Does Thanos die in Avengers Endgame?

After the events of Infinity War, there’s one thing on the Avengers mind. Do they succeed in defeating Thanos? As importantly, does he die?

This post contains spoilers for Avengers: Endgame.

Hello, there. We really, really, really don’t want to ruin, spoil, if you will, Avengers: Endgame for you. This post is going to tell you what happens to Thanos in Endgame and consequently whether he lives or dies at the end of the three hour movie. If you don’t want to know any of that information, please click away! If you do, if that is what brought you here, please read on.

Once more, in case you skimmed past the ad break on accident. This post contains spoilers for Thanos’ fate in Avengers: Endgame. Do not read if you don’t want to know!

All right. Onto the matter at hand. Does Thanos die? Yes, twice! Or, once and half, maybe? It’s a bit complicated.

In the film’s first act, the surviving Avengers assemble, minus Tony and plus Carol, to find and fight Thanos. They succeed and despite learning that he has destroyed the stones, making it impossible to reverse the snap, they fight him anyways and Thor kills Thanos. He goes for the head. The Avengers are bummed, but they have indeed avenged the fallen.

Five years later, Scott Lang a.k.a. Ant-Man finally makes it back from the Quantum Realm, bearing knowledge that could change everything. And it does! Through a series of events that you can read about elsewhere, the Avengers go about time traveling to gather the stones and create a gauntlet to reverse the snap. However, Past Thanos knows their plan for some Nebula-related reason and Past Thanos time travels to the present to take the new gauntlet. Another battle ensues.

Thinking he has the gauntlet, Thanos snaps his hands but all the stones are in Tony’s suit. (Tony has rejoined the Avengers by this point.) Tony, in turn, snaps his fingers, thereby erasing Thanos’ army and Thanos himself. If you subscribed to the belief that snapped beings are dead, Thanos is dead (again).

(Unfortunately, the snap that takes Thanos also kills Tony — really, he doesn’t dissolve, he dies.)

So, that’s how the Infinity Saga ends. Present Day Thanos is dead at the hands of Thor, and Past Thanos who time travels to the present is snapped out of existence.