How the hell does Marvel expect me to wait a full year for the fourth Avengers film?

Like “The Empire Strikes Back” and “The Last Jedi,” “Avengers: Infinity War” dares to leave its audience in suspense over how our heroes are going to prevail.

The difference is, while “Star Wars” is a single movie series (at least for now), “Avengers: Infinity War” represents the culmination of almost every movie series within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, from “Iron Man” and “Thor” and “Captain America” to “The Avengers” and “Guardians of the Galaxy.”

Technically, “Avengers: Infinity War” could count as a sequel to the one-off films that haven’t released sequels yet, including “Doctor Strange,” “Spider-Man” and especially this year’s “Black Panther.”

That’s 18 films, totaling more than 38 hours, released over the course of the past 10 years, with “Avengers: Infinity War” expected to bring all those ongoing and separate stories together, and do justice to each of their individual character and plot arcs, within its own running time of a little more than two and a half hours.

Against all odds, it succeeds.

Thanos, the cosmos-conquering “big bad” whom we’ve seen increasingly frequent glimpses of in previous films, is finally making his move to collect all six of the Infinity Stones, each of which gives power over one of the fundamental forces of the universe.

This is the realization of Tony Stark’s prescient fears. It’s also hitting our heroes when they’re at their lowest, with Bruce Banner unable to transform into the Hulk, Thor finally feeling the effects of PTSD from his travails, and the Avengers still splintered in the wake of the events of “Captain America: Civil War.”

The temptation is to compare this film to the first time a little kid mashes up all of his action figures in one big brawl, which is certainly the primal appeal for overgrown middle-aged kids like me. But the directing duo of the Russo brothers deftly interweaves the threads of each character’s efforts to thwart Thanos and his minions.

Part of the fun for continuity-steeped fans is that we get to see the long-awaited teaming of headline characters like Iron Man, Doctor Strange and Star-Lord, yet it’s easy to miss how scattershot our heroes remain, even when they’re paired up in partnerships you wouldn’t expect.

Who knew that the irascible Rocket Raccoon would prove to be such a sensitive counselor to a grieving Asgardian? Or that we’d manage to get not one, but two tragic love stories in the midst of this sprawling ensemble free-for-all?

Whatever else I was anticipating, the guide who appears briefly to help Thanos along his way was the absolute last character from the MCU I expected to see return in this film.

Which leads us to Thanos himself. No less than Jim Starlin, the comics artist and writer who co-created Thanos, gave Josh Brolin’s portrayal of the character his highest praise, and it’s not hard to see why.

While the MCU has struggled to make its villains memorable, with Tom Hiddleston’s Loki and Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger standing out as notable exceptions, Brolin’s Thanos tweaks the motivation that Starlin gave him in the comics, yet he remains a fascinating zealot on behalf of what he sees as the most heroic crusade possible.

The lengths that Thanos is willing to go to for his goal are shocking, and so is the state in which he leaves the entire MCU by the closing credits, even for those of us who have read “The Infinity Gauntlet” from Marvel Comics. Even the obligatory post-credits scene we’ve all come to expect from Marvel offers next to no clues about what will happen next.

I’m 42 years old. I’ve been a fan of these movies for nearly a quarter of my life. Even if I hadn’t already followed them through the comics, these characters would feel like friends and family by this point. And based on “Avengers: Infinity War,” I’m with them until the end of the line.