Avengers: Infinity War Directors Briefly Considered Adding TV Characters

Avengers: Infinity War united almost all of the heroes that have appeared in the MCU over the past decade. Well, those that have appeared on the big screen, that is. Characters who’ve starred on the TV side of things, such as Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and more, were nowhere to be seen. It’s a Marvel fan’s dream to have the Avengers and the Defenders crossover, but it apparently wasn’t meant to be in this movie.

If things had gone differently, though, perhaps we might have seen the two superhero teams collide. While talking to Variety, Infinity War co-director Anthony Russo explained that the production team briefly considered inserting Marvel Television characters into the film. However, everyone quickly agreed that there was enough to be getting on with as it was.

“We made the briefest consideration of [including TV characters in ‘Infinity War’]. When we’re alone in a room with [screenwriters Christopher] Markus and [Stephen] McFeely, we consider every idea. We like thinking of everything. But it seemed like the story that had been told within the movies was so specific and elaborate already that once we started working through the story, we knew we had our hands full just with this set of characters and narratives.”

This fits with what we’ve been told before. Though the idea was floated around in the earliest planning stages, nothing ever materialized as it was thought, as writer Christopher Markus has put it, that attempting to factor in even more heroes would be “a bridge too far.”

Even if they wanted to play with Marvel’s TV division, though, Anthony Russo has previously labelled the situation as “complicated,” even going so far as to compare the divide between Marvel Studios and Marvel Television to the distance between the studio and 20th Century Fox.

You can’t blame the filmmakers for deciding to leave out the likes of the Defenders and the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., then, even if it would have made Avengers: Infinity War even more of a fan-pleasing experience. After all, the Russos and their writers had a monumental undertaking ahead of them as it was with just balancing the Avengers, the Guardians, Thanos and the rest of the characters. Attempting to stitch together the MCU’s movie and television divisions as well would have just been, as Markus says, “a bridge too far.”