SPOILER ALERT: nothing in this post will diminish your ability to fully enjoy the fact that Tony Stark talks about eating crickets in Avengers Endgame. 😉 There aren’t any real spoilers actually, other than one brief scene. Which, if you’re into eating insects, you’ll enjoy even more knowing it’s there!
In Endgame, there’s a scene at Tony Stark’s house in the countryside, and he’s with his daughter outside. They’re having a cute father-daughter moment, and he asks her if she’s hungry, and then he asks her if she’d like a plate of crickets for lunch!
Yes, really! Tony Stark, aka Ironman, aka the most awesome of all the Avengers, asks his daughter if she’s hungry for crickets. Not in a dystopian way, not even really in a sarcastic way, just like a fun dad who cares about what his daughter eats way.
It was written to come across playfully, an acknowledgement that it’s a popular food trend right now in 2019, that the most brilliant mind in the universe both knows that crickets are healthy to eat, and that his daughter should probably eat nutritious bugs too!
POSITIVE RE-FRAMING OF ENTOMOPHAGY
This represents a big step in a positive direction for entomophagy, in my view. If you’ll remember two years ago the scene with edible insects in Blade Runner 2049, it was a dystopian, bleak future where people were essentially forced to subsist on insect larvae.
But in Avengers Endgame, the scene is bright and cheerful, it’s playful, it’s fun, it’s happy…and while Tony Stark’s daughter says no to eating crickets this time, they both laugh about it, as though it’s a food he’s been trying to get her to eat now for a while. You know, like many good parents in happier moments might tease their kids about eating their vegetables, offering them yummy broccoli or carrots in a serious yet lighthearted manner.
But in this case, it’s crickets! And entomophagy takes one more giant leap into the mainstream subconsciousness, through a hidden easter egg moment from the Avengers movie series that right now only bug-eating Entomophogists might appreciate, but one which in a few years we’ll all look back on as prescient!
Thanks Ironman! We’ll all be eating insects soon, and if his parenting is any indication, the next generation of superheroes will be making crickets for lunch just as commonplace as a peanut butter sandwich.
Mr. Stark, if Ironman and the Entovegan ever have a chance to grab a meal, your plate of crickets is on me!
