Few film franchises have transformed pop culture worldwide as much as the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It is 22 films in, and it shows no signs of slowing down. With the biggest film in the franchise, Avengers: Endgame, releasing this week, Nikhil and Sindhu explore the relevance of the MCU as a global phenomenon, how it has become a box-office juggernaut even in markets like China and India (where it had an unprecedented local publicity strategy on multiple fronts), and where it is headed as a global platform for diversity and representation. Joining them for the discussion are guests Siddhant Adlakha, freelance film critic for publications like The Village Voice, Polygon, and /Film, who did a deep dive of all the MCU films leading up to Endgame for /Film in a series called 'Road to Endgame', and Vedang Patel, co-founder of the online merchandise company The Souled Store, an official Marvel merchandiser. 

After talking to Siddhant and Vedang, Nikhil and Sindhu get into a spoiler-filled conversation around Endgame to discuss how carefully designed it is to ensure maximum emotional and narrative satisfaction, the constraints that the MCU faces with the stories it tells, both from a production and a box-office standpoint, and what we're all trying to get out of the MCU, and whether we're actually at the end of a particular era. 

And how cool is the logo for this episode? @aparna_ramanujam kills it every time.

Music Credits:

"Me In Your Life"
Music By The Passion HiFi
www.thepassionhifi.com

Music from https://filmmusic.io:
"Chill Wave" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Sorrow by Sappheiros | https://soundcloud.com/sappheirosmusic
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US

Incredibly Close by Savfk | https://www.youtube.com/savfkmusic
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
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