"Avengers? Assemble." OK, so the quote got cut off as Joss Whedon brought his Avengers: Age of Ultron to a close, but the sentiment was there. Captain America (Chris Evans) looked out over his new team, which included Vision (Paul Bettany), Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), War Machine (Don Cheadle), Falcon (Anthony Mackie) and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson). But that now-famous scene was supposed to have a LOT more Marvel faces in it, and we’re finally finding out why the studio pulled back at the last minute.
We have reported in the past that Captain Marvel and Quicksilver were options for the revamped roster at the end of Avengers: Age of Ultron. During a recent Blu-ray event held on behalf of Age of Ultron, though, Marvel Studios exec Jeremy Latcham said (via Collider) that the plan was always supposed to be bigger… then explained why it wasn’t. He said:
In really early development there was a notion of there’d be a ton of new people. And then it was like, ‘Well we haven’t really introduced them, we don’t know where they’re gonna come from,’ and Joss [Whedon] kind of did not love that idea. It was an early discussion, and then that kind of became just Captain Marvel, and then that felt weird just to have one new person.
And so, they stuck with heroes who had been introduced in previous Marvel films (Falcon and War Machine), and two heroes who were added in Age of Ultron (Vision and Scarlet Witch). In a way, it makes a lot of sense. Seeing Captain Marvel appear at the end of Age of Ultron would be an unusual (and borderline terrible) way for this potentially pivotal character to make her debut in the MCU. While die-hard fans likely would recognize her simply from her costume and look, the majority of casual fans would leave Whedon’s movie perplexed by who that flying woman was at the end of the movie that already introduced a number of new faces.
Also, as part of the same event, Kevin Feige admits that a line of dialogue from Whedon’s script made it strange to bring in Captain Marvel in that scene. Feige explains:
What does Cap say? ‘They’re not the ’27 Yankees.’ Well, if Captain Marvel is there, what are we saying about her? It needed to be [that], certainly, Wanda and Vision, I think to a lesser extent Falcon and Rhodey need to learn what it means to be a team, even the most dysfunctional team in history.
Watch the scene once again, right here:
If you are hungry for new Marvel faces, you need only wait for next summer’s Captain America: Civil War. In addition to bringing back pretty much everyone – from Iron Man to Ant-Man – the sequel will give fans their first real looks at Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) and the MCU’s Spider-Man (Tom Holland). Also, we are getting Baron Zemo (Daniel Bruhl) and a mysterious character played by Martin Freeman. As for Captain Marvel, we will see her in her own movie, scheduled to arrive on November 2, 2018.
