Ever since it was announced that Disney was in the process of swallowing up Fox, Marvel fans have been wondering if this would mean a stray X-Man or Fantastic Four member could sneakily be included in Avengers: Endgame. After all, the deal finally went through a month ago, so there was surely time to film a quick post-credits tease, right?
Well, no. With Endgame releasing around the world, we can now confirm that it doesn’t feature any Marvel character previously owned by Fox. No Silver Surfer, Doctor Doom or Wolverine. ComicBook.com were able to ask the Russo brothers why this was and the filmmakers reiterated that there was simply no time to integrate any X-Men or FF characters into the movie at such a late stage. “It would not have been logistically possible,” Joe Russo explained.
The tight timeframe is likely just one reason why it was impossible to drop a formally Fox-owned character in Endgame. Another major one is that the plans for how the X-Men and Four are going to be introduced into the MCU are not yet set in stone. Kevin Feige’s revealed that he only had “vague ideas” about the process before the buyout was finalized because he had enough on his hands as it was.
Also, it would be pretty cruel to tease the coming of these super-teams in Endgame as we likely won’t see them in the MCU for a while yet. Feige has further explained that the next five years of the franchise were already mapped out before the Disney-Fox deal, so the X-Men and the Fantastic Four will just have to wait their turn.
Until then, though, fans are bound to continue theorizing away about how the Marvel universe will finally be united as one – apart from Sony’s pesky off-shoots – on the big screen. As it is though, the spectacle and enormous scale of Avengers: Endgame isn’t a bad substitute.