Ultimate Endgame was more than just the payoff to two years of build-up that started with Ultimate Invasion. The Maker’s transformation of Earth-6160 into his ideal universe had roots going all the way back to his original Ultimate Universe. With that much story behind it, Ultimate Endgame was expected to reward readers for their commitment and loyalty in keeping up with all these comics. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. Instead, the ending missed the mark as a rewarding payoff. So how did that happen? Let’s talk about it.
ULTIMATE ENDGAME ACTED AS THE ULTIMATES SPIN-OFF
Whether intentional or not, Ultimate Endgame never really felt like the culmination of everything happening across the Ultimate Universe line. From the very beginning, Ultimate Endgame felt less like a true line-wide finale and more like a spin-off of Deniz Camp’s work on The Ultimates.
That stood out in the way Camp handled the rest of the Ultimate Universe. Even with Ultimate Spider-Man, Black Panther, and the X-Men available, they were mostly treated as supporting characters. That’s especially noticeable because the story set up multiple battlefronts across the world. But most of these came across as quick pages to promote how this narrative was truly being told in The Ultimates series.
All of that made the larger Ultimate Universe feel like it was only there to support the way Camp split the event’s narrative. Ultimate Endgame was really carried by Ultimate Iron Lad and Doctor Doom’s stories. A lot of the time, it felt like we were just waiting for Iron Lad and Doctor Doom to get their heads straight, which didn’t happen until the final issue. Because of that, much of the action felt unimportant to the main plot, since the event was so focused on the waiting game surrounding those two characters.
THE MAKER TURNS INTO BORING BLOB
Camp didn’t just have the two-year lifespan of this Ultimate Universe to work with. He had more than a decade of The Maker’s history to pull from and use to make him feel like the kind of villain worthy of an event titled Ultimate Endgame. Instead of coming across as an all-powerful, god-like threat on the level of Doctor Doom from Secret Wars, The Maker was reduced to a literal giant blob. It was hard to take him seriously when most of his appearances showed him as a deformed mass covering a building.
Even when The Maker manifested in his regular form within Ultimate Doctor Doom, he was basically just playing the devil on Doom’s shoulder. As a concept, that does tap into the forever war between Reed Richards and Doctor Doom that exists across every universe. But in actual execution when it turns into Reed vs. Reed, it just doesn’t hit the same way.
It didn’t help that Ultimate Endgame barely paid attention to The Maker’s Council. Considering how much time The Maker spent establishing his control across the Ultimate Universe, his Council should have played a bigger role in the event. Instead, that entire side of the story was brushed aside for Ultimate Wolverine and The Ultimates to deal with elsewhere.
The Maker’s Council could have done a lot to show how his threat extended across the entire universe. Instead, The Maker felt strangely contained within The City, even though the story made it seem like he could have escaped at any time.
ULTIMATE UNIVERSE TRIPS INTO THE FINISHING LINE
What really highlighted how much Ultimate Endgame failed to live up to being a big event was how it cheapened so much of what it tried to do. The Maker’s Council was essentially taken down off-screen if you were only reading Ultimate Endgame. The Maker himself was quickly defeated once the heroes once Iron Lad and Doctor Doom stopped being frozen by indecision.
If all that wasn’t enough, Camp also cheapened what was arguably Ultimate Endgame’s biggest moment by bringing Ultimate Peter Parker back to life. Yes, the way Camp killed off Ultimate Peter Parker was poorly executed. But it would have actually said something if Camp and the publishing line’s team had committed to showing what an Ultimate Universe without the original Spider-Man looked like. That would have shown how much every moment mattered to the future of the Ultimate Universe.
Then there was the fact that Ultimate Universe: Finale didn’t feel like a celebration of this version of the universe. The entire one-shot felt like there was a disconnect between the creators and editorial. The way each story was written and drawn didn’t give off the feeling that we should be satisfied knowing life continues, even if we won’t get to read what comes next. If anything, the way everything was framed made it feel like we were supposed to get at least a third year of this Ultimate Universe. That unsatisfying conclusion ended up summarizing the whole big event experience Ultimate Endgame gave us.
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