Thanos snap explained: How Thanos changed the MCU forever (and why he did it)

For the whole of Phase 3 of the MCU, Thanos went on a mission to gather the gems for his world-changing glove to snap. It completely changed the MCU, and we’re still experiencing those changes today.

Thanos had to gather the six Infinity Stones. We watched as he gathered some of them through post-credit scenes. Others happened in the likes of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies and the last couple of Avengers movies.

While the Avengers would eventually reverse the snap, it would take time. That snap has changed the world of the MCU, which we’re seeing in Phase 4 right now. There was no way to reverse time, only reverse some of the things Thanos did.

Why did Thanos snap?

What was the point of the snap in the first place? This was all linked to Thanos’s view that the world was becoming too plentiful. We’re not just talking about Earth. He thought all planets had too many people, and he believed the right thing was to cull the planets by 50%. This is something he did in person at first, and we learned it was how he ended up taking in Gamora and viewed her as his daughter.

The snap allowed him to tackle the population issue with just one moment. People immediately disappeared in a cloud of dust. Everyone would remember them, but they would be gone for good.

If we looked at everything objectively, we can see that Thanos is somewhat right. We can look at the world we live in today and see that there is a population problem. There have been discussions on how to deal with that for some time. Thanos just took it upon himself to deal with it, and not in the best of ways.

While Thanos said that he was doing things fairly and without prejudice, it did seem like the snap was more in Thanos’s favor than Earth’s. There were a lot more good guys gone than bad guys.

How Thanos changed the MCU forever with the snap

The snap caused the “Blip.” This is what the five years with half of the population gone is called.

This Blip is still on the minds of many. After all, when the Avengers changed everything, they didn’t do it through reversing time. They didn’t go back five years to prevent Thanos from doing the snap. That wasn’t the way they were all going to win.

The Avengers were able to change things. They managed to find a way to bring everyone back from the Blip. While five years had passed for everyone else, the people who were caught up in the Blip were as they were when they disappeared. For example, we see Peter Parker and MJ, among others, back in school while those who were in their classes before the Blip had graduated.

Scott Lang, who had actually been in the quantum realm, didn’t come back until five years later. He’d lost years with his daughter, and they mourned him believing him to be caught up in the Blip. So many others would have gone through something similar where their loved ones had been Blipped.

James Gunn talked about how Thanos’s snap changed so much. It meant Phase 4 was spent bringing in new characters with how Endgame wrapped things up. Iron Man was killed in his steps to reverse the snap and do his own snap, while Captain America was able to go back in time and get the life he wanted with Peggy Carter. Black Widow sacrificed herself to make Iron Man’s snap possible. It removed so many main players we’d come to know and love that it effectively meant a restart on the MCU.

Thanos’s plan didn’t exactly work out the way he initially planned, but it is still felt in the MCU to this day.