Avengers: Endgame is likely going to go down as the biggest success story of 2019. The film had to juggle so many different aspects, from tying up the franchise in a quality fashion to setting up the next phase of the MCU. There was a lot on the shoulders of the movie but against all odds, it was a resounding success.
It’s not surprising that given how heavy the expectations for this film were, that it was dissected ad nauseam. In fact, snippets are now starting to emerge about why certain things in Endgme were done the way they were and why certain elements were left out.
Apparently, one of the scenes cut in the early stages of production involved Thanos meeting with Captain America while time traveling and presenting the super soldier with a severed head of a past version of himself, still wrapped up in his trademark winged cowl.
The desire was to recreate, at least in part, the iconic imagery of the throne of skulls that was featured in the Infinity Gauntlet comic miniseries that heavily influenced the latter two Avengers films. And while speaking with Empire, MCU leader Kevin Feige elaborated a bit more on the scene and why it didn’t work in the end.
“One of the ideas was, when they finish the time heist, they returned to a world [in 2023] that Thanos had already conquered, that involved all of that, the throne made of bones and skulls and had him tossing, like a bowling ball, Captain America’s severed skull head, still in the cowl, to Captain America. And it was pretty cool, but the logic to get there defeated us. I think it ended up in a set of pages at one point in the script. There might be a piece of concept art somewhere with it.”
This little tidbit would’ve gone a long way in legitimizing the Thanos from 2014 and surely would’ve added a deeper sense of menace to the character. All things considered though, it’s probably best that Marvel chose not to scar auditoriums full of young children with the sight of the First Avenger sans the rest of his body in Avengers: Endgame.
