As the clock ticks down to the release of Avengers: Endgame (Thursday 25 April in the UK, if you haven’t got it marked in the calendar yet), debates rage on over which of the main five might sacrifice their lives to bring back the people they’ve lost. We’ve got a lot of investment in these characters, considering all the money phases one to three of the Marvel movie franchise have raked in.

I love the Avengers. I collected the comics during university; I full-on snot-bubble cried at the cinema during Infinity War when – SPOILERS – Loki and Spiderman copped it. That film grossed over a billion at the box office, with its sequel – the culmination of over a decade of interconnected superhero cinema – on track to do even better. So you think I’d be hoping that those left standing would survive for another decade of adventures. But, actually, not so much. It’s going to hurt, but it’s time for them all to cop it. Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Black Widow and Hawkeye. Especially Hawkeye.

The debate about who’s going to make it isn’t the loudest one the Marvel films have inspired among fans – it’s the diversity debate that’s steadily been getting louder. Or, “the diversity debate – ALL STRENGTH TO IT” as Tilda Swinton earnestly put it in her email to Margaret Cho on Marvel casting her in 2016. You know, when she played the Ancient One? A Tibetan man. That guy; remember? That’s who Swinton – the white Scottish woman of 55 who lives in the Highlands – played.

‘Go now. Make way for others.’ Robert Downey Jr in Avengers: Endgame. Photograph: AP

If you’ve dipped heavily into Avengers reprints in the past – or read inclusive titles like Young Avengers, for instance – the lack of diversity in the first phase of films was … weird. Like walking into a space and suddenly realising everyone there is white. You know that feeling? When you go to a rooftop bar in Peckham and you worry that you’ve inadvertently stumbled into a Klan meeting? Not that source material for the Marvel films were always golden with diversity – Falcon’s time in crime being a particularly racist low point – but a huge roster of characters have been created since and there’s ample opportunity to give a greater number of fans someone who looks like them.

At the very beginning, our main roster for the Marvel movies were four white guys and a token “strong female character”. You can see them (sans Hawkeye, because who really likes Hawkeye) in the first “Avenge the Fallen” posters Marvel released to fandom wailing on Twitter: Steve, Tony, Thor (or Donald, if you’re formal) and Nat. The thread starts to get less white at tweet three, four, five, six, seven … Much has been done to make the films more diverse as they’ve gone on, but they need to go further.

“We owe this to everyone who’s not in this room; to try,” says Black Widow solemnly in the Endgame trailer, and she’s right. But not to try – to die. To leave. Go, now. Make way for others. Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, and Scarlett Johansson are a draw, but they’re crowding the screen and hogging space at a time when it’s so important to make way. Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie had scenes cut in Thor: Ragnarok, so we lost our first confirmed LGBTQ character in the Marvel movie universe. Danai Gurira’s name was crowded out of the first Endgame poster – fan outrage got it put where it belongs.

Audience hunger for increased diversity in these movies shows in the quick acceptance and championing of the newer characters that don’t fit the mould of the original film five – Shuri is loved as a Disney Princess, Miles Morales as Spiderman is a hit, and Monica Rambeau’s introduction in Captain Marvel promises exciting things for the future. Diversity has been promised by Marvel Studios’ president Kevin Feige (finally). We’ve got Shang-Chi on the way, and an openly gay male lead in The Eternals coming up. And we could soon have Kamala Khan, a young, female, Muslim superhero.

But for this version of the Avengers universe to happen, it’s time to cheer on Thanos and say goodbye to the first roster. Ta-ra, Cap and Iron Man. See ya, Thor and Black Widow. And let’s wish a special farewell in particular to Hawkeye. Because no one likes Hawkeye, right?

• Phoebe-Jane Boyd is a content editor