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A good cliffhanger is exciting, but sooner or later you need to figure out how to resolve it. Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War ends with the villain Thanos collecting all the Infinity Stones and using their power to wipe out half the universe. The script was written by screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who set up some big problems for the writers of the next film to solve. Unfortunately for them, those writers also happened to be Markus and McFeely.

Now that Thanos had the Infinity Gauntlet, it would be nearly impossible for the Avengers to defeat him, which put McFeely and Markus in a tough spot when they were breaking the story for Avengers: Endgame. “Remember we have a villain who has the power of a god. He’s omnipotent and omniscient,” Stephen McFeely summarized during an interview with Vanity Fair. “We’re faced with telling a story where, even if we don’t defeat him, how do you even start trying to solve the problem with a guy who can kill you with a thought and can see it coming from a million miles away?”

He continued, “It was [executive producer Trinh Tran], I think mostly because she was just frustrated, said, ‘I wish we could just freaking kill him.’ And we stopped and went, ‘Oh.’”

This helped Markus and McFeely realize that the next logical step in Thanos’s character journey would be getting rid of the Stones. Not only did this solve the problem with Thanos, but it set up a good obstacle for the Avengers, who now had to reverse Thanos’s crimes without the Stones. “Because [Thanos] was serious about what he said, and all he wanted to do was balance the universe, and so he then got rid of [the Stones]. And that one frustrated comment sent us down a road that we probably should have been down before if we were honest with Thanos’ character. And then we jump five years and we still can’t solve the problem because the Stones are gone.”

For those who don't know how they solved the problem - and everyone who just wants to watch them solve it again - Avengers: Endgame is streaming now on Disney+.

Consider this a meta post-credits scene for Marvel fans - the four key articles you need to read next to continue the thrills:

• How to watch the Marvel Cinematic Universe in release or chronological order
• The best Marvel Comics stories of all time
• All the MCU movies ranked from best to worst
• Our weekly Marvel insider's column, Marvel Matters