People are mourning Infinity War's saddest death by just killing off random pop-culture figures
Spoiler alert: Major plot points for Avengers: Infinity War—including the ending—will be revealed below.
Look, there’s nothing wrong with admitting that a comic book movie made you cry. The ending of Avengers: Infinity War was intense as hell, with a huge swath of the superheroes we’ve come to know and love dissolving into ash after Thanos lodged the last infinity stone into his magic glove. Now, we’re not gullible enough to believe these characters are gone, not when there’s new Spider-Man and Guardians Of The Galaxy movies on the way, but the actors certainly played it like they did, and that’s what made it count.
None deserve more credit than Tom Holland, however, who apparently improvised Spider-Man’s Peter Parker’s final pleas to Tony Stark. As his colleagues dissolved into ash around him, Holland’s Parker muttered, “Mr. Stark, I don’t feel so good” before collapsing to the ground and, his voice quivering and weak, cried, “I don’t want to go.” Whether you loved or hated the turn of events, it was a genuinely affecting moment.
The best way to deal with that kind of grief and melancholy is, of course, to lampoon it as thoroughly as possible. This has led several fans on Twitter to graft Infinity War’s climactic dissolves onto any number of other characters. The sillier, the better, of course, if only to hilariously envision Holland’s depth of emotion emerging from the likes of Shrek, Shaggy, or Napoleon Dynamite.
Choose the right subject and the meme can also illustrate deeper truths, whether that be John Cena’s fear of commitment, our collective relief when The Walking Dead killed Carl, or just the general wish for our president to evaporate.
And, of course, it wouldn’t be a modern meme without “Steamed Hams” nosing its way in there.
But the winner needed no digital trickery at all.
To paraphrase sweet, innocent Peter Parker: “We don’t want to this meme to go.”