Did you know that today, May 31, is the five-year anniversary of the day that Thanos snapped half of all life out of existence in Avengers: Infinity War?
Well, it might be, anyway. It’s the date that some Marvel fans have calculated as the exact date of the beginning of the Blip, or the five-year period during which the surviving half of sentient beings tried to rebuild society and move on after their friends and loved ones disappeared into clouds of black dust.
Whether or not today is the exact anniversary of the Snap, 2023 is the year that, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Avengers bring everyone back by traveling through history to steal the Infinity Stones from their various places in time and space. Some fans on Reddit are taking the opportunity to pose an interesting hypothetical: do you remember what you were doing five years ago today, when you would have watched people disappear (or disappeared yourself) in the Blip?
It’s an interesting little exercise, since remembering what you were doing means remembering who you were with. May 31, 2018 was a Thursday, which was a workday for me. If the Snap happened in the afternoon in Wakanda, then it probably would have been the morning here in California. Would I have been on my way to work? If so, I would have been in the car with my husband and two kids (my husband and I used to work at the same place, so we all commuted together, dropping the kids off at daycare on our way). Would I have watched half my family disappear as we sat in traffic?
That thought experiment leads me to another: what in your life would have changed if you got dusted in 2018 and came back today? (I know the Blip didn’t last exactly five years to the day, but this is just for fun.) Assuming my kids didn’t get blipped along with me, I might come back to find them unrecognizable: a tween in middle school and an elementary school student, instead of a little kid and a baby. My reaction would probably be similar to Scott Lang’s when he sees Cassie after the Blip: complete, wordless shock.
This kind of speculation is part of what makes the Infinity Saga so good. The Snap is such a world-changing event, you can’t help but wonder how it would have affected you.
So, happy Snap Day! I guess? Maybe you can celebrate it by giving your loved ones an extra hug.
(featured image: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
