Avengers: Infinity War, he instantly erased half the life in the universe. For the next five years, the world mourned, until one day the Avengers finally put matters right and restored the lost to life once again.

Precious little is known of what life was like during those bitter five years. In Avengers: Endgame indicates the survivors sought comfort and companionship from one another, with a community even developing at the foot of the Statue of Liberty.

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Surprisingly, Falcon & Winter Soldier episode 1 actually indicates its villains, the Flag-Smashers, are people who look back to the Blip with a sense of nostalgia. Apparently the human race was forced to unite in the face of its shared grief, and the boundaries between nations collapsed. It is easy to understand why this was the case; governments would have been destabilized, food supply would have been disrupted, and all the normal rules of international trade would have collapsed in an instant. Suddenly all the old differences that had divided humans from one another would have seemed inconsequential in light of the one thing every single person on the planet had in common.

WandaVision Episode 4 - Monica Reforming During Blip

As Falcon suggests, though, those looking back at the Blip with nostalgia are probably being naïve. They are forgetting that the one thing that a unified humanity was its shared sense of grief, of loss. The price of peace was literally the death of half the human race – and that is too heavy a price. What's more, Falcon suspects they are being naïve because he believes every system will inevitably have winners and losers. The Flag-Smashers, those who long for the politics of the Blip to be regained, are simply those who benefited from it – the "winners," if you will.

Still, the reflections in Falcon & Winter Soldier episode 1 do nonetheless imply that the five years after Thanos snapped his fingers were years of unprecedented peace. The immediate aftermath of Thanos' snap would have been chaos, but when that had ed the world united as never before. It is easy to understand why this could not last when those who had been Blipped away were restored; , for them no time at all had ed. And thus a new world order has emerged in the post-Avengers: Endgame MCU, one where borders have been restored but are no doubt being hotly disputed, and where old hatreds that have been buried beneath the weight of shared sorrow have risen to the surface once again. Falcon & Winter Soldier promises to explore this brave new world.

More: Falcon & The Winter Soldier: Every MCU Easter Egg In Episode 1

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