Some of it likely is just taking a moment to accept things didn’t go how we necessarily expected them to, and also putting two and two together. Like, the Steve retiring stuff annoyed me (you can check a few messages of mine from like an hour ago and I kinda trash it even) but then I thought about it in relation to everything that happens to Tony and... yeah. I can actually see that shaking up even Steve enough that he might decide it’s worth retiring to avoid a similar fate. He’s genuinely selfless and heroic, but he also is still a person who isn’t completely obligated to continually give up having his own life for everyone else. And I think seeing what went down with Tony could pretty believably drive that home to him.

The only part I’m super iffy on is Black Widow. Mainly just because I feel like she’s been consistently misused and underused and this seems like an extension of that.