The key Avengers scene to rewatch before seeing Endgame

Marvel has been planting the seeds of its grand finale, Avengers: Endgame, for nearly a decade now — and there's no better example than a prescient scene from Avengers: Age of Ultron.

The looming threat of Thanos hung over Joss Whedon's 2015 sequel, when Tony Stark was haunted by the fallout of the Chitauri alien invasion from the original Avengers. The man behind that invasion was none other than Thanos, who even then was seeking to obtain the six Infinity Stones and wipe out half the universe.

Tony's desire to protect the Earth from returning alien invaders is what inspires him to secretly build Ultron, an artificial intelligence program that goes awry. In a brief scene that sets up the primary conflict of Endgame years in advance and could easily inspire a callback, Tony defends his thinking.

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"A hostile alien army came charging through a hole in space — we're standing 300 feet below it," Tony says. "We're the Avengers. We can bust arms dealers all the livelong day but that up there? That's the endgame. How were you guys planning on beating that?"

Steve Rogers responds, "Together." Tony retorts, "We'll lose," to which Steve says, "Then we'll do that together, too."

Earlier, Tony saw a vision of his fellow Avengers dying, apparently at the hands of this alien threat. He explains that the worst part of this nightmare wasn't that his friends were killed, but that he wasn't.

Four years later, the endgame Tony foresaw has arrived, and just as he feared, half of the Avengers were murdered in Infinity War while he survived. In Endgame, which derives its name partially from this scene, the Avengers will seek out a rematch against Thanos. Although they failed last time because they were split apart, this time, they may able to beat him just like Steve said: together. Brendan Morrow