Why Captain America Retires After Avengers: Endgame

Retirement was a natural ending for man out of time and perennial soldier Captain America (Chris Evans), explain Avengers: Endgame writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely.

"Steve Rogers has … boy, he has done all you can do. He's well over 100 … I think he's over 100 years old," Markus told Variety.

"He has fought World War II and Civil War and an Infinity War. He's been through three wars. And he has come to a place, I think, where he's realizing to be a fully rounded human, which is all of our goals, he needs to take a little time and be a little healthier. I think when he … in a way I think when he encounters his old self back in Avengers Tower, there is a processing going on in his head that well, that's a really intense and maybe not 100% healthy guy. So I think it is time."

A trip through time to retrieve three of the six Infinity Stones needed to resurrect the Vanished brought with it a shield-to-shield encounter with his past self circa 2012. Rogers jumped back further through time again to obtain the Tesseract, catching a glimpse of long lost love Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) during a visit to 1970 New Jersey.

It would ignite in Rogers a desire to find the domestic home life awarded to his Avengers colleague Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), who after a five-year time jump had peacefully settled down with a wife and daughter.

"We figured out pretty early that … and we've been helping do this for a few years now, that Tony and Steve were sort of on crisscrossing arcs," Markus said.

"That Tony movie by movie was becoming … was having a more a macro view, becoming more selfless. And Steve was becoming a bit more self interested. Civil War is a good example of that. So, we had put up on the wall at one point, Tony becomes a complete person when he loses his life and Steve becomes a complete person when he gets one. We drove toward that."

The writing partners previously defended the decision to have Rogers live out his life in the past before returning to 2023 as an old man, telling the New York Times they knew the star spangled superhero would receive his long-awaited dance with Peggy "from the very first outline."

Directors Anthony and Joe Russo have since said they do not expect Evans, who has "emotionally moved on," to ever reprise the role.

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