Disclaimer: This post contains major spoilers for Avengers: Endgame.

We all knew sacrifices were coming in Avengers: Endgame. For too long, the Marvel Cinematic Universe continued on without any meaningful deaths taking place. Over the course of 21 movies, the only real deaths we had were…Quicksilver and Yondu? And while that was great for us, as it allowed us to have a chance to see the arcs of so many different characters, it did feel a bit like a cheat that we’ve gone this far without many deaths.

But, man, I wasn’t prepared for one death in particular. Sure, we’d all expected either Tony or Cap to die over the course of its three-hour runtime — or even both — but Black Widow was at the bottom of my list of potential casualties. And yet, when she and Hawkeye went to Vormir to retrieve the Soul Stone, she was the one who had to make the ultimate sacrifice. Speaking with the NY Times, co-writer Stephen McFeely addressed why she had to be the one to bite the dust:

“Her journey, in our minds, had come to an end if she could get the Avengers back. She comes from such an abusive, terrible, mind-control background, so when she gets to Vormir and she has a chance to get the family back, that’s a thing she would trade for. The toughest thing for us was we were always worried that people weren’t going to have time to be sad enough. The stakes are still out there and they haven’t solved the problem. But we lost a big character — a female character — how do we honor it? We have this male lens and it’s a lot of guys being sad that a woman died.”

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I have to say, Black Widow’s death put me in a sour mood for about thirty minutes or so after it took place, but the more I thought about it, the more it did make sense from a character standpoint. I know a lot of people point out that Hawkeye still has a family, but I don’t even think that’s it for me. For me, it’s less about what he was to go back to and more to do with what Black Widow has gained over the course of the series.

She started out as an agent with a dark past who finds a family in the Avengers. She then spends several years fighting for that family to stay together and stay alive at all costs. It only makes sense she’d sacrifice herself protecting it.

But what do you think of her sacrifice? Do you think it was the right choice? Let us know down below!

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SOURCE: NY Times