Avengers: Endgame’s final act had a magic-related plot hole - so how can it be fixed? The third act of Avengers: Endgame was an absolute masterpiece, with the assembled Avengers going head-to-head with Thanos and his armies. It was everything viewers had waited over a decade to see.

Tony Stark’s new Infinity Gauntlet was at the center of the action. The Avengers were desperate to keep the Infinity Gauntlet out of Thanos’ hands; if the Mad Titan acquired it, he would be able to exert total control over all reality, and accomplish his insane goal of rebalancing the universe. Making it even more complicated, Bruce Banner insisted that the Infinity Stones should be taken back in time to where they first retrieved in order to fulfill his promise to the Ancient One. As a result, Ant-Man and Wasp attempted to fire up the Quantum Tunnel in the van - but the plan went awry when it was destroyed. That seemed to mean there was no way the Avengers could get the Infinity Gauntlet out of there - and it eventually led to Tony Stark’s sacrifice.

But here’s the catch; there was actually one way the Avengers could have gotten the Infinity Gauntlet away from Thanos. In fact, they could even have potentially taken the Infinity Stones back to their times of origin without needing the van.

The Masters of the Mystic Arts Could Have Taken The Infinity Gauntlet

The problem is with the Masters of the Mystic Arts. This ancient group of sorcerers have always considered themselves protectors of reality itself, defending Earth from threats from the wider Multiverse. “We harness energy drawn from other dimensions of the multiverse,” the Ancient One explained in Doctor Strange, “to cast spells, conjure shields and weapons to make magic.” They don’t just train for the sake of it, though; they’re combat-ready, using their sorcery in battle against threats from across time and space.

The Masters of the Mystic Arts played a key role in Avengers: Endgame. Under the leadership of the restored Doctor Strange, they used their Sling Rings to reinforce the beleaguered Avengers, giving them a veritable army to back them up. But, as crucial as the Masters of the Mystic Arts were in all this, they could have done far more. As an example, they could have used the Sling Rings to send the Infinity Gauntlet out of the action, removing the risk of Thanos getting his hands on it straight away. What’s more, any member of the Masters of the Mystic Arts could have done this, not just Doctor Strange. That would have completely reshaped the third-act battle, because Thanos would no longer have been laser-focused on acquiring the Infinity Gauntlet.

Doctor Strange Could Have Taken The Infinity Stones Back In Time

The plot hole gets worse when you remember that the Avengers were desperate to send the Infinity Stones back to their own times. The Masters of the Mystic Arts could actually have accomplished this. As Baron Mordo explained in Doctor Strange, the Sling Rings “allow us to travel throughout the Multiverse.” In other words, they don’t just transport the Masters of the Mystic Arts across Earth, or even to far-flung planets like Titan; they can also be used to access other dimensions, such as the Quantum Realm. What’s more, the so-called “Magical Mystery Tour” scene in Doctor Strange included a brief glimpse of the Quantum Realm, proving that the Masters of the Mystic Arts are familiar with that mysterious plane of existence. All this means that the Masters of the Mystic Arts could have opened a portal directly into the Quantum Realm, allowing the Avengers to sidestep Scott Lang’s Quantum Tunnel altogether.

Now, it is conceivable that most of the Masters of the Mystic Arts didn’t know the Quantum Realm could be used to travel in time. After all, if they’d ever been interested in time travel before, they’d just have used the Time Stone. But Doctor Strange would certainly have learned it could be done in Avengers: Infinity War, when he saw 14 million alternate futures and learned the only one where the heroes triumphed involved time travel through the Quantum Realm. He could have stepped in, and made that battle-damaged van irrelevant.

Why Didn’t Doctor Strange Take The Infinity Stones?

All this raises the inevitable question of why the Masters of the Mystic Arts didn’t take the Infinity Stones - or, more specifically, why Doctor Strange didn’t take them out of play altogether by sending them back to their times of origin. The key, however, is probably in Doctor Strange’s visions of the future. He’d presumably have seen timelines where they took this approach, and learned that it ultimately failed to stop Thanos. Of course, this is quite a lazy explanation, a convenient get-out clause that was in part deliberately added to Avengers: Infinity War for precisely this kind of situation. The real issue is that continuity in the MCU is quite complex after 11 years’ worth of movies, and Marvel had likely forgotten that Sling Rings could be used like this.

It is interesting, however, to speculate how those future timelines would have worked out. It’s worth noting that, in spite of the might of the assembled Avengers, Thanos was only defeated when Tony Stark managed to steal the Infinity Stones out of the Gauntlet and snapped his fingers. Perhaps this was the one way Thanos could have been defeated; perhaps he’d have ultimately won in the Battle of the Avengers Compound had the Infinity Gauntlet not stayed in play. In that scenario, the Mad Titan would likely have gone on to ravage the entire planet Earth.

Even worse, it’s quite possible Thanos could have then pursued the Infinity Stones back in time. The Avengers had unwittingly told Thanos that time travel was possible, and he’d been able to quickly mass-produce enough Pym Particles to transport his entire Sanctuary II vessel forward in time to 2023. There’s absolutely no reason to assume he couldn’t have then figured out how to create his own time platform, allowing him to travel back in time and collect the Infinity Stones. By that argument, removing the Infinity Stones from the battle - or even from the year 2023 altogether - could have only delayed him. The one way to truly keep the universe safe from Thanos was to keep the Infinity Gauntlet in play, and take the risk.

More: How MCU Phase 4 Will Be Shaped By The Quantum Realm

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