Marvel Studios veteran and Spider-Man: Far From Home star Cobie Smulders, who returns as former S.H.I.E.L.D. spy Maria Hill, says she only learned its shock twist at the last minute. Spoilers follow.
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“No. No, I found that out from [Marvel Studios president] Kevin Feige like a week before it came out,” Smulders told Kevin Smith aboard the IMDboat at San Diego Comic-Con when asked if she knew Hill would be revealed as shape-shifting Skrull Soren (Sharon Blynn).
“And I mean, I wish that the whole movie was actually that actress but CGI’d as me [laughs], that would have been amazing. No, but that was a last minute addition.”
She added the post-credits revelation “was certainly a twist and surprise for me. It was really exciting, actually.” Because of its well known secrecy, even most Marvel stars “have no idea what’s going on most of the time,” Smulders said.
The green-skinned aliens, first introduced as allies of Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) in Captain Marvel, ultimately play a small role when it’s learned Soren and husband Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) have been posing as Hill and Fury, respectively, while the real Fury is off-world nurturing a Skrull workforce that appears to be the S.W.O.R.D. organization from the Marvel comic books.
But screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers told Variety they once considered having the disguised aliens play a bigger role in connection with master fraudster Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal).
“It’s funny, there was a very, very early iteration of the Mysterio story that actually did involve the Skrulls that we kicked to the curb early in the story-writing process,” McKenna said.
“Because this really became a con artist movie, essentially, we really went along with how many ways can we deceive the audience? How many twists and turns can we have?”
The idea, not expanded on by McKenna and Sommers, was one that director Jon Watts “had kicked around early on that we embraced as something people would love to have,” McKenna said.
“There’s always one final twist, and we would be living up to what we were trying to emulate and celebrate.”
