The Marvel Cinematic Universe has built its success on its ever-growing, constantly evolving story, but that does sometimes cause some retrospective issues with its earlier movies. Since the release of Iron Man in 2008, the MCU has grown into one of the most expansive and financially successful franchises in movie history. The movies and TV shows of the MCU have adapted countless characters and stories from the pages of Marvel Comics, bringing them to life on the big and small screens alike in triumphant fashion. The MCU’s story has continually grown with the franchise, with its characters constantly making discoveries as new narrative ideas are explored and established.
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One of the problems with this, though, is that it occasionally makes older plot points or details seem nonsensical in hindsight. Elements of the franchise’s story established in later movies and shows sometimes retroactively create MCU plot holes, making certain moments and scenes from the franchise’s earlier movies seem pretty nonsensical as a result. Considering what was later established as canon within the MCU, these old scenes no longer make any sense at all.
7) Tony Stark Touches the Tesseract
The MCU’s Infinity Stones were the focal point of the franchise’s Infinity Saga, but there are certain points in their story that are pretty confusing. A relatively minor moment in Avengers: Endgame‘s time heist sees Tony Stark recovering the Tesseract from his father’s facility in the 1970s. In doing so, Stark handles the Infinity Stone with no adverse effects at all, despite the fact that other characters to hold Infinity Stones were either corrupted or destroyed by their power.
6) Thor’s Vision in Age of Ultron
It’s often said that Avengers: Age of Ultron is the worst of all the MCU’s Avengers movies, and considering the ways the franchise later contradicts the film, it’s an understandable position. One infamous scene saw Thor travel to the Pool of Sight to gain some clarity on recent events, only to learn that Loki’s scepter contains the Mind Stone and that Thanos is secretly pulling the strings. The scene serves simply to move the plot along, but the realization of Thanos’ involvement should have spurred the Avengers into action against the Mad Titan. Instead, it simply creates an annoying MCU plot hole.
5) All the Scenes Where Rhodey was a Skrull
Secret Invasion is, to date, the biggest failure of the MCU’s Disney+ shows. One of the show’s biggest revelations is that Rhodey, a long-standing Avenger, had actually been a Skrull impostor for some time. In hindsight, this makes many scenes involving the character incredibly confusing, as it’s hard to understand where the real Rhodey was replaced. Trying to work out which scenes are genuine and which ones featured the Skrull impostor now overshadows practically all of the character’s story, effectively ruining his MCU arc so far.
4) Thanos’ First Appearance
2012’s The Avengers was a monumental movie for the MCU in many ways. As well as establishing the titular team in the franchise, it also introduced Thanos in one of the MCU’s most important post-credits scenes. Thanos makes a reference to courting Death, which teases the franchise’s adaptation of the Infinity War story from the comics. However, with Death now introduced into the MCU after playing no role at all in Thanos’ plan, the scene simply doesn’t quite make sense the way it did upon The Avengers‘ initial release.
3) Red Skull’s “Death”
The rules surrounding touching Infinity Stones in the MCU seem to be frustratingly flexible, but even putting that aside, Red Skull’s apparent death in Captain America: The First Avenger is baffling in hindsight. Handling the Tesseract — which we later learned contained the Space Stone — didn’t kill Red Skull as it initially appeared, but rather transported him to Vormir where he was forced into servitude as the guardian of the Soul Stone. Exactly why and how this came about from touching the Tesseract was never established, making the whole death scene seem utterly nonsensical.
2) Civil War’s Spider-Man Post-Credits scene
Making Spider-Man one of the MCU characters with a Stark suit was relatively divisive, but the hero’s introduction in Captain America: Civil War also featured a moment that no longer makes sense. In Civil War‘s post-credits scene, Peter Parker discovers a feature of his new web shooters that projects some form of interface. The moment teases the tech incorporated into his new suit, but this particular feature was never shown again, meaning that, in retrospect, the scene doesn’t really make much sense at all.
1) All Suggestions of Scarlet Witch Being a Mutant
While the Scarlet Witch remains firmly established as one of the MCU’s most powerful magic users, there are a few elements of her story that don’t really make sense anymore. There were a few occasions on which it was suggested that Wanda’s abilities stemmed from her being one of the MCU’s mutants, which was an exciting tease for the X-Men’s imminent arrival. However, killing the character off before the MCU’s Mutant Saga made these scenes seem redundant and confusing. While they may yet be better explained, at present, the suggestions that Wanda was a mutant just seem to have been utterly pointless.
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