Anna Daniels
Joe Russo explained during the Endgame event that the lyrics of “Dear Mr. Fantasy” parallel the story of the film. The song, which plays over the opening credits just after the scene in which Hawkeye‘s (Jeremy Renner) family members disintegrate before his very eyes, addresses “Mr. Fantasy” — asking him to “play us a tune, something to make us all happy, do anything, take us out of this gloom.” It then goes like this: “You are the one who can make us all laugh / But doing that you break out in tears / Please don’t be sad / If it was a straight mind you had / We wouldn’t have known you all these years.” The first grouping of lines is repeated twice, and then the second sounds out.
Taking a careful look at the lyrics of “Dear Mr. Fantasy” with Joe Russo’s words floating in the back of their mind, one can easily discern that this song is likely meant to represent the living Avengers’ plea to Tony Stark (Downey Jr.), who’s seen at the start of Avengers: Endgame stranded in space. He and Nebula (Karen Gillan) are on the brink of death, having run out of essential resources; without Iron Man alive and well, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes have little chance of avenging the deaths of everyone they loved following Thanos’ (Josh Brolin) snap in Avengers: Infinity War. They need Iron Man, the hero whose 2008 solo film founded the MCU as we know it today, to do something — anything — to take them out of the post-snap gloom.
And he does… eventually. Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) rescues Tony and Nebula, and the three touch down at Avengers HQ. Things don’t go as planned — after the Avengers locate Thanos and Thor (Chris Hemsworth) beheads him in an act of pure rage after it’s revealed that the Mad Titan reduced the Infinity Stones to ash, the heroes go their separate ways for five years — but Iron Man eventually comes around, and in a massive way. Though he initially refuses to help the Avengers in their plot to reverse Thanos’ snap, saying that he needs to take care of his wife Pepper (Gwyneth Paltrow) and daughter Morgan (Lexi Rabe), Tony devises a way to make time travel possible. His findings fuel the Avengers’ time heist plan, which ultimately works. Perhaps most poignant of all is that the time heist was only fully successful because of what Tony did at the very end: In the final battle against Thanos and his armies, Tony gave up his life after snapping his fingers while wearing the Infinity Gauntlet, dusting the Titan and his forces in the process.
“Dear Mr. Fantasy” really is a flawless reflection of Iron Man’s arc in Endgame: He did everything he could to take the Avengers out of the gloom, and he was the one who could bring the heroes joy even if it meant causing himself pain. That’s just the kind of man he was — the person they knew “all these years.”
Written by: Looper
