Avengers: Endgame Writers Talk Character Fates, Incorporating Captain Marvel & Black Panther (Spoilers)

WARNING: Spoilers follow for Avengers: Endgame.

Avengers: Endgame screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely spoke with the New York Times discussing the decision behind some of the character fates and more. You can see a couple of highlights below:

On how they chose which characters would survive Infinity War
MARKUS: “We knew we wanted to see Cap and Tony dealing with the aftermath so that you could really see them suffer, quite frankly. And that’s why Cap and Natasha are relatively minimal in the first movie, because all they’d be doing is punching. We knew that they had a lot of story in the second movie, and there were other people who would have much more story in the first movie, like the Guardians.”
McFEELY: “Thor is strangely the one that gets two movies’ worth of story.”
MARKUS: “For a guy people once thought of as boring, he’s become very useful.”

On killing Thanos right off the bat
McFEELY: “We always had this problem. The guy has the ultimate weapon. He can see it coming. It’s ridiculous. We were just banging our heads for weeks, and at some point, [the executive producer] Trinh Tran went, “Can’t we just kill him?” And we all went, “What happens if you just kill him? Why would you kill him? Why would he let you kill him?””
MARKUS: “It reinforced Thanos’s agenda. He was done. Not to make him too Christ-like, but it was like, “If I’ve got to die, I can die now.””

On whether they looked for more opportunities for Black Panther and Captain Marvel after their films were hits

McFEELY: “There wasn’t a lot of time to adjust. It’s not like we could say, “Hurry, put Shuri in there.” We started [filming Infinity War and Endgame], and then Black Panther started, we’re still going. They finish. We’re still going … When we’re doing the tests [before Black Panther opened], and Cap goes, “I know somewhere,” and then you cut to Wakanda, the audience goes, “Oh, that’s interesting.” But when you do those tests after the movie comes out, all you have to do is [makes drumming noises] and people freak out. Same issue with “Captain Marvel.” We shot [Brie Larson] before she shot her movie. She’s saying lines for a character 20 years after her origin story, which no one’s written yet. It’s just nuts.”
MARKUS: “She’s been in space nearly half her life. She has obligations.”
McFEELY: “Certainly, Captain Marvel is in [Endgame] a little less than you would have thought. But that’s not the story we’re trying to tell — it’s the original Avengers dealing with loss and coming to a conclusion, and she’s the new, fresh blood.”

On if any scenes from the battle didn’t make it into the film
McFEELY: “It didn’t play well, but we had a scene in a trench where, for reasons, the battle got paused for about three minutes and now there’s 18 people all going, “What are we going to do?” “I’m going to do this.” “I’m going to do this.” Just bouncing around this completely fake, fraudulent scene. When you have that many people, it invariably is, one line, one line, one line. And that’s not a natural conversation.”
MARKUS: “It also required them to find enough shelter to have a conversation in the middle of the biggest battle. It wasn’t a polite World War I battle where you have a moment.”

On the scene where all the female Marvel heroes come together
McFEELY: “There was much conversation. Is that delightful or is it pandering? We went around and around on that. Ultimately we went, we like it too much.”
MARKUS: “Part of the fun of the Avengers movies has always been team-ups. Marvel has been amassing this huge roster of characters. You’ve got crazy aliens. You’ve got that many badass women. You’ve got three or four people in Iron Man suits.”

On Black Widow’s death
McFEELY: “Her journey, in our minds, had come to an end if she could get the Avengers back. She comes from such an abusive, terrible, mind-control background, so when she gets to Vormir and she has a chance to get the family back, that’s a thing she would trade for. The toughest thing for us was we were always worried that people weren’t going to have time to be sad enough. The stakes are still out there and they haven’t solved the problem. But we lost a big character — a female character — how do we honor it? We have this male lens and it’s a lot of guys being sad that a woman died.”
MARKUS: “Tony gets a funeral. Natasha doesn’t. That’s partly because Tony’s this massive public figure and she’s been a cipher the whole time. It wasn’t necessarily honest to the character to give her a funeral. The biggest question about it is what Thor raises there on the dock. “We have the Infinity Stones. Why don’t we just bring her back?””
McFEELY: “But that’s the everlasting exchange. You bring her back, you lose the stone.”

On Tony Stark’s death
McFEELY: “Everyone knew this was going to be the end of Tony Stark.”
MARKUS: “I don’t think there were any mandates. If we had a good reason to not do it, certainly people would have entertained it.”
McFEELY: “The watchword was, end this chapter, and he started the chapter.”
MARKUS: “In a way, he has been the mirror of Steve Rogers the entire time. Steve is moving toward some sort of enlightened self-interest, and Tony’s moving to selflessness. They both get to their endpoints.”

On if they considered other outcomes for Tony
MARKUS: “No. Because we had the opportunity to give him the perfect retirement life, within the movie.”
McFEELY: “He got that already.”
MARKUS: “That’s the life he’s been striving for. Are he and Pepper going to get together? Yes. They got married, they had a kid, it was great. It’s a good death. It doesn’t feel like a tragedy. It feels like a heroic, finished life.”

On Captain America’s happy ending
McFEELY: “From the very first outline, we knew he was going to get his dance. On a separate subject, I started to lose my barometer on what was just fan service and what was good for the character. Because I think it’s good for the characters. But we also just gave you what you wanted. Is that good? I don’t know. But I’ll tell you, it’s satisfying. He’s postponed a life in order to fulfill his duty. That’s why I didn’t think we were ever going to kill him. Because that’s not the arc. The arc is, I finally get to put my shield down because I’ve earned that.”
MARKUS: “A hero without sacrifice, you’re not going to get the miles out of that person that you need to for these movies. That’s what makes them a hero, it’s not the powers.”

On whether Sam Wilson as the new Captain America will be a future film
MARKUS: “We really do just know what you know. They’re doing The Eternals, which is a property I know next to nothing about. We’ve been here, trying to set this contraption running. Were we to take another one on, you can’t increase the scope or the stakes from where we are at the moment. We’d have to shrink it back down, do an origin story. There are deep-bench characters where I’m like, if you roll that guy out, I couldn’t resist. There is a great Moon Knight movie to be made, but I don’t know what is.”