Regardless of whether you refer to it as The Snap or The Decimation, the Man Titan’s actions at the tail-end of Avengers: Infinity War brought ruination to the entire MCU, vaporizing 50 percent of its inhabitants in the blink of an eye.
Bucky, Black Panther, and Groot were among the first to go, leaving behind a small pool of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes who would eventually go up against Thanos in Avengers: Endgame. Both Marvel movies were so intrinsically linked that directors Joe and Anthony Russo – not to mention screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely – viewed them as a single entity split across two super-sized blockbusters.
So, it should come as no surprise that the Russo Brothers mulled over multiple drafts before pushing ahead with development on Infinity War. And as Markus told CinemaBlend, one such draft spared Scarlet Witch from the Snap, thereby allowing Elizabeth Olsen’s character to feature quite prominently in the subsequent Endgame.
We had a moment where [Scarlet Witch] looked at his body in a drawer, and it was mainly just maudlin. It was also frankly from a draft where she hadn’t been blipped. Because we had a draft where she survived and was a character in Endgame. The problem was she’d gotten so much mileage and story in the first movie that she didn’t really have anything that equaled that in the second. So it was a step down.
Throwing Scarlet Witch into the mix for Endgame would’ve certainly resulted in a totally different time heist, given Wanda Maximoff’s mind-melting abilities. Perhaps it’s for the best that the Russo Brothers decided against Scarlet Witch’s inclusion then. After all, at three hours in length, Endgame is already a massive film with an equally massive cast, and adding Wanda (and her mourning the death of Vision) may have lead to a bloated story.
Avengers: Endgame is available across all the usual platforms and will no doubt join the Disney+ roster in due time. The streaming service will go live in three weeks’ time with Captain Marvel at the fore.
