The Blip was a trauma the MCU could not ignore: half of humanity vanished overnight, and the world spent five years without them. Triggered by Thanos using the Infinity Gauntlet at the end of Avengers: Infinity War, the event erased life across the universe with a single snap of his fingers. When the dust settled and people returned, the surface of society looked the same, but beneath it, institutions, criminals, and individuals had shifted. Opportunities opened for those ruthless or lucky (or simply in the right place) to remake their lives.
Some people used the gap to grieve and rebuild. Others used it as a ladder. Criminal networks filled power vacuums, ambitious operatives turned exile into influence, and even ordinary lives were rearranged by chance. The five-year pause rewrote career tracks, relationships, and political calculations across the MCU.
MCU Characters Who Benefitted From the Blip
Mr. Harrington’s Wife
A more mundane, yet brutally personal, example of exploiting the chaos comes from the wife of Mr. Harrington, Peter Parker’s high school teacher. As revealed in Spider-Man: Far From Home, Mr. Harrington survived the Blip, but his wife, Tabitha, did not. Later, search snippets clarified the dark truth: she had faked being Blipped to run away with her secret partner.
The sudden disappearance of half the population created the perfect cover, a globally accepted out with no questions asked. This allowed her to dissolve her marriage and abandon her husband without accountability, using the world’s greatest tragedy as her personal escape route.
Sharon Carter
Branded a fugitive after the events of Captain America: Civil War, Sharon Carter was forced into hiding. While the records initially listed her as a victim of the snap, she secretly survived the Blip and settled in Madripoor. The five-year global collapse of government and law enforcement was the ideal environment for her to flourish.
Sharon ruthlessly leveraged the chaos to establish herself as the incredibly wealthy and powerful Power Broker, ruling the city’s criminal underworld. The absence of traditional international security structures was directly responsible for her rise from fugitive to global crime boss, a position she maintained even after returning to the United States.
Brad Davis
The Blip created an awkward but beneficial romantic opportunity for Brad Davis, a minor character in Spider-Man: Far From Home. Brad was five years younger than Peter Parker and his friends, meaning he was likely around 11 years old when the snap occurred. While Peter and his friends were Blipped and therefore did not age, Brad survived the snap.
This meant he aged naturally for five years, turning him into a much more mature and physically attractive teenager by the time Peter returned. He was suddenly the same age and in the same grade as Peter, transforming him from a child into a legitimate, formidable romantic rival for MJ’s affection.
Karli Morgenthau & the Flag Smashers
The anarchy and reduced global oversight during the five-year Blip created the conditions for the Flag Smashers to rise to prominence. Led by Karli Morgenthau, who was interestingly a male character in the comics, the group’s core mission was to return the world to the borderless state of unity it experienced during the Blip, arguing that half the population’s disappearance led to a more cooperative global community.
The movement’s popularity and Karli’s leadership grew in the wake of the snap, as the ensuing global refugee and resource crisis made their anti-nationalist message resonate with displaced and marginalized people. The Blip gave them both a social cause and a receptive, chaotic environment to organize their movement.
Wilson Fisk (Kingpin)
Though he was already a powerful crime lord before the Blip, the five-year gap allowed Wilson Fisk to exponentially rebuild and expand his criminal empire in a New York City devastated by the loss of half its population. With the established justice system crippled, police forces thinned, and overall oversight severely weakened, a massive power vacuum opened up.
Fisk was able to exploit the disorder and fear to consolidate his control, emerging by the time of Hawkeye as one of the most powerful, influential criminal figures in the city. The chaos of the Blip provided the perfect cover for him to operate without the constraints of a fully functioning legal or superhero presence.
Ikaris & Ajak (The Eternals)
The Celestial Tiamut was gestating inside Earth, and its full Emergence, which would have destroyed the planet, was set to happen once humanity reached a certain population level. Thanos’s snap, which wiped out 50% of all life, delayed the Emergence of Tiamut by five years.
This delay was a massive, unforeseen benefit for the empathetic Ajak, the leader of the Eternals, and any other Eternal who wished to protect humanity, such as Ikaris, who suffered a tragic fate, and Sersi. The Blip essentially gave them an extra five years to prepare and ultimately find a way to stop the devastating event.
The Ten Rings & Other Criminal Organizations
Beyond the individual gains of figures like Sharon Carter and Wilson Fisk, the collapse of infrastructure and law enforcement proved a massive advantage for numerous criminal organizations worldwide.
With police forces decimated, border security compromised, and government agencies struggling to maintain basic functions, groups like the Ten Rings, who were implied to have used the opportunity to expand their operations, found fertile ground for illicit activity.
The organization’s lasting global presence in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings suggests that the chaos of the Blip years allowed them to strengthen their influence while governments struggled to maintain order.
Tony Stark (Iron Man)
For a man perpetually burdened by heroic duty and the specter of impending doom, the Blip offered Tony Stark an unprecedented five years of peace. Surviving the snap with Pepper Potts, he effectively retired from superhero life, moving to a remote cabin to focus entirely on his family. During this time, he married Pepper and they raised their daughter, Morgan, finally achieving the quiet, ordinary life he had long craved but never allowed himself to pursue.
This period of domestic tranquility gave him a full, loving family life, a personal benefit he would not have traded for anything, as he was reluctant to return to the mission that ultimately cost him his life.
Thanos
Thanos himself is obviously one of the biggest beneficiaries of the catastrophic event he caused. The Blip was the immediate and definitive fulfillment of his life’s ultimate goal, balancing the universe by eliminating half of all life. After collecting the Infinity Stones and enacting the snap, he achieved perfect, cosmic success, leading him to retire to a garden planet.
He was a man who had completed his life’s work. The immediate result of the snap was his triumph and a brief period of total, undisputed satisfaction before the remaining Avengers found and confronted him.
Geraldo Amartey is a writer at The Direct. He joined the team in 2025, bringing with him four years of experience covering entertainment news, pop culture, and fan-favorite franchises for sites like YEN, Briefly and Tuko.
