Avengers: Endgame Directors Address Dropping “Really Dark” Decapitated Captain America Scene

Avengers: Endgame directors Anthony and Joe Russo couldn’t quite crack the execution of a “really dark” scene that would have shown 2014 Thanos (Josh Brolin) taunt the 2023 Avengers with the decapitated head of Captain America (Chris Evans).

“When Thanos comes back, and he comes through a hole that Nebula has created and all that, we had to decide what the playing field was for that final battle,” co-writer Stephen McFeely told IMDb at San Diego Comic-Con.

“And one of the ideas was that she opens a time rift, he walks through from 2014 Earth, where he’s already gone and laid waste to the whole place. And so our heroes come out of the dust, they see this figure walking toward them, he crosses from light to dark or whatever, and it’s Thanos, and he tosses something at their feet. And it rolls and lands at Steve’s feet, and it’s his own head.”

Added co-writer Christopher Markus, “With the helmet still on.”

When IMDb host Kevin Smith asked who scrapped the scene, Joe answered, “It wasn’t us!”

“It was a favorite,” Anthony said. “It was a complicated idea [to pull off].”

“The four of us sat in a room for months going, ‘How do we make Captain America’s severed head work? We can’t figure out where we go once he throws his head at his feet, where does the story go?’” Joe said.

The screenwriters also revealed during their Comic-Con panel they originally intended to include another gruesome Easter egg by showing Giant-Man’s (Paul Rudd) corpse in the background of a shot — a homage to dark alternate reality comic book Old Man Logan, which sees the Marvel Universe ruled by supervillains following the slaughter of Earth’s superheroes — when the Avengers attempted to work their time-travel device for the first time.

Avengers: Endgame is available to own on Digital HD July 30 and on 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray August 13.