Stan Lee Originally Had A Different Line In 'Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2'

Stan Lee has made appearances in almost every Marvel-related film, playing everything from a man drinking a tainted soda in The Incredible Hulk to an intergalactic barber in Thor: Ragnarok. In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Lee appears alongside the Watchers and makes a joke about one of his previous cameos. When writer/direction James Gunn posted the film's script online, readers noticed that Lee initially made a different reference.

In the finished film, Lee tells the Watchers, "Anyway, before I was so rudely interrupted, that time I was a Federal Express agent," a reference to his cameo in Captain America: Civil War. The script, however, reads, "that time I was a WWII vet," a reference to Avengers: Age of Ultron.

The discrepancy most likely stems from the timeframe of when the script was written, with Age of Ultron having hit theaters in May of 2015, which would've been months before Vol. 2 even went into production. Civil War debuted in May of 2016, a year before Vol. 2's release, with Doctor Strange being released in between. In that film, Lee was merely a passenger on a bus, which might have made for a clunkier bit of dialogue were it to have been addressed in Vol. 2.

From the Fox-owned X-Men, the Sony-owned Spider-Man or Marvel Studios' own Avengers, Lee has crossed all studio lines to appear in various films. It was his Vol. 2 appearance that may have given a narrative explanation for his various appearances, as he was conversing with Watchers, who are tasked with observing the events of the entire universe. Were Lee to be a Watcher himself, it would explain how he adopts a variety of personas to briefly visit earth.

"Stan Lee clearly exists above and apart from the reality of all the films," Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige said during a Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 press event. "So the notion that he could be sitting there on a cosmic pit stop during the jump gate sequence in Guardians was something very fun."

"James had that idea and we shot that cameo and loved it so much, you know, you see it a couple of times in the movie," Feige pointed out. "It wasn't in for a long time and we put it back in towards the end of the process where he references that time he was a Federal Express agent and we thought it would be fun to put that and keep that in there because that really says, 'So wait a minute, he's this same character who's popped up in all these films, the same person.'"

Audiences should keep their eyes peeled for Lee's cameo in the upcoming Black Panther, which hits theaters on February 16.

[H/T Reddit]