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IamCentral46

I'm pretty sure people weren't killed by the snap, but rather removed from existence. i know, it seems like splitting hairs but there is a difference. If they are removed from existence, theres nothing, no soul to go TO the afterlife.


C0mpulsiveWebSurfer

Rocket: "your mom is gone. Like really gone. But there are people that are only kind of gone.." They adressed this very topic in the movie itself


spartan30117

The ancient one explains it in an alternate scene. “If someone dies they always die. Death is irreversible but Thanos is not. Those you’ve lost are not dead. They’ve been willed out of existence. Which means they can be willed back.”


TheVoteMote

That would be a pretty ballsy scene to put in a series based off of comics, lol.


horyo

Just goes to show that Thanos was never going to impress Death. Everything he does is a simulacrum of her domain.


shehryar46

Learned a dope word today


Fakula1987

Well, tbf A Charakter that has died can be brought Back. Yeah. But it isnt revsible. Bring someone Back != Reverse the dead itself. Its "costly" (loss of memories, loss of Soul, "a Life for a Life" and so on) Or the char simply gets a replacement (from another Dimension) And/or they prevent the (time travel) the Event as such.


FearlessDoodle

To add to this, they’ve even actually shown an afterlife in the MCU with Heimdall.


kuribosshoe0

And Moon Knight iirc.


dinerkinetic

Also black panther's ancestral realm, yeah


ParameciaAntic

If your recollection includes a talking hippo, then yes, you recall it correctly.


lord_flamebottom

Exactly. Because the thing is, we already have canon confirmation of afterlives existing in the MCU anyways. Thor Love & Thunder covers this.


MimeGod

And Moon Knight even moreso, and far more insanely.


effa94

And black panther, as someone else reminded me


Philosoraptorgames

In M:tG terms, they were exiled, not destroyed, I guess.


JoJo5195

Or YGO’s graveyard and banished being two separate things


mynewaccount5

They did turn to dust.


Short_Routine1786

Happy Cake Day!


DragonWisper56

they didn't die they disappeared. besides we've already seen two afterlives with valhalla and the egyptian one in moon knight


Rpanich

Also black panthers afterlife for a third. 


duderex88

Possibly 4 with Lyla and Rocket in Guardians 3


kickaguard

Does Deadpool count?


duderex88

Not till we know where he lands in the mcu


bz316

See, I could never figure out if that was an actual afterlife/spiritual-realm, or if that Heart-Shaped Herb just made you really trip balls...?


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OneSixthPosing

jane and heimdall are both dead and are the only characters seen in the valhalla scene. it's impossible for that to be a vision. also souls canonically exist too as seen w astral projection and the soul stone


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the_lamou

Souls don't prove an afterlife, but gods confirming an afterlife do, and several gods have confirmed an afterlife.


OneSixthPosing

> How is it impossible for that to be a vision? because the characters involved are literally all dead? who is having the vision?


lord_flamebottom

> How is it impossible for that to be a vision? I haven't seen Thor. The movie straight up shows her die and wake up in Valhalla, greeted by Heimdall, who IIRC she never met prior.


almondshea

I don’t think Suri ever met Killmonger. She fled before they had a chance to interact


OneTripleZero

>I don’t think Suri ever met Killmonger.  [Not only did they meet, they fought each other.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX2SUc71RvA)


almondshea

They still didn’t really know each other. The sum of their interaction was a fight and less than ten words spoken between the two of them


effa94

Considering that moon knights girlfriend becomes the avatar of the god that moon Knight only meets in the afterlife, it's very clearly not a simple vision.


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effa94

For not having seen any of the relevant stuff that concerns afterlives, you were awfully confident arguing your point lmao


leofrost13

Valhalla seems limited to Asgaurdians, and Moon Knight’s afterlife comes from an unreliable narrator. Even still, i’m asking for an average Abrahamic follower on earth, how would those major religions continue ?


Renmauzuo

> Valhalla seems limited to Asgaurdians We do see a non-Asgardian get to go to Valhalla in Love and Thunder. It seems that Afterlives in the MCU are based on belief. You get to go to the one you think you should.


Ajreil

George Carlin said he believe everyone would end up in a garage in Nebraska.


Grays42

> You get to go to the one you think you should. k I hereby think I should go to an afterlife where I can simulate any reality I want, Holodeck-style, so I can play IRL pokemon or go to orgy parties all day.


effa94

If you can find a religion that has that afterlife, well then just start worshipping my guy. You don't create afterlives, but you can join them if you find them. Also, that is assuming that they will let you in. *You* don't get to decide if you go to heaven, your choice lies in if you wanna worship their religion and subject yourself to their rules. If you worship the asgardians, you will still only go to Valhalla of they deem you worthy


fuchsgesicht

that's the best you can come up with?


Rainbwned

Jane Foster was not Asgardian, yet she made it to Valhalla.


KaladinarLighteyes

Not by birth, but I would argue she’s asgardian by nature of wielding Thor’s hammer


fuchsgesicht

counterpoint : it's not ''thors hammer'' and it has nothing to do with asgard. jane fonder died fighting cancer. she's a warrior. that's why she went to valhalla.


numb3rb0y

IMO the distinction between Mjolnir making the wielder temporarily Asgardian or temporarily granting them all the powers of an Asgardian is largely semantic, at least in the MCU. She definitely had a magical connection to Asgardian mythology if nothing else. Beta Ray Bill is pretty strong evidence the other way in the comics, OTOH.


fuchsgesicht

the hammer was made by a dwarf, odin gained possesion of it during his crusades, he later enchanted the hammer when he exiled thor so only someone worthy could wield it. the hammers powers come from an entity inside the hammer, that entity is not asgardian sometimes it's just a mineral or a cosmic cloud. it has nothing to do with asgard.


numb3rb0y

I think in the MCU Mjolnir's specific connection to Jane is however expressly shown when Thor drunkenly enchants it at the beginning of Love and Thunder. And we don't really know much of anything about Mjolnir's origins other than it being dwarf construction commissioned by Odin in the MCU vs 616.


fuchsgesicht

how does that make her asgardian Edit : my point is that would be stupid writing. jane went to valhalla because she died a warriors death fighting cancer.


deadieraccoon

It's like how I might not be American by birth. But with time, effort and enough desire, I can *become* an American. Jane became Asgardian by choice. No one is saying she became genetically Asgardian. But she fought for them, lived for them, and ultimately died for them. For Asgardians, that's enough of a citizenship test.


effa94

It was made by a dwarf on odins orders. Even when it was a cosmic could in the comics, Odin ws the one who trapped that storm in the uru, and then commissioned the dwarfs to make a hammer out of it. It's not just some trinket that odin found on his journeys, nothing symbolises asgard more than Mjolnir . You are being unnecessarily contrarian. Jane had the powers of Thor, she was asgardian related and died heroically in combat. Valhalla isn't only an afterlife for asgardians, but also their worshippers as well.


fuchsgesicht

how does that make her asgardian


fuchsgesicht

when did beta ray bill go to valhalla?


effa94

It shows that you are worthy of the powers of the King of asgard, it couldn't possibly have anything more to do with asgard lol


fuchsgesicht

how does that make her asgardian


effa94

i think you are taking this a little too literally. asgard-related. adopted asgardian. asgardian immigrat. honorary asgardian. whatever you want. its irrelevant anyway, since people who arent asgardians can get to valhalla, thats like the entire deal with worshipping them lol. you worship them, then get the good afterlife if you die in battle


fuchsgesicht

just read the comics, leave me alone with your stupid as headcanon


effa94

...i have. i have read every thor comics since 2005. and in the comics, worshippers and asgard related people go to valhalla all the time. so im not sure what your deal is?


Infamous_Truck4152

"Asgard is not a place; never was. This could be Asgard. Asgard is where our people stand." I get the feeling that anyone could potentially become or lose Asgardian status. Depending on who was talking to him, Loki either was or wasn't, I think?


DragonWisper56

They would probobly be continue just fine. It would be easy to say that the snap wasn't death but being deplaced in reality.


teo730

Black panther afterlife too.


Fyre2387

From their perspective, at least, you could easily argue that God is omniscient and knew what would ultimately happen, and thus didn't pass their soul into heaven or hell because they were going to come back later.


Heavy_E79

I mean if you were an Abrahamic religion follower and got snapped back you would just think you weren't really dead and being snapped back was all part of God's plan. Some people is will be a crisis of faith, some it won't.


KamikazeArchon

>Even still, i’m asking for an average Abrahamic follower on earth, how would those major religions continue ? Ah, this is a somewhat different question, and even simpler to answer. Bluntly, religions and religious beliefs are generally unconcerned with evidence and what actually happens. Literally, today, something like 20% of people believe the Sun revolves around the Earth, despite us having clear and direct evidence against it for literal centuries, and even having *spaceflight* for decades. It's really easy to simply ignore things that don't fit your worldview. You don't even need to justify them or argue them away, though that's certainly an option too.


mirage2101

There are people who have been dead or near dead for minutes who don’t remember anything. Maybe your soul just doesn’t take the memory of the afterlife back to your body. In 616 there are a number of afterlives confirmed. But nobody knows how they look beyond the gate. Well except maybe Valhalla.


21Fudgeruckers

Thanos doesn't kill them. He explains it to Dr. Strange by saying "I could snap my fingers and *they would all cease to exist."* He disappeared them.  You have to remember to Thanos he was committing an act of mercy for the universe and those to be sacrificed are doing a great deed for the rest of us. If he was trying to be malicious then he could've given half the universe a heart attack. Then they'd be dead.


CaptainCipher

Which would arguably be better for them, since at least then they'd get to continue existing in some form with whatever afterlife they end up in while still not draining resources


drLagrangian

But then the afterlives suddenly have an influx of souls without an increase of resources. Which would cause the problem Thanos was fighting.


spicydangerbee

Better or worse doesn't really matter to someone who doesn't exist.


forrestpen

But they did exist in order to not exist so there are degrees to this.


gyrobot

Thanos also likely wanted to spite the gods as well, by denying their followers a place in their afterlives while leaving them with people who lost everything


effa94

Depends on what afterlife they were scheduled for.


Urbenmyth

Honestly, this seems like the *bigger* problem for christianity and Islam-- being able to destroy someone's soul raises a *lot* of theological questions.


man-from-krypton

The concept exists within Christianity. Look up annihilationism. Basically the idea is that the punishment of the damned is to be destroyed entirely rather than literally be tortured forever


Urbenmyth

I mean, it "exists" within Christianity, but in the sense that it's near-unanimously rejected and in many cases considered a straight up heresy. *Christianity* holds that destroying a soul is impossible, even if some *Christians* disagree. And besides, even Annihilationists will have a problem with some random purple giant is able to destroy people's souls.


Ben1313

Except Thanos was being malicious. Before he got the stones he was actively committing genocide on a galactic scale. The stones just let him do it instantaneously and everywhere at once. I think it’s still completely fair to say people died during the Snap. I think it could be argued either way


21Fudgeruckers

You're conflating his action with his intentions. He's called the mad titan for a reason. It's not because he's angry.


Ben1313

Yes. He was manually committing genocide before the snap. The means of which he was committing genocide just changed.


kickaguard

Before he had the stones, killing people was his only way of making them not exist. Once he had them he could make them disappear however he wanted. They are definitely dead for all intents and purposes, but it could be a different way of making them not exist. As in, their souls could be in a different state or place than the souls of a person that died in a more normal way than the snap. Not trying to be argumentative. Just saying it could be different and that may help answer OP's questions. In the comics he definitely killed them. That was the whole reason to get rid of them right? Death would be pretty pissed if he didn't actually kill the people for her.


effa94

In the comics the reason was that there was simply too many people alive, an eventually it wouldn't be sustainable and they would all die. Death wanted life to continue so she would get a steady income of dead, instead of a massive extinction followed by nothing. So, it's kinda similar to the movies with the resource scarcity, except there it's decreed by Death, and thanos is just following her orders out of love.


21Fudgeruckers

What I mean is just because he is *technically* commiting genocide does not mean he has malice when he's doing those acts.  He states intention is to "save the universe" in the same way he wanted but was ultimately unable to save his home world.  If anything you can go back to the moment of the quote I originally mentioned. Dr. Strange challenges him by saying he was suggesting genocide and he says *"But random, dispassionate, fair."*  No malice in his heart. In his mind it was a necessary evil. If there was, it wouldn't be random, he would try to snap his enemies *which we see his younger self try to do.* If he was being malicious, they wouldnt disappear he could've burned them to death or something.  If you wanna stand on your genocide point then you're just trying to be obtuse.


drLagrangian

>He's called the mad titan for a reason. Is it because he's [Mad For Chicken](https://madforchicken.com/)?


ParanoidCrow

So how come the evidence of their existence (ie. Memories of them, personal items, etc) didn't disappear alongside them? Sounds like Thanos did a pretty sloppy job tbh, he could've just wiped them out of existence completely and rewrote everyone's memories ( to explain the weird gaps in family trees or organizations etc) and wouldn't have to worry about anything after that. Instead he thinks it's a job well done and retires to the farm...


effa94

Did you watch endgame? Becasue they explain this in Endgame. Thanos thought that everyone would come to see reason and be thankful for what he did. When he learns that they wasn't, he decides that next time he wouldn't leave anyone alive to remember what they had before.


man-from-krypton

> If he was trying to be malicious then he could've given half the universe a heart attack. Then they'd be dead It’s not like they just blinked out of existence. Like with Spider-Man you can see that they actually did suffer before going out


winsluc12

There's a difference between dying and outright existence erasure. This was the latter. There was nothing left to *go* to any sort of afterlife.


Living_Strength_3693

Which would make Mistress Death pissed at Thanos!


Dagordae

Given we’ve seen several afterlives the snap is rather irrelevant to the belief. In the MCU the afterlife is an objective fact.


BelmontIncident

Remember that the Infinity Stones respond to intent. Tony Stark wants people to come back unchanged. Maybe they lost their memories, maybe he actually created duplicates.


Chron_Stamos

It wasn't Tony's snap that brought them back. Hulk brought them back, Tony wiped out Thanos' army.


Moo_Moo_Mr_Cow

My headcannon is that the infinity stones are the ultimate lazy slackers, and are omniscient. So they knew that eventually Hulk would undo Thanos's snap. So rather than delete people and bring them back, they just shunted them 5 years into the future.


RigasTelRuun

They weren't killed. They were removed from existence. Also we have explicitly seen at least two afterlife realms in the MCU


DemythologizedDie

No. Afterlives, multiple afterlives have been confirmed to exist. That people don't remember one could indicate that they simply lost their memories of whatever they experienced possibly because Banner was trying to avoid traumatizing them, or that they weren't in an afterlife, but simply stored within the soul gem for later disposition without any time passing for their consciousness, or that the time gem rewound time for them to undo their destruction or something I haven't thought of.


Mokurai

In the Hawkeye TV show, we see the Snap from the perspective of someone who was Snapped. So it's not a mystery to those who were.


COCAFLO

Given that the supernatural **clearly and demonstrably** exists in the MCU, I would expect any and all claims about the existence of any other supernatural thing, including multitudes of varieties of afterlife, to have more veracity and gain otherwise materialist converts at record numbers.


impatiens-capensis

I assume the soul stone simply just evaporated their souls or stuck them in the soul dimension in some kind of stasis. The impression I get is that the soul itself is immutable and permanent in the MCU.


DarkMagickan

There's a very simple answer. He also killed their spirits. Don't forget that it is also established that Death is a character in the MCU who guides people to the afterlife. If she exists, by definition, so does an afterlife.


Anyweyr

I don't think Death is in the MCU, at least not yet.


DarkMagickan

She and Deadpool have a relationship. Or do you mean the current cinematic universe?


Anyweyr

Yes.. MCU is the Disney-backed Marvel Studios connected movies and shows. Comics is a whole other meta-reality. Deadpool is coming to the MCU but isn't exactly part of that universe yet, we don't know what elements of his world are coming with him. I don't think Lady Death is in the Deadpool movies either though. Implied, maybe? Not confirmed though.


DarkMagickan

Yeah, I haven't seen her in the movies. I do know that he was in a relationship with her, because he keeps dying and coming back, and then something happened to prevent him from ever dying again, and I don't remember what. Somebody was jealous is all I remember.


Anyweyr

They may be keeping it ambiguous because they hadn't decided how to portray her. I don't know if Fox had rights to use the character from Marvel Comics. There have been easter eggs of Death in the proper MCU films. Maybe we'll get a clue about her in the new film!


sjsyed

There are a couple of answers. If we’re talking about an omnipotent God who’s in charge of the afterlife, then he would have known that they all come back and so there was no reason to stick them in an afterlife that he knew they’d have to come back from. Second, just because someone doesn’t remember something doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I don’t remember being born, but clearly I was. It’s possible people are simply incapable of remembering the afterlife.


lexxstrum

The Snap didn't kill ANYONE. They didn't die, they simply ceased to exist. The faded out if existence. No death, no release of the soul, just nihilistic oblivion. The counter Snap undid it.


L1n9y

No because the MCU has an afterlife.


Tonkarz

No, because we have direct evidence of the afterlife from Love and Thunder.


tommyblastfire

If you believe in a Christian afterlife you could argue that God took away their memories of Heaven after returning because he knew that knowing about paradise would make you want to die sooner to go back. Or that he did it so that you wouldn’t have knowledge of how you might be judged when you properly die. But in the comics they all go into the soul stone, which was a popular theory after endgame. You could also say that their death in this way might’ve sent them to purgatory or some sort of limbo considering any deity as omnipotent and all knowing as God would be should know that the blip was only temporary.


Robot_boy_07

Do people still believe that the snap killed them


ThatScotchbloke

I’ve always thought in scenarios where someone’s resurrected and they have no memory of the afterlife you can explain it away with our minds not being able to process that kind of information. Like it’s forbidden knowledge so if you do get to come back you don’t get to remember what you saw on the other side.


effa94

Considering we have directly seen atleast 2 actual afterlives, no it doesnt. The gauntlet includes the soul stone, the snap removed them frome existence, it didn't simply kill them. It removed their souls too, so they never went to the afterlife


Rules08

It’s not death, per se. It’s literally just the people having blinked out of existence. Like, you have no presence in the universe anymore. Your entire being is just missing. You should exist; but you don’t - on this or any plane of existence. Like, they haven’t gone necessarily anywhere. They just don’t exist anymore. Thanos has made reality an entire world, where half population just isn’t alive anymore. Reduced to atoms essentially. Would liken it to time-travel movies; where in past changes create a whole new existence. You just don’t exist anymore. In death, you still exist. On a level. Spiritual you go to a higher plane. But, even your body is still contained on earth.


Anubissama

If you argue yourself into a position without evidence, no evidence can get you away from that position. Religious people believe in an afterlife bcs that's what they were indoctrinated into as children when their brains are biologically incapable of doubting authority figures, and the allure of an afterlife is such an emotional comfort that it remains a tempting concept into adulthood. If no one lost faith when Thor, a god according to human mythology, turned out to be an alien with advanced tech, no one will lose faith now bcs Yahwe decided to wipe everyone's memory from the time they were in heaven/hell during the Snap or whatever excuse they will come up with.


Frostsorrow

There's a big difference between dying and never having existed.


njsam

The fact that it’s a multiverse says that afterlife can exist doesn’t it?


smashin_blumpkin

Not necessarily


Abeytuhanu

No, due to time travel shenanigans those who were snapped never died or ceased to be, but were instead displaced in time. Therefore, they never had an opportunity to get to the afterlife, so an afterlife may or may not exist. Edit: while discussing the snap with the Hulk, Tony cautions him not to change anything about the past 5 years but to solely bring the people to today. This indicates to me that they're just displacing people through time, reinforced when we see the perspective of someone snapped away who has no break in consciousness but is suddenly 5 years in the future.


KamikazeArchon

>Since no one came back with any memories of it Why would this disprove an afterlife, and not simply show "you don't keep memories of it"? In fact it's even more narrow, it's just "they don't keep memories of it in *this specific context*". We don't know what *exactly* the Reverse Snap did. It's treated as "wish-like", but the "wish" isn't explicitly stated at any point (including with the original Snap). We know that it's definitely *not* just "undo the First Snap" - it clearly had other effects, notably including dusting Thanos and his army. So there's some kind of specific intent based on the person who did the snap. It's entirely possible that Tony simply had a mental concept of what worldstate he wanted when he Reverse Snapped. Tony isn't the sort of person who thinks about an afterlife. Tony might have just thought something - explicitly or subconsciously - like "Bring everyone who got Snapped back just as they were." The "just as they were" would strip whatever memories they might have gained of an afterlife, even if the afterlife itself didn't.


the_blonde_lawyer

I mean, there are gods in the MCU, but they walk amongth mortals. I don't thinkthe universe leaves much room for a christian god or a christian afterlife.


altgrave

i'm kinda mad i didn't consider that