How ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ Has Helped Me Deal With Grief

The first time I saw Avengers: Infinity War was the Tuesday night before it premiered in movie theaters. My very best friend — the Rhodey to my Tony, if you will — worked at Marvel and she invited me as her plus one to the Marvel employee screening. She did that because I loved Marvel movies, and she loved me, and she knew I had a rough week because one of my college friends had passed away. We talked about how grief crashed in weird waves over margaritas before the screening, and after the film was over, we feverishly texted each other theories for how the Avengers would come back and, well, avenge their loss against Thanos in the next installments.

The next time I saw Avengers: Infinity War was on a Delta flight back from Los Angeles last week. I was numb with exhaustion and devastated by an even greater grief. My very best friend, the one who had spirited me into the private Marvel screening just four months before, had suddenly passed away due to a stroke. Two deaths in one year, bookended by the Avengers: Infinity War. When the movie’s promotional art popped up on the little in-flight movie screen in front of me, all flash and fire, I didn’t know if I should watch it.

Well, I did, and as soon as I got home, I bought the film on VOD, and watched it again. I’ve let the Bonus Features lull me to a numb sleep, and gone back and re-watched favorite bits again and again. In the last few weeks, I’ve been buoyed by friendship, saved by kindness, and, in private, found myself put at some sort of cathartic ease by a bloated superhero film where the superheroes all lose. Avengers: Infinity War has been the one piece of art I’ve encountered that’s helped me deal with the black hole of grief I’ve felt upon losing my best friend.

On the one hand, I feel a dreadful amount of embarrassment about this. Avengers: Infinity War isn’t exactly a poignantly drawn Kenneth Lonergan film. It’s not supposed to be the life preserver that helps you float through the black river of loss; it’s meant to be a popcorn flick for the masses, with soda can tie-ins. But then, its very escapist quality is probably what has drawn me to it. My favorite pop culture has always been the escapist kind. I like stuff with rowdy space battles with mystically powered heroes, high-concept comedies with giddy performances dialed up to 11, and prim romances where the sexual tension is wound tighter than the heroine’s corset. Sometimes I don’t want to see a mirror of my own lousy condition, but a technicolor dream of what I could maybe, somehow, but probably never, be.

Still Avengers: Infinity War is uniquely suited to coping with grief. Of all the films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s the most invested in the themes of sacrifice and loss. From the opening scene, where Loki finds himself bartering for Thor’s life, to Doctor Strange’s final “end game” that turns half of the universe into dust just to get our heroes closer to the only possible way to defeat their enemy, this is a movie about heroes and villains making the ultimate sacrifices. It’s a story about the greatest demands friendship puts upon us, and it ends in absolute mourning. It is a movie where superheroes have to fight the same shock and grief I am facing right now: once unflappable figures like Iron Man and Captain America have to confront the devastation of seeing their friends blown away into ash.

Losing your best friend is like watching a whole part of your world get blown away. I keep telling people that my friend was like a cornerstone to me. She supported my dreams, listened to my secrets, and was always there when I needed her. Once I fell down into the street into path of a moving car, and she jumped between us, waving the driver to stop before I was hit. She performed smaller acts of bravery for me, as well, like promising to be my plus one to big events that caused me social anxiety. I poured so much into that specific friendship because I felt like she was the only friend I would need to see me through adulthood. So now that she’s gone, so suddenly from the random tragedy of a stroke, it’s like a part of my own life has slipped away in the wind, just like Spider-Man, the Guardians of the Galaxy, Black Panther, Bucky, and more do.

However, it’s not movie’s final tragic scene that moves me the most right now, but a fleeting little scene nestled in the midst of the film’s biggest battle. After Scarlet Witch joins the fight in Wakanda, the vicious Proxima Midnight strikes her down and says that both she and Vision will die alone. Then we hear Black Widow say offscreen, “She’s not alone.” A triumphant fanfare plays as both Black Widow and Okoye come into frame, ready to help Scarlet Witch defeat Proxima Midnight. Together, the three women defeat the villainess, and the whole thing makes my heart swell and my eyes tear.

Because the truth is Avengers: Infinity War isn’t really doing all that much to help me process my grief. It’s a cathartic stopgap to avoid getting lost in negativity, but it’s not what’s really helping me move forward with as much strength and grace as I can desperately muster right now. What’s saving me is the knowledge that I’m not alone. Even though my best friend, one of the great emotional foundations of my adult life, is gone, I’m not by myself. I am surrounded by a team of people as kind and mighty as the Avengers, and it’s with their help that I’m soldiering through.

Where To Stream Avengers: Infinity War