In their quest to reclaim all the Infinity Stones from across time, Black Widow and Hawkeye travelled to Vormir in Avengers: Endgame in order to find the Soul Stone. While there, though, they discovered the sad truth, something fans already knew from Avengers: Infinity War: to get the Stone and save the universe, one of them had to die. Ultimately, after a self-sacrificial fight between the two heroes, Natasha Romanoff threw herself off the cliff-face and Clint Barton took home the gem.
We don’t really know how or why the Avengers decided which heroes would collect which Stones, so it could theoretically have been any pair of characters that had to make the terrible decision of which of them would die so billions could live. If you want to rip your heart out, just imagine if it was Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, arguably the only other Avenger friendship that’s as strong as Clint and Nat’s. How would the situation have played out between them?
This was the difficult question put to the Winter Soldier himself, Sebastian Stan, when he attended an Italian convention known as Just a Bello this week. The actor imagines it might’ve been similar to how it went in the movie, with Cap and Bucky wanting to protect the other.
“Wow. [Steve] would probably be like, ‘I got this.’ And [Bucky] would have been like, ‘No, I should be doing this,.” No, I think it would have been a fight, and I probably would have tried to — I should be the one, after everything, to take the leap, so to speak. But knowing him, he probably wouldn’t let me. But I don’t know, that’s a crazy question. Jesus. And then the Red Skull was there.”
Much like Black Widow decides that it should be her in Endgame because of her dark past, Stan thinks Bucky would’ve been the one to “take the leap” after his decades of being a brainwashed HYDRA assassin. The Russos have also explained that this is why the decision was made to kill off Black Widow rather than Hawkeye. Though it’s not an explanation that a lot of fans have been happy with.
Thankfully, neither Steve or Bucky died in Avengers: Endgame, meaning Cap was able to go off and get married to Peggy Carter and Sebastian Stan’s Sergeant Barnes was free to star in Disney Plus’ upcoming Falcon and Winter Soldier TV show with Anthony Mackie. Expect that to enter production later this year ahead of a 2020 release.
