Show me an Avengers: Endgame plot hole, whether a small detail or a significant event, and I’ll explain it immediately: as Doctor Strange said, there was only one way for them to beat Thanos. That’s it… that’s the plot armor that Marvel planted in Infinity War to ensure it could deliver an Endgame story with as many flaws as it needed. But now that the MCU Phase 4 is over, we have another interpretation of the Infinity War and Endgame plot and how the Avengers never stood a chance of losing. Perhaps it was all thanks to Kang (Jonathan Majors).
That “one way” was the only way the timeline would move forward. He Who Remains, the good variant of Kang we met in Loki, set things up in such a manner. And this brings us to a brilliant theory that further reinforces that idea while dealing with one of the famous Avengers: Endgame plot holes.
While most MCU fans have seen Endgame more than once, Multiverse Saga spoilers might follow. You should avoid the theory below if you’re behind on Phase 4 titles, or if you don’t want to read rumors about upcoming movies.
Avengers: Endgame doesn’t have plot holes
Again, Endgame is not a perfect movie, as highly entertaining as it might be. But Endgame doesn’t have any big plot holes that ruin the fun either. Everything can be explained away using Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch). He told the Avengers in Infinity War that they only won in one instance of the 14 million futures he saw.
At the time of the Endgame premiere, we had no idea of Kang or the Sacred Timeline. But as soon as Loki dropped on Disney Plus, everything made more sense.
As He Who Remains told us, everyone in the Sacred Timeline lived a predestined life in order to avoid multiversal wars. All the events were carefully orchestrated. And everything that disrupted his script was obliterated. That’s how a Loki variant (Tom Hiddleston) ended up with the TVA. He just deviated from the original plan.
Therefore, the plan was always for the Avengers to lose to Thanos (Josh Brolin) and spend five hopeless, miserable years dealing with that loss. Eventually, they found a solution to beat the Mad Titan. But everything was going according to He Who Remains’s plan.
Why did it have to be so difficult for the Avengers to win? This was the only way. He Who Remains probably gamed all the other versions of this conflict. Ultimately, he must have allowed Thanos to beat the Avengers in Infinity War.
This Kang version still needs Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) to develop multiversal time travel so that his future self can use it. Also, He Who Remains can’t allow Thanos to kill half of all living beings, otherwise Kang might never have been born.
Kang and Ant-Man’s rat
Tony Stark only figures out time travel after Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) informs him about his experience in the Quantum Realm. Therefore, Kang needs Lang to come out of his five-hour Quantum Realm experience. But for Lang to return to his primary reality, Avengers: Endgame needs a rat to press buttons inside that ugly van.
That’s one of the popular Endgame plot holes that fans refer to. You don’t need to know about Kang or Loki to explain it. The only way the Avengers win is for that rat to press those buttons in that particular order.
Add Kang into the mix, and the answer is even simpler. As a Redditor theorized, the rat is Kang’s idea. That would involve minimal interaction with the timeline to ensure a particular outcome. It ensures that Scott can exit the Quantum Realm and hurry over to Tony. And that’s really a great way to explain this Endgame plot hole, one that Marvel could definitely steal in future Avengers movies.
It doesn’t have to be the evil Kang planting the rat in the Sacred Timeline’s script. He Who Remains might have done it for the reasons described above. The Avengers need to beat Thanos in Endgame in a particular way to ensure that at least one future Kang version can be born and that the multiverse tech is invented.
He Who Remains might be pruning all timelines that diverge from the script to prevent other Kangs from appearing. But he still needs a future where multiverse wars are possible, knowing that eventually, a good variant of Kang will team up with the Avengers to beat the evil Kangs.
