tony suddenly said and they stopped as they looked at him. "Pepper, did she…"
"She survived, she was okay," Barton assured him and Tony nearly collapsed with relief.
"Oh thank god," Tony breathed as he put a hand to his face, thanking whatever god was out there that the love of his life had survived.
"I know that was…hard for you all to see, but it's so you don't have to go through the same things we did," Scarlet said gently. "You never really recover from something like this."
"It's my fault," Thor said lowly.
"I told myself the same thing for months," Barton said and Thor looked at him. "I thought if I was there, that maybe I could've made a difference. All that kind of thinking does is make you feel worse."
"You all made mistakes, but punishing yourselves isn't going to help. All you can do is learn from them," Parker told them and everyone glanced at each other, silent.
"This time, we take him together," Steve said and Tony nodded.
"No more fighting each other," Tony agreed.
With that said, the group entered the kitchen. An arrangement of sandwiches and fruit as on the table as a solemn Strange stood in the room.
"I take it they've finished the first one?" Strange asked and Barton nodded. "I'm sorry you had to see that."
"Was giving the Time Stone to Thanos really the only way?" Natasha asked and he nodded grimly.
"Even if I had brought the Time Stone back to Earth the moment after I emerged from my trance, Tony was determined to fight Thanos on Titan. You all needed to face Thanos together to win," Strange said and Tony winced. "The moment Tony and I made the unfortunate decision to head to Titan rather than return to Earth, there was only way we won."
"My bad," Tony mumbled.
"Mine as well. One lesson you never learned is that the responsibility of protecting the world does not fall to you alone. The failure to stop Thanos is not solely your fault. There were multiple factors that led us to that point," Strange said as Tony sighed.
"But we won, right? Otherwise, they wouldn't be here," Scott said as he looked at Parker and Scarlet.
"We won…but at a cost," Lila said gently as Barton once again got a haunted look in his eyes that chilled them to the bone.
"Like I said yesterday, those of us who lived were left broken by what we lost," Barton said gruffly, fighting not to look at Natasha. "We lost friends. We lost family. We lost part of ourselves that we never got back. You have a chance to make sure none of this ever happens. Don't waste it."
"We won't," Steve said with conviction and Barton. Nodded gratefully.
"So who was it that Fury was calling?" Peter asked and the future Avengers exchanged a glance.
"Well…before Fury started the Avengers Initiative, there was an incident in the nineties," Barton said as the past Avengers looked at him curiously. "A woman named Carol Danvers, who was almost as powerful as Thor fell from the sky. She was an Air Force Pilot who had been abducted and brainwashed by an alien race known as the Kree."
"The Kree," Thor started at the word and Barton nodded. "Why would the Kree have interest in this pilot?"
"Because she received powers due to being exposed to the Tesseract," Scarlet explained, to their shock.
"She had no memory of her life on earth except vague fragments; she didn't even know her name when she crashed on earth. She brought trouble with her to, a war between a species of shapeshifting aliens called the Skrulls and the Kree," Parker explained and Thor started again.
"The Skrulls?" Thor asked as he paled.
"You know them?" Rhodey asked and Thor nodded.
"Three hundred years ago, the Skrulls attempted to take over Asgard by replacing Loki and Lady Sif. They planned to get to my father and replace him as well. But they were no match for Loki's cunning and Sif's strength and skill. And these creatures were on earth?" Thor asked horrified and Barton nodded.
"You don't know the half of it, but that's a story for another time," Barton said before getting back on track. "After it was all over, she gave Fury that pager in case he ever needed help."
"Okay, so why hasn't he pulled it out and called her before? If she's as strong as you say she is, she would have been a big help against Loki and Ultron," Clint pointed out.
"Fighting the Kree was getting pretty taxing; you have to understand that they are extremely powerful. Plus, there was an incident just before Ultron that made it worse, the Guardians can tell you about it," Strange explained.
"It's why Fury decided to assemble The Avengers, he realized he couldn't rely on Carol to protect us, especially when she reached out and told him only to call in extreme emergencies," Lila explained and they all nodded in understanding.
"Still seems a bit convenient," Scott muttered.
"In any case, if you're hungry, you should eat. In an hour, we'll resume the recordings," Barton said.
"How many are left?" Sam asked.
"Just two," Strange said.
"So, if you want, eat up. If not, just meet in the viewing room in an hour," Barton said before the future Avengers walked out, leaving them all alone to process what they had heard and seen.
Not my longest chapter and certainly not my best, but I do hope you enjoyed it.
I didn't reveal everyone who died because I didn't want to spoil the ending of Antman and the Wasp, at which point I'll probably reveal most of the victims of the snap.
I'll be honest; I don't like the MCU's take on Captain Marvel for several reasons. Brie Larson has done a horrible job in the role IMO and Carol herself is a horribly written character. But the main reason I dislike her is because she was shoehorned into Endgame so that Kevin Feige could score woke points. I have no problem with them wanting to bring in Captain Marvel, but introducing her this late in the game was just bad writing. She should never have been in Endgame, she should have been introduced in Phase Four. Because she wasn't, the first time Steve, Tony, Natasha, Clint, Thor, and Bruce all come together in the first Avengers now has a lot less meaning and we're left with the gapping plot hole of why Fury waited until the world was literally falling apart to call her.
But, that's just my opinion. You don't share it, that's perfectly fine.