‘Avengers: Endgame’: Thanos’ Plan Actually Made No Sense
With projects being delayed left and right due to the coronavirus pandemic, Marvel Cinematic Universe fans have naturally taken to dissecting all aspects of the past 20+ films. And when we all have too much time on our hands, we realize some disappointing things. Recently, fans have started thinking back to Thanos’ plan in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame to get rid of half of the universe’s population. The plot swept us all in for two whole movies, but looking back, fans are wondering if it made any sense at all.
Thanos’ plan in Infinity War and Endgame
Thanos is an interesting villain in that he’s not driven by power — he’s driven by a desire to save the universe. Thanos’ home planet Titan was destroyed due to overpopulation and over-consumption of the planet’s natural resources. Thanos first had the idea to get rid of half of Titan’s population in an effort to save the world, but his idea was rejected and the planet was ultimately destroyed.
The death of his planet made Thanos desire to save the rest of the universe from the same mistakes. But this time, instead of allowing others to say no to his plan, Thanos decided to act on his own. He sought the six Infinity Stones that would, when placed into his gauntlet, allow him to kill half of the universe’s population at random. This, he thought, would ultimately save the universe from the same destruction that he saw happen to his home planet.
…But would it actually work how he thought it would?
Thanos succeeded in his plan. He got control of all six Infinity Stones and, with a snap of his fingers, killed half of the universe’s population. The result should have been that the remaining population would have twice the amount of resources available to them and would no longer be putting their planets in danger of over-consumption.
But would that actually work? Fans recently took to Reddit to discuss their thoughts on the matter:
“So thanos’s plan was to kill half the population in the universe to allow them to start a new life with double the resources they would have had? But was this just a temporary solution? In X years the populations would reproduce and everyone would be back to square one. How would he have handled this? Snap again? Kill the people who weren’t snapped the first time? Change his plan entirely?”
Fans don’t think Thanos’ plan actually made sense
Many fans responded to the post by agreeing that the plan didn’t make much sense. The solution would have indeed been temporary at best, leading to the same population growth that first led to the original problem Thanos was trying to stop. On top of that, Thanos destroyed the Infinity Stones after using them, so he wouldn’t have been able to do another snap when population levels rose again. One user stated that was their biggest frustration: “I think the real issue was destroying the infinity stones, my head canon was that he uses the stones again every X years he needs to.. but then he destroyed them.”
Other users pointed out that while it seemed as though Thanos’ plan came from a place of altruism in that he desired to save the universe, they suspected that he also desired power after all. One user said, “The [directors] did agree that his plan was flawed; it was more about showing his messianic complex and that his way was the right way.” Perhaps Thanos thought the remaining population would look to him for guidance following the snap, thus giving him power. Whatever his true reasons were, at least the movies were good enough that they distracted from this silly plan.
