Thanos’ (Josh Brolin) Snap from the end of Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War is one of the biggest cinematic shocks of the century. It’s this generation’s equivalent of Darth Vader telling Luke Skywalker he’s his father. And by adding the five-year period between Thanos’ initial victory and his eventual defeat known as the Blip, Avengers: Endgame cemented the grave effects of half the universe being erased from existence. But while Endgame did a great job of showing how the Blip devastated the main heroes, subsequent Marvel movies haven’t depicted how it altered life in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as comprehensively. Spider-Man: Far From Home even played the chaos of the Blipped peoples’ return for laughs. Marvel’s television series on Disney Plus, on the other hand, has excelled at showing the various personal and sociopolitical ramifications that the Blip still has on the franchise’s world.

The most devastating personal storylines related to the Blip are shown in WandaVision and Hawkeye. The former depicts Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) returning after the Blip, finding herself in the hospital where her mother, Maria (Lashana Lynch) had been undergoing cancer treatment five years earlier. The hospital is a scene of chaos as more and more confused Blipped people snap back into existence with quick camera movements emphasizing the panic and confusion in the atmosphere. A nurse Monica knows is shocked to see her and delivers the devastating news that Maria died a few years into the Blip.

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The Loss of Time

Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova in Hawkeye
Image via Disney+

Flashbacks in Hawkeye showed Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) going through a similar experience. At the time of the Snap, Yelena was working with a few other Black Widows to free one of their own, Ana (Annie Hamilton), from the Red Room’s brainwashing, unaware that Ana already was free. After they clear up the confusion with Ana the Blip is shown from Yelena’s perspective, in which her surroundings changed in what appeared to her to be a single moment before she emerges in Ana’s redecorated house five years later, with Ana now having a husband and daughter. Ana explains the Blip to a panicked Yelena, who immediately plans to contact her sister, Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johnasson), only to discover that Natasha died saving the world, although she doesn’t learn the exact circumstances until later in the series.

Monica and Yelena both struggle to deal with the loss of their loved ones, and arguably even more devastating, the loss of time they could have spent with them because of the Blip, and it doesn’t seem like Yelena is really finished doing so by the end of Hawkeye. Monica gets further in the healing process and her recent experience with grief winds up being crucial in allowing her to relate and connect to Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) while trying to understand the Westview anomaly Wanda created. Monica is ultimately able to get through to Wanda and see that she was not a villain, just a person in pain and their relationship contributes to Wanda’s eventual decision to free Westview from her mental control and process her own grief in healthier ways. Although Yelena stops trying to kill Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) when he tells her that Natasha sacrificed herself to save him, she remains jealous of all the time Clint got to spend with Natasha and when she departs there is still resentment and misplaced anger radiating off her. Yelena has a much longer road ahead before she has fully healed from her Blip experiences and the loss of Natasha.

The Politics of the Blip

Teyonah Parris in WandaVision
Image via Disney+

There are also far-reaching political and social consequences of the Blip, as shown in WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. In the former, Monica’s boss at SWORD is director Tyler Hayward (Josh Stamberg), a jingoistic bigot willing to use any means, no matter how immoral, to acquire superhuman operatives and resources for the U.S. government and eliminate what he sees as superhuman threats. Hayward is quick to label Wanda a terrorist and hides the fact that it was the dismantling of the Vision’s (Paul Bettany) body, which he ordered, that led to her disturbed mental state and subsequently the Westview crisis, from Monica and other subordinates. Hayward uses the fear and trauma caused by the Blip to justify his actions as necessary to prevent future supernatural disasters.

In an argument with Monica he states, “You people who left still have the luxury of optimism. You have no idea what it was like. What it took to keep the lights on.” This fear of super-powered phenomena feels like a possible foreshadowing of future MCU storylines involving the X-Men, given that that team and other mutants like them are discriminated against because of their abilities rather than celebrated for their heroism in the comics. Hayward’s statement also raises the possibility of tension between those who were Blipped and those who survived, which could be interesting for various different projects to explore.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier further developed how the Blip changed Earth on a geopolitical level. The series depicted a new refugee crisis in which Blip survivors who had taken up residences during the five-year gap were forced out of their homes when previous residents who had been Blipped returned. The Global Repatriation Council was formed to address these and similar issues but failed to do so positively. The series’ main antagonists are the Flag Smashers, a group of revolutionaries who believe the world was better and more unified during the Blip but who let their desire for political change drive them to terrorism.

Erin Kellyman as Flag Smasher in Falcon and the Winter Soldier
Image via Disney+

The final action scenes take place when Flag Smashers enhanced with a version of the super-soldier serum attack a GRC vote that could enact the controversial Patch Act, which would deport all Blip-related refugees to their countries of origin. After Flag Smasher leader Karli Morgenthau (Erin Kellyman) is killed during the fighting, Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), the Avenger formerly known as Falcon who had recently taken up the mantle of Captain America, urged the politicians present to make more compassionate decisions going forward to avoid creating more resentment and violence.

Even as time goes on and the MCU continues to progress further it would still benefit from more of this kind of detailed world-building and exploration of the Blip. It’s a monumental event that plays a crucial role in separating the MCU from the real world and its ramifications should continue to be studied. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is an encouraging sign that the films may do so as well as the TV series going forward, given that it shows Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) dealing with the loss of time with his daughter, Cassie (Kathryn Newton), when he was trapped in the Quantum Realm during the Blip.