Editor’s Note: This article contains spoilers for WandaVision, Loki, and Black Widow.

One of the bummers of comic books these days is that death doesn’t really matter. Ever since Superman “died” in the 1990s only to be resurrected, countless other heroes have died as more of a temporary inconvenience. It’s a way to juice sales, grab some mainstream headlines, and then figure out a way to bring them back for a relaunch that will in turn provide a jumping-on point for new readers. However, death should matter in stories. In the real world, death is final, and it leaves a massive impact around everyone touched by an irreparable loss. And from a basic storytelling perspective, if you want a story to matter, then you need death to count because otherwise the stakes of the story are diminished.

Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame were the culmination of the “Infinity Saga”, the first three phases of the MCU, and that culmination meant that some characters had to die and die for good. The problem was that these characters were also incredibly popular, so how would you make those deaths matter, and still bring those characters back for new stories so that Marvel could keep banking on goodwill, especially when some of those characters never really had the room to get their own narrative when they were part of the big MCU ensemble?

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Image via Disney+

As the MCU moves into Phase 4, we’ve seen that Marvel’s solution to death has been to work around the problem rather than simply resurrect those who have been lost. We saw that right off the bat with WandaVision, which managed to bring back Vision (Paul Bettany). We all saw Vision die in Infinity War, and yet here he was living out suburban sitcom bliss with Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen). As the story unfolded, we saw that Vision really was dead, and that this new Vision was one who had been conjured through Wanda’s reality-altering magic, and also one who could only live within the confines of the Westview Anomaly. He hadn’t been resurrected, but was a new thing entirely, and also separate from the White Vision that S.W.O.R.D. had created. Even Vision explored the curious nature of his new existence with the “Ship of Theseus” parable, asking if something that’s been altered over time still retains the essence of its original design. For Marvel, the question of whether Vision was now alive was a resounding, “Yes, but…”

Then there was the matter of Loki (Tom Hiddleston), who was killed by Thanos (Josh Brolin) at the beginning of Infinity War. “No more resurrections this time, I think,” Thanos said after killing the God of Mischief, a reference to how Loki had seemingly died in both Thor and Thor: The Dark World only to return. And Thanos was correct in a sense. The way to tell a new Loki story involved going back to New York in 2012 and having Loki escape with the Space Stone only to be captured by the Time Variance Authority. While we currently don’t know how this season of Loki will end, we do know that Marvel has solved the problem of a dead Loki by making their star a “variant”, someone who has only experienced the character’s arc up until the events of The Avengers and then goes a different path. So the Loki of Thor: The Dark World, Thor: Ragnarok, and Avengers: Infinity War is still dead and that death matters to characters like Thor (Chris Hemsworth), but there’s still a new way to tell a Loki story.

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Image via Disney+

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And now with the arrival of Black Widow, Marvel has found the simplest way around a character’s death: prequel. Even our heroes in Endgame seemed perplexed that they couldn’t simply use the Infinity Stones to resurrect Natasha (Scarlett Johansson), but those were apparently the rules of the trade—a soul for a soul—and there was no bringing back their fallen comrade. But the Avenger still deserved her own story, and the way to manage that was to simply go back to the events following Captain America: Civil War and tell us what she was up to between that film and her reappearance alongside Captain America (Chris Evans) and Falcon (Anthony Mackie) in Infinity War. When we reach the credits scene, we see Yelena (Florence Pugh) at Natasha’s gravesite, once again confirming that Natasha died in Endgame even though we just spent an entire movie with her.

For some, these new avenues may seem like “cheats”, a way around deaths that aren’t narratively convenient for the MCU. But I see them more as clever workarounds that don’t negate the deaths that had an impact earlier in the story. You can’t have a story about Wanda’s grief if Vision doesn’t die. Loki can’t go on a new path if he isn’t shocked by his own demise. Yelena can’t avenge Natasha’s death if Natasha is still alive. These deaths matter, and I don’t begrudge Marvel for finding a way to make them stick even if they’re also continuing to tell stories about deceased characters.

KEEP READING: How the MCU Was Made: ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ and Crafting the Beginning of the Endgame