How The Writers Behind Avengers: Infinity War Decided Who Lived, And Who Died

Who lives, who dies…

That was the crucial, potentially Earth-shaking conundrum that came attached to Avengers: Infinity War, the Marvel blockbuster with more characters and bone-rattling action than the last three MCU movies combined.

And sure enough, as Infinity War approached its gut-wrenching finale, Joe and Anthony Russo kept the pedal firmly to the metal, ensuring that the stakes were just as high – if not higher – than everyone anticipated…everyone feared. However, as Stephen McFeely told BuzzFeed, deciding who lives (and who dies!) was no mean feat, and involved a “two-movie conversation,” what with Avengers 4 waiting in the wings for 2019.

We had so many characters in movie 1, and we knew it was a two-movie conversation. Some characters were better served in movie 2 after this event. We were making some choices based on some characters we knew were going to leave us at the end of the first movie, so they got highlighted in the first movie. And some who were going to be in the second movie more maybe got less attention or less screentime [in Infinity War] — I’m thinking of Cap and Natasha, specifically. It’s about the story we wanted to tell in movie 2, mostly.

So while Captain America (Chris Evans) and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) got very little screentime during Infinity War, their characters will be better served by Avengers 4 – ditto for Hawkeye – as the remaining Phase One Avengers join forces with Captain Marvel in order to reverse Thanos’ devastating finger-snap. Or, at the very least, create a new reality in which the Mad Titan failed to acquire all six stones.

It lays the groundwork for a pretty wild and entertaining sequel, so it’s small wonder why fans are beginning to count down the days in anticipation of Avengers 4‘s arrival on May 3rd, 2019.