The stories of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame are dizzyingly complex, with the writers having to keep track of numerous intersecting events, parallel timelines and an enormous cast of heroes. Since Endgame‘s release, though, we’ve gotten a peek behind the curtains of their creative process, seeing a few deleted and extended scenes and a bunch of interesting concept art teasing ideas that didn’t make it into the movie.
Now, artist Ryan Meinerding has released a new image showing Black Widow and Hawkeye about to square off against Thanos on Vormir. This is described as an image he was asked to make “to help the filmmakers visualize and evaluate the moment.”
Check it out below:
This scene is obviously very different from the events of the film. In the final product, we saw Hawkeye and Black Widow journey back to 2014 with War Machine and Nebula, promptly heading off to Vormir to nab the Soul Stone. As Thanos hadn’t yet discovered the location, they were able to succeed, albeit at the cost of Natasha’s life. But this alternative version suggests a different course of events.
One could be that they considered sending the pair to Vormir to prevent the Mad Titan from getting the Soul Stone. To do this, they wouldn’t necessarily need to beat Thanos and could simply assassinate Gamora before he throws her off the cliff. They’d certainly be ground into a fine paste by the big bad soon after, but it would at least have prevented him from making the Snap.
Let’s face it, though, as two relatively normal human beings, Hawkeye and Black Widow wouldn’t have stood a chance against Thanos, so it’s probably for the best that they didn’t go toe-to-toe. But I can’t deny that I’m curious about what tactics the two might use to slow him down a bit. If there’s more Avengers: Endgame concept art out there, I’d love to see it, as these alternate takes tell us a lot about how the movie came together.
