OK, now I've processed things a bit, and I've also managed to sort out my messy feelings, which yesterday night were basically a huge skein of denial.

I loved it and hated it at the same time.

Loved it, because it was everything it should be: quick and smart and funny and just the right side of complicated, and it had everything it should have: battle and drama and heroics and the necessary comic relief.

But I hated it for Natasha. God, how I hated that ending.

To make myself clear: I think that this was the ideal ending for her character, given the arc that was kicked off with Joss Whedon's horrific choices in AoU. I would hate for Natasha to serve as Clint's consolation prize, and I would also hate for her character not to receive a "full circle" like Tony's and Steve's did. But I have to admit that seeing Laura Barton alive and well at the final scenes of the movie, while Natasha's body was rotting at Vormir, kind of made me mad (even more so because Laura was a totally unnecessary piece of canon, born out of a director's narcissistic need to somehow differentiate himself - well congrats Joss, you sure differentiated yourself by producing MCU's worse movie by far). I wanted my girl alive and happy and walking off into the sunset with her man, so sue me.

So while I think that the Russo brothers did the best they could with the mess they inherited from Whedon and AoU, I still didn't like the ending, because I didn't like that character arc for Natasha to begin with.

Anyway. (sighs)

Once more we chose a late night screening, which meant that the theater was full of nerds and aficionados who cried when Tony died and laughed their asses off with the Lebowski references, and isn't it amazing when one hundred strangers are connected with something?

Also: what the hell happened in Budapest. If there's ever a Black Widow prequel, I really hope it will give us some answers.

The end of an era, guys! Now I'm gonna need many, and I mean a very great deal of many, fix-it fics.