Between them, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame feature an enormous range of characters from across the first decade of the MCU. They also introduced a handful we hadn’t seen before from the pages of Marvel Comics. But were there any characters that the writers wanted to include but weren’t allowed to for whatever reason?
That was the question put to scribes Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely by NY Times, and it turns out there was one major addition who was cut. Markus revealed that The Living Tribunal almost featured in a scene that would’ve appeared in Infinity War – or perhaps even Endgame, if it didn’t work out for the first film – but he was pulled out due to being too big for the story.
MARKUS: We did try to put the Living Tribunal in the first [one]. We wrote a scene in which he appeared during the Titan fight. And everyone was like, what?
McFEELY: Whoa. He’s got three heads. It would indicate a whole different level of architecture to the universe and I think that was too much to just throw in.
For those unfamiliar, The Living Tribunal is one of the most powerful beings in the whole cosmos, second only in his power, in fact, to the always unseen “One-Above-All” (essentially God). He would definitely change the way we see the MCU so maybe it was the right idea to hold him back for a future movie.
Markus seems to think this is a possibility, too, as he commented that the decision’s up to Kevin Feige. Though he and McFeely did go on to joke that a Living Tribunal TV show could be coming to Disney Plus.
MARKUS: The idea’s still in [Marvel Studios President] Kevin [Feige]’s court.
McFEELY: Oh sure, we probably just spoiled it.
MARKUS: The Living Tribunal has his own streaming show.
McFEELY: It’s like “Judge Judy.”
This is just a bit of conjecture, but presumably the character would have appeared in the Titan scene during Doctor Strange’s look into the future. Perhaps the Sorcerer Supreme would have met with the Tribunal on the Astral Plane and asked for his aid in the fight against Thanos. As in the comic arc The Infinity Gauntlet, he likely would’ve refused to intervene, which is why Markus doesn’t mention the Tribunal appearing again in the film.
Plus, all those fans that theorized TLB was going to appear in Avengers: Endgame can feel vindicated that, though he didn’t turn up to show his three faces, he was still part of the narrative in the first place.
