Avengers: Endgame Directors on Watching the MCU’s Future Unfold Without Them in Spider-Man: Far From Home

Anthony Russo, who directed Avengers: Endgame with brother Joe, says it was "both kind of shocking and thrilling" to witness Spider-Man: Far From Home after bringing the first 11-year chapter of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to its climax.

"One of the great experiences of Endgame for Joe and I, which is unlike our experiences on our previous three Marvel movies, we were not thinking about the future at all," Russo told FOX 5 DC.

"Our job on Endgame was to simply bring things to a close, and sort of have them climax in the most exciting, satisfying way we could think of. And that was very creatively liberating, I think, for Joe and I, to not have to think forward for the first time, to not go, 'Where can this possibly go, what are we gonna do with this next?' This was just about, 'How do we end things?'"

The responsibility of bringing Phase 3 of the MCU to a close was in the hands of the Spider-Man team, who wrap up the Infinity Saga with Endgame epilogue Far From Home. Not being involved past Avengers allowed the Russos to be surprised by what came next.

"And then all of a sudden, to watch it move forward was exciting, and also surprising, and there were certain things about it — you inevitably can't avoid sort of projecting into the future," Anthony said. "Some of that was there, but certainly I was much more surprised than seeing what I expected."

In handling the aftermath of Endgame, where Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) made the ultimate sacrifice, Spider-Man director Jon Watts wanted to explore the "sort of real-world, ground-level implications of something like that," Watts previously told Fandango.

"You don't get to see any of the fallout in Endgame, and we get to explore that in our movie. It's really interesting and fun."

Starring Tom Holland, Zendaya, Marisa Tomei, Jacob Batalon, Jon Favreau, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Samuel L. Jackson, Spider-Man: Far From Home opens July 2.