Avengers Endgame spoilers: We need to talk about THIS character’s CRUEL exit

WARNING: Major spoilers ahead for Avengers: Endgame.

The film did, as expected, bring the current era of Marvel storytelling to a close; regardless of what happens in Spider-Man: Far From Home in July.

And that meant bidding farewell to some old friends – and this is your last chance to LOOK AWAY NOW if you haven’t seen the movie.

While Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) went back in time to live the life he always wanted with Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell), Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) died a hero after wielding the Infinity Stones and giving Thanos a taste of his own snap-happy medicine.

One character’s exit was much more brutal.

Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), aka Black Widow, suffered the same fate as Gamora (Zoe Saldana), albeit voluntarily.

When she and Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) discovered that they’d have to sacrifice someone they loved before they could get their hands on the Soul Stone, they bickered over who would get the honours – and Natasha ‘won’.

This meant she met her fate at the bottom of a cliff in Vormir, leaving Hawkeye to take the Soul Stone back to the survivors.

And just like that, Black Widow – the first, and for a long time only female Avenger – was gone.

This was an effective gut-punch in the moment, but the cruelest thing about it was how Johansson then had to sit out of the movie’s heart-pounding climax.

In fact it was she who did most of the leg-work in the first act: after sitting out a lot of Infinity War, she was instrumental in driving forward the plan in the first chunk of Endgame.

Of course her death made sense for her character arc: Clint had a whole family, whereas Natasha was providing the ultimate sacrifice for her makeshift one, as well as fully and indisputably paying back the debt she felt she owed him all those years ago.

But for her to then have to miss the payoff was devastating: she’s played Supporting Character throughout her time in the MCU, and a final moment of glory may have been much more satisfying.

Tony and Steve got those big, epic farewells at the end, and to resign Natasha to a splat at the bottom of Vormir an hour or so earlier seemed particularly cruel.

Still, at least we have some consolation: the Black Widow movie (presumably a prequel) is in the pipeline, though it has yet to be officially announced.

At long last, Natasha Romanoff can finally take centre stage like she deserves.

Avengers: Endgame is out now.