The weight that lifts us

Originally released in 2019, Marvel Studios' Avengers: Endgame returned to Chinese mainland cinemas on Sept 25, with previously unseen footage. The film follows the surviving Avengers as they attempt to reverse the devastation caused by Thanos, culminating in Iron Man's sacrifice to save the universe.

For as long as I can remember, I have been a Marvel fan. So when I first watched Avengers: Endgame in 2019, I cried my eyes out after seeing my favorite character, Iron Man, die.

Seven years later, watching the film again, I saw something in Tony Stark's story that I had been too young to understand before: the weight of responsibility.

At the beginning of his journey, Tony is almost unbearably light — a "genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist" seemingly free to live however he wants. But gradually, his life becomes heavier. The arc reactor gives him a responsibility he cannot escape. Yinsen's death gives him a debt he can never repay. Then come Pepper, the Avengers, Peter Parker and, eventually, his daughter, Morgan Stark.

By the end, Tony carries not only the people he loves but the fate of the entire universe. Yet strangely, the heavier his life becomes, the more fulfilled he seems. What weighs him down also gives him something worth living — and ultimately dying — for.

Perhaps I noticed this change in Tony because, over those seven years, I had changed too.

I was no longer an elementary school student. Instead, I had moved hundreds of miles away from home to university and, this semester, became the director of our campus Youth Volunteers Association. My first big task was organizing orientation for incoming students.

It sounded simple enough. But it wasn't. Volunteer assignments kept changing, people canceled at the last minute, and schedules had to be rearranged again and again. Some nights, I felt overwhelmed and irritated by the sheer weight of being responsible for it all.

But when orientation began and new students poured onto campus, their faces full of expectation, I realized that I had played a small part in making their arrival a little smoother. Almost immediately, the frustration of the previous weeks seemed to evaporate. What remained was a quiet sense of fulfillment.

Of course, coordinating a university orientation is a world away from saving the cosmos. But it helped me understand something I had missed when I first watched Endgame: responsibility is meaningful not despite its weight, but because of it.

That changed the way I felt about Tony's final sacrifice. I no longer saw only the death of a character I loved. I saw the completion of his journey — from a man who lived mainly for himself to one willing to carry the greatest possible responsibility for others.

This time, I still felt sad watching him die. But more than anything, I felt proud. Tony Stark had learned to carry the weight of something bigger than himself. Now, in my own much smaller way, I am learning to do the same.

Written by Wu Lijie, 19, a sophomore law student at Sun Yat-sen University.