This ‘Infinity War’ Recap Is All The Training You Need For The Avengers' Next Battle

If you saw Avengers: Infinity War, then you probably remember — at least in a general sense — how things turned out. (Badly.) But maybe you don't remember what state everyone ended up in or how exactly they got to that point. Not everyone is a Marvel superfan, so if you're getting ready to go see Avengers: Endgame and feel like you need an Avengers: Infinity War recap first, there's nothing wrong with that.

The overall plot of Infinity War has to do with Thanos (a giant bad guy from another planet) trying to collect all six Infinity Stones and place them onto a gauntlet that will allow him to wipe out half of all life in the universe in order to restore "balance". (In his opinion, there's simply too much life in the universe.) The six Infinity Stones all have separate powers and represent different aspects of the universe overall. There's the Mind Stone, the Power Stone, the Reality Stone, the Space Stone, the Soul Stone, and the Time Stone. Together, they grant whoever is carrying them a really massive amount of power. An amount that allows you to wipe out half of all life.

In his quest to retrieve the Stones, Thanos gets into tiffs with various combinations of Avengers. He battles Thor and Loki — killing Loki — in order to get the Space Stone. He fights the Guardians of the Galaxy in his attempts to find the Reality Stone and Soul Stone. He faces off against Doctor Strange, Iron Man, and Spider-Man over the Time Stone.

Then, in a final huge battle at the end that takes place in Wakanda, Thanos gets the final Infinity Stone, the Mind Stone, which has been in Vision's head. With the gauntlet full, he's able to snap his fingers and turn half of all life in the universe to dust.

While, obviously, this means that a lot of — well, everything — dies. The main characters who don't make it out alive — either because they are half of all life or because they die fighting in other ways before that — are Heimdall, Loki, Gamora, Vision, Black Panther, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, Bucky Barnes, Falcon, Scarlet Witch, Groot, Star-Lord, Drax, Mantis, Nick Fury, and Maria Hill. As explained by GameSpot, in the post-credits scene of Ant-Man and the Wasp, it's also revealed that the Wasp turned to dust and Ant-Man was trapped in the Quantum Realm. On top of that, while it wasn't clear what happened to Shuri in the movie, posters and trailers for Endgame showed that she died, too.

So, where do things go from here? In the post-credits scene for Infinity War, Nick Fury is shown calling for Captain Marvel right before he turns to dust himself. And, now that Captain Marvel's solo movie has come out, it's clearer than ever that she's going to play a major role in Endgame; although, of course, no one really knows what she'll be up to.

Now that you're all caught up on Infinity War, better go watch that Endgame trailer over and over again to continue your preparation for the final battle on April 26.