This post contains frank discussion of the most crucial plot points in Avengers: Endgame. If you’re looking for a spoiler-free, risk-free review, you can find it here. But if you’re about to wander into the article below, it means that you have either already seen the latest installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or that you really, truly don’t mind knowing what’s to come. We’re going to give you one last chance to bail out—but after this GIF, the gauntlets are coming off.

For much of Avengers: Endgame, the bulk of the sprawling M.C.U. cast is reduced to ash, and the team is stripped back down to basics. With a few exceptions—Rhodey, Rocket, Nebula, etc.—we’re dealing with the original Avengers here. The ones that battled to save New York. So the big friendship angle of Endgame is between Captain Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) and Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.)—how they heal the rift that drove them apart in Civil War. But when the battle’s lost and won and Tony’s made his final sacrifice, why is the actual biggest friendship in Steve Rogers’ life not given the spotlight? It’s Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), not Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), who gets the biggest moments with Steve as Endgame wraps up. There may be a few reasons why.

First, a quick moment of appreciation for the reforging of Steve and Tony’s friendship in Avengers: Endgame. When we first met Steve, he was just a skinny kid from Brooklyn literally launching himself on grenades. And when the M.C.U. introduced Tony, he was loving life without the burden of heroics. When Endgame wrapped up, however, it was Tony throwing himself on grenades, and Steve learning to actually live. This swap in lifestyle is especially rewarding given the break in their friendship during Civil War. So why was the main cause of that break, Bucky Barnes, so absent from this latest film?

It’s not Bucky’s ride-or-die refrain with Cap—“till the end of the line”—that signals the triumphant return of the Snapped in the final battle sequence. Instead, it’s Sam’s “on your left”—a nice callback to his introduction to the M.C.U. in The Winter Soldier. And it’s Sam, not Bucky, who shares a final conversation with Steve by the lake. It’s fine that Sam got Cap’s shield instead of Bucky (though both Sam and Bucky have carried it in the comics)—but it’s baffling that he got the very last word, when Bucky has been Steve’s most important friend throughout his life and in the film franchise.