From waiting with bated breath to crying my eyes out to biting my nails to rushing heartbeat, Avengers Endgame was one hell of a ride I was so not prepared for.

In Avengers: Infinity War, we witnessed the course of events set in motion by Thanos when he wiped out half the universe with one snap of his fingers, bumping off some major characters from the MC Universe. Taking a five-year leap since the events of the last film, the fractured half of the Avengers team has given up any hope of stitching back the past and is half-heartedly trying to move on, some more worse than the others. Hope comes in the form of Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) a.k.a. Ant-Man, who finally escapes from the quantum realm and gives the team the idea of using the quantum realm to time travel to the past and get the infinity stones before Thanos does.

While the idea of time travel does seem a bit cliched, you’ll be left Sherlocking the hell outta your brain to guess the next plot twist. Hats off to the directors of the film, the Russo brothers, to pull this complex plotline with such finesse, giving its huge fanbase the mind-blowing closure they had been waiting for and tying up more than a decade of storytelling.

I was ready for the 181 mins film to feel a bit overlong and may be a bit stuffy but never in my life had I been gladder about being wrong. Not being a hooting-clapping kind of person, I have to say I was perhaps the loudest one in the theatre screaming my lungs out, yep, Endgame will indeed bring out your inner Hulk.

Captain Marvel, hailed as the most powerful superhero, remains as disappointing as she was in the last film. But there comes a scene towards the end of the film when Captain Marvel has to take the Infinity Gauntlet to safety but is faced with the indomitable Thanos. As soon as we think that everything is lost now, one by one all the surviving female Avengers, including Blank Panther’s Shuri, ready to take on Thanos eliciting a loud cheer from the audience.

Though the film is a motley of awesomeness fused together, this particular scene is a testament to the female empowerment, as their male allies fight alongside them as equals. But is the moment really enough to represent a female character in a particularly male-dominated genre, with the number of films with the focus on female superheroes being a rarity?

Endgame gets bonus points for its stellar cast, its capability to make us laugh in the tensest moments and oh, its exemplary visual effects that are presented without even the smudge of a glitch. While the first half may lack in presenting the visual grandeur, the second half more than makes up for it. Did you know that over 400 visual effects were shot to create Thanos, the indomitable villain given to us by Marvel that we simply cannot not hate?

Ample amounts of screen time were given to the characters, particularly the original six, Captain America, Natasha Romanoff, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Clint Barton, and Thor. Prioritizing the characters over the plot is one of the reasons that Endgame is the new definition of perfection. It gives us the chance to see them from a different perspective, how far they’ve come and above all, the fact that they are not mere superheroes, that at the end of the day they too feel pain, mourn the loss of their loved ones and try, fail and again try to move on with life.

Marvel Studio’s conclusion to the 22 films leaves us with the heartbreaking thought of bidding farewell to a legacy which has been a part of our life for years but here is to embracing what Iron Man says, ‘part of the journey is the end.’