‘Avengers: Infinity War’ Had a Fake Script Where Loki Survived

Keeping details of the Marvel Cinematic Universe secret is no easy thing, particularly when it came to Avengers: Infinity War. It’s almost legendary at this point the lengths that Joe and Anthony Russo went to to prevent spoilers, and now it sounds like one of those lengths was a fake script with a very different fate for Loki.

As fans know, Loki is among the first to die in Infinity War, killed by Thanos at the very beginning of the film. However, in the new book The Art of Avengers: Infinity War, it’s revealed that in one of the fake scripts for the film, Loki survived. It’s something that executive producer Trinh Tran said required them to explain the situation to confused crew.

“We created a version of the script where Loki would get away in an escape pod at the beginning of the movie,” the anecdote reads. “When we started shooting that particular sequence, we had crew members who were thoroughly confused. We had to let them know that those were fake versions of the script that they read.”

The idea that there was a version of the script — fake or otherwise — in which Loki survived may come as a surprise to fans, but the idea of the fake script is by no means new. In particular, Vision actor Paul Bettany has been open about his experiences with fake Infinity War scripts, and the directors themselves confirmed early on that there were fake scripts, not to mention that no one had read the full real one.

“We can divulge nothing at this point. We worked really hard to protect the secrets of the movie because this is the end of 10 years of storytelling and I think a lot of people [have] emotionally invested quite a bit into the Marvel Universe so we want to make sure they have the best experience they can have when they go in to see the movie,” Joe Russo shared with Kinowetter. “We wrote fake pages for the script, we distributed fake pages. None of the actors have actually read the entire script, the real script. Very few people actually know what’s going to happen in the movie.”

Of course, despite the reveal of the fake Loki survival script seeming like a lean towards the idea that Loki did in fact die in Infinity War, it also is likely to keep feeding a popular fan theory that the character is still alive. Fans have been pointing to a few small details of the scene such as which hand Loki uses for his weapon as proof that the real Loki is alive somewhere. If it turns out, and it’s a big if, that Loki really did survive Infinity War, the idea of a fake Loki script gets even more interesting and just proves that Marvel takes protecting their plots perhaps even more seriously than we realized.

Avengers: Infinity War and Ant-Man and the Wasp are now available on digital platforms, DVD, and Blu-ray. Other upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe movies include Captain Marvel on March 8, 2019, the fourth Avengers movie on May 3, 2019, and Spider-Man: Far From Home on July 5, 2019.