Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame were two of the most memorable films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s entire existence. Being a clash of narratives of characters we have been following for many years through numerous films, the two films provided us so many iconic moments and exchanges, all while having, maybe, the most engrossing storyline to come out of the MCU to that point. To bring everything together, Thanos, one of the most anticipated, powerful, and ethically conflicted antagonists we’ve ever seen, appears in this franchise. While the films were probably among the best produced by the studio, they were not without their share of heartbreak, from the deaths of many cherished characters to some completely avoidable calamities. The snap, the moment Thanos obliterated half the cosmos, has to be the most prominent of the latter that led to many of the former.
There have been many discussions over the years regarding how the snap could have been avoided, attempting to pin responsibility on one or more heroes, and it appears that a director of a future Marvel production has more to say to this topic. Who is the director of The Marvels to blame for the snap? Many characters have been blamed for Thanos snapping his figures and wiping half of the universe. It appears that at every step of his plan, someone or something could have stopped, blocked, or killed his plan or simply him, whether it was Chris Pratt’s Star-Lord, who has received a lot of backlash from fans for allowing his emotions to get the best of him and destroy Iron Man’s plan to steal Thanos’s gauntlet, or Thor, who even beat himself up for not going for the Mad Titan’s head with his axe. Another figure appears to have been added to the growing list, as Nia DaCosta, the director of the upcoming film The Marvels, has revealed who she believes is responsible for the snap and the deaths of all those who died as a result of it. “Something I like to say a bit flippantly about Captain America is that the Snap is all his fault because he was trying to do his best, trying to do the right thing,” she said to Inverse Why does Nia DaCosta believe Captain America is to blame for the snap? Nia DaCosta elaborated, saying that she believes Steve Rogers is completely to blame for the snap, and her rationale is rather intriguing.
When Vision discovered that the infinity stone on his head constituted a threat in Avengers: Infinity War, the first thing he requested was that the stone be removed so that Thanos could not fulfill his plan. Rogers, on the other hand, quickly shot this down, claiming that they do not trade life. DaCosta argues that this was a poor decision, and that sacrificing one life would have been preferable to the destruction of half the universe. “There is a world in which he’s a villain because, at the end of the day, he should have just sacrificed Vision. He chose one robot’s life, albeit a sentient one, over literally the entire universe. There’s a sort of anti-hero in that if you want to look at it through that lens.” she went on to tell Inverse. While this makes sense on paper, it would not have ended well if the mind stone had been destroyed, as in the sequel to this film, Avengers: Endgame. We learn to preserve equilibrium in the flow of time of a universe through the Ancient One infinity stones. If only one stone is removed or destroyed, it might cause even more issues than Thanos presented.
