Please Stop Asking Where the Avengers Are

Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Secret Invasion Episode 5.

At this moment, 32 films have been released in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), as well as 9 Disney+ shows and a number of off-shoots and loosely connected iterations sitting on the franchise’s periphery. Along the way, much of Marvel’s pantheon of iconic heroes have spent multiple years in the live-action limelight, and many of the comics’ more obscure characters have morphed into household names.

As the MCU reaches the halfway point of Phase Five, now over fifteen years since its inception, the instances of team-up ventures between the heroes have stretched well beyond the four Avengers films we’ve seen thus far. Naturally, the audience (and by extension, the characters) are going to begin wondering why every subsequent threat isn’t managed by every available Avenger, but it’s a question we cannot keep asking. Sometimes hand waving at the unanswerable is acceptable, and frankly, if Brie Larson‘s Captain Marvel wasn’t consistently occupied elsewhere, these movies would be a lot shorter.

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Everyone Is Always Asking Where the Avengers Are

The most famous (and most often made into memes) example of this comes from Spider-Man: Far From Home, in which an overwhelmed Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is recruited by secretly Skrull versions of Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Maria Hill (Cobie Smoulders) to tackle the problem of the Elemental beasts that have been concocted by Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal). Understandably, after having recently united with the universe’s mightiest heroes, Peter’s a bit unsure as to why he’s on his own for this. After all, he just met Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), and Captain Marvel, all of whom would make quick work of a few villain-of-the-day foes.

“Mr. Fury, this all seems like big time, you know, huge superhero kind of stuff, and, I mean, I’m just a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man,” Peter pleads to Fury. He’s got a point. Then he runs through the list of suitable — adult — substitutes. “What about Thor?” he asks, to which Fury responds, “Off-world.” Sounds plausible. “Okay, um, Doctor Strange.” Maria Hill gives him a simple, “Unavailable.” Then, with raised eyebrows, Peter suggests “Captain Marvel!” Fury frustratingly retorts sternly, “Don’t invoke her name.”

Captain America: Civil War was a team-up flick missing two off-world juggernauts, Thor and Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) — a couple of misplaced “30 megaton nukes,” as General Ross (William Hurt) put it. After those events, half of the Avengers were forced on the run while a couple of others fell under house arrest. This is the MCU’s best-explained instance of a splintered team, with the unavailability of our Avengers naturally manifesting itself from the logic of the plot. We can’t always have our scripts laying the groundwork, however, for our character’s itineraries. Sometimes — most of the time, even — it’s best to just eat your popcorn and accept that this is Spider-Man’s movie, not an Avengers-level event.

In Avengers: Endgame, we get what may be the only acceptable occurrence of the inquiry in question when it hasn’t been answered by the plot. The universe has just lost half of all living creatures, and the ravaged roster of Avengers that remains has gathered to put their heads together and plan their retaliation against Thanos (Josh Brolin). Naturally, Carol Danvers is asked where she’s been all this time, and she simply tells them that there are a lot of other planets that have needed her help. That’s fine, now we can move on. She packs an insane amount of power, and if she’d been around all along they’d have to constantly nerf her abilities or generate excuse after excuse, which would be annoying at best and unsustainably nonsensical at worst.

Where Are the Avengers During ‘Secret Invasion’?

While we’ve been able to eye-roll at these moments in the past, Secret Invasion has made this the time to finally address the matter. Until now, the series has been led by Nick Fury in a show otherwise devoid of those adjacent to the Avengers, save for some supporting appearances from Maria Hill and Colonel Rhodes (Don Cheadle). Aside from the Skrulls, we’re working with a cast of entirely non-super-powered players, and that’s made for an at least slightly more grounded approach to the conflict of the MCU’s post-Blip universe. That is until we’re reminded that all of this could’ve been swiftly solved by a superhero or two.

In Secret Invasion‘s recently aired penultimate episode, a character once again had to ask this question. Faced with the threat of extinction at the hands of the Skrulls, Olivia Colman‘s Sonya Falsworth asks, “Fury, why haven’t you called any of your special friends down?” Fury then utters the worst attempt at explaining the issue away that the MCU’s ever managed: “This is personal.”

“We can’t keep depending on these superheroes to swoop in and save our asses,” Fury elaborates. You can’t? Says who? You’re facing the potential extinction of the human race, you should absolutely depend on the superheroes. That’s what they’re for! Even that’s beyond the point, though. The real answer is that you just can’t have everyone show up in every series or movie. It doesn’t work; we get it. Please just tell the stories without needlessly reminding us of their limitations.

Not Every MCU Movie or Series Should Be a Team-Up

The problem with the consistent need to inquire about the Avengers’ whereabouts is twofold. It goes for the audience just as much as it does for the writers. At this point, when recognizing the unrealistic nature of accounting for each hero ad nauseam, it’s a losing battle for everyone. When the characters do it themselves, we’re immediately removed from any immersion in the story that may have been present, and any semblance of our suspension of disbelief dissipates. We have to pause, remember that we’re watching a production, and consider the budgetary and logistical roadblocks that render constant team-up ventures impossible.

From an audience standpoint, it’s a having our cake (and eating it too) situation. We want a believable connection throughout the entire franchise, with much of the fandom expressing incessant displeasure when something like the Eternals‘ giant stone Celestial goes unacknowledged, but we set ourselves up for disappointment when the only answer can be a trudge through unnecessary exposition and, ultimately, unsatisfying reasoning. Never mind the fact that the worry over referencing the stone behemoth has, for some reason, outweighed the more pressing question of the whereabouts of the Eternals themselves, an arguably much more consequential matter that the MCU writers are ignoring until the time is right.

It’s not a complicated matter — not everything can be a team-up. If we want to give ourselves any chance of accepting the stakes for what they are and enjoying some schlock, it’s time to put our push-pins and strings of yarn away and absolve ourselves of the need to keep tabs on the Avengers at all times.