My friends and I have figured out a time we can all go see Endgame, which is the good news. The bad news is that it's not until Thursday, during which I will be spoiler-dodging as best I can. That being said, the biggest obstacle to this will be myself.
In theory, I think there is some value to seeing a movie without knowing what's coming. The first time I saw The Matrix (how can that movie already be 20 years old?) I had only seen the rather impressively detail-scarce trailers, and had no idea that the movie's premise was that the real world was actually just a virtual reality we were trapped in (or is it that our descendants will be trapped in such a world?) So everything was a surprise in that viewing.
That being said, while I do think people ought to have the right to see a movie fresh the first time, I also recognize that all subsequent viewings of such a movie are going to be "spoiled," and that doesn't detract from their value.
I loved Get Out, even though I had the biggest plot twists spoiled for me years in advance, and in fact it allowed me to watch the movie with those in mind and thus allowed me to appreciate the clever craft of it - how those twists were so well-seeded in moments I likely would not have remembered if I didn't already know about the twists.
As an exercise, I am, for now, trying to remain spoiler-free on Endgame, though I did see an errant tweet that was either a full-on spoiler or a trolling misdirection.
Naturally, the big question for the movie is who is going to die. With this huge arc coming to an end, and many of the actors ready to move on to other projects, it's prime killing season. Obviously, Infinity War saw a number of deaths before its profoundly bleak finale (bleak if one did not assume Endgame was going to fix it - something that announced sequels and such would make absolutely necessary.)
So let me make my predictions. For the record, I swear I haven't seen the movie. These are not spoilers - they are only my predictions. So don't get mad at me if I get these right!
First off, the two most likely deaths to me are Steve Rogers and Tony Stark. Both have been at the center of the Avengers story. Even if Thor has had just as many movies, those didn't really get good until the third one, and Thor's kind of off in his own space. Also, after the devastation of the beginning of Infinity War - something I'm not sure is going to get reversed (we'll get to those parts below,) the Asgardians really need to keep him around.
Iron Man, I think, would find the ultimate completion of his arc from selfish to selfless, and maybe more profoundly, by sacrificing himself he would ultimately be stepping aside for others to protect the world in the future. Tony's biggest flaw, I think, has been the notion that he's got to be the one to fix things. That led to Ultron, and it led to his conflict with Steve. While yes, a self-sacrifice does kind of put the spotlight on him, it is also, ultimately, a passing of the torch.
Captain America would be staying true to himself if he sacrificed himself to save the universe - even pre-serum, he was throwing himself on a (fake, but he didn't know that) grenade. Steve is the ultimate Lawful Good, self-sacrificing hero, but in a way that almost makes me wonder if we're going to lose him without him actually dying.
There's clearly going to be some kind of time-manipulation if they're going to undo the snap - just bringing people back would create some really messed up existential stuff for literally half the universe. Steve Rogers has, of course, become an integral part of the modern era, but there was a whole life for him in the 1940s that was lost to him pretty unfairly. If we wanted to give Captain America a happy ending, could we think of a better one than sending him back to the 40s to be with Peggy again?
Now, I've talked about how the Snap is obviously going to have to be undone. We've still got Guardians of the Galaxy vol 3, Black Panther 2, maybe another Doctor Strange movie? (I liked it, though I'll admit largely because of how cool its visuals were - I think they wasted Mads Mikkelsen.)
The real question is which pre-snap deaths from Infinity War are getting undone. First, let's talk the Asgardians. I think Heimdall and Loki are probably down for the count. Loki has come back so many times that this one really needs to stick or we'll just never believe he's dead. I'd like to know what happened to Valkyrie, Korg, and the other Asgardians (Sif escaped Hela's cast-culling in Ragnarok, but we don't know how she did with Thanos.)
Then we've got Gamora. Now, I think she's got to come back. The fact that a vision of her appears when Thanos gets the Soul Stone makes me think that she's not truly dead, but somehow trapped within the gem or something. I think Guardians would really suffer losing any of the core group, and while Nebula and Mantis get them enough women to potentially pass the Bechdel test, I really think Gamora's got to come back (if for nothing other than to have some kind of final reckoning with Thanos.)
So that leaves Vision. On one hand, Vision hasn't been around in too many movies, but on the other, Paul Bettany has. I could imagine that, as someone who has been in the franchise just as long as Robert Downey Junior, he might be ready to leave. But in-narrative, I don't think Vision really needs to stick around. Can they save him? Maybe. Will they? I don't really know. It's a chance for an unsnapped Wanda to feel sad, and doesn't angst drive all sorts of drama?
Anyway, it seems pretty clear to me that the fact that Doctor Strange saw only one possibility in which they beat Thanos, and then went on to hand over the Time Stone to him, means that the "only way" absolutely required that they first lose. As I've said before, Strange is no stranger to dying over and over if it means winning in the end. After Dormammu, that one death probably feels like nothing.
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