Avengers: Endgame’s Black Widow Death Scene Was Almost Very Different

As you can probably imagine, Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Endgame went through a ton of changes from the first draft of its script to the final product that became the highest grossing film of all time. Each and every scene throughout the three hour runtime was mulled over for months, sometimes years, as the creative team behind the film attempted to get every second to click just the right way. Of course, that means nearly every sequence in the movie had a different look at feel at some point in time. This certainly applies to Black Widow’s death scene on Vormir, which was almost completely different.

During the feature commentary on the Avengers: Endgame home release, directors Joe and Anthony Russo break down the entire movie with writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. When commentary reaches the scene where Black Widow decides to sacrifice herself for the Soul Stone, the writers confirm that the sequence was actually reshot in order to make it simpler.

Originally, Thanos sent an army up to Vormir to try and stop Hawkeye and Black Widow from taking the stone, effectively causing the sacrifice to be made. As you can imagine, it didn’t work too well.

“We actually reshot this,” said McFeely. “This is much better than what we had. It was a little more complicated. It was Thanos sending a small army to pretend to try and stop them. It was sort of awkward. It was overthinking.”

“While it lit a fire under them to do the act, it also took a little bit of the agency away, and we lost the characters,” Markus added.

This alternate version of the story definitely would’ve given Black Widow and Hawkeye some urgency when it came to getting the Soul Stone, but it would’ve taken away from the decision that Black Widow made to bring everyone back. It was more about necessity than actual free will.

Fortunately the scene was reshot, and the final product turned out much, much better.

Buy or Pre-order Avengers: Endgame:

• Buy it digitally on Amazon, Fandango Now, and Vudu (7/30)
• Pre-order on Blu-ray and 4K Blu-ray at Walmart (8/13)
• Pre-order the Steelbook version at Best Buy (8/13)