Captain America's Fate in Avengers: Endgame Was Set Partially To Defy Fan Expectations

One of the most interesting reveals in Avengers: Endgame occurs towards the end of the film, where Captain Americastays in the past after heading back in time to return the Infinity Stones to their rightful places. He decides to stay and live his life as just Steve Rogers, enjoying a life with his love Peggy Carter and giving up the mantle of Captain America. ComicBook.com had the chance to talk to Joe Russo all about that decision and why he and Anthony Russo decided to go that route and keep him alive by movie's end, and part of it is because it was expected.

When ComicBook.com's Brandon Davis asked about the decision not to kill him, he brought up that many suspected he might die by film's end, and Russo responded: "Which is why we didn't kill him."

"It's not about trying to subvert expectations all the time, even though that comes into it," Russo said. "Typically when you're in a writers room and you're working through storytelling, if somebody says something that feels obvious you go 'well that's the expectation', and it's not like we don't always meet expectations but the job I think is to surprise people. But the reason you surprise them is because if you're really tracking Cap's arc, he starts off as a selfless character who has given over his identity to service, right? He is more than happy to serve the community."

"The curvature, the arc that you're creating, characters are always most compelling when they travel the greatest distance, so if Cap is Rocky and all he ever does is get into the ring and try to beat his opponent it's going to get boring really quickly," Russo said. "There's just not a lot of dimensions to the character, and so what we wanted to do was travel him on this incredible journey that took him from service to self-actualization to where he wanted to fully embrace the identity of Steve Rogers. That is what happens at the end of Endgame."

Russo realizes it's controversial, but there was always going to be an end arc for Steve that differed from the comics.

"And I know it's controversial for some people because they fell like he should always be that guy in service, but that just feels like an elliptical story that never ends," Russo said. "It feels like what you can do in the comic books because you can keep resetting it and recycling it, but it's not something you can do over the lifespan of a movie. He has to travel some distance to go somewhere as a character."

You can watch the full interview in the video above.

"After the devastating events of Avengers: Infinity War (2018), the universe is in ruins due to the efforts of the Mad Titan, Thanos. With the help of remaining allies, the Avengers must assemble once more in order to undo Thanos' actions and restore order to the universe once and for all, no matter what consequences may be in store."

Avengers: Endgame is in theaters now.

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