The Avengers: Endgame screenplay, officially released online by Walt Disney Pictures for awards consideration, reveals new victims of Thanos’ (Josh Brolin) snap that wiped out half of all life in the universe. In the finished film, a sequence set 23 days after the events of Avengers: Infinity War shows Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), newly returned to Earth, discovering the mass casualties caused by the Infinity Stone-powered snap, including old ally Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson).
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The faces of more than a dozen of the Vanished are displayed on screens, including Bucky (Sebastian Stan), Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgรฅrd), Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp), Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders), Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), Peter Parker (Tom Holland), Shuri (Letitia Wright), T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) and the believed-dead Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), who disappeared within the Quantum Realm.
The screenplay confirms three more victims whose pictures weren’t displayed in the finished film: Wong (Benedict Wong), Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) and Secretary Thaddeus Ross (William Hurt). As scripted:
A HOLO-DISPLAY ROTATING THROUGH FACES OF PEOPLE WE’VE LOST: WANDA. VISION. BUCKY. T’CHALLA. MARIA HILL.RHODEY
It’s been twenty-three days since Thanos came to Earth.TONY, weak, sits in a hi-tech wheelchair, IV dripping into his arm. He stares, taking in the loss: SAM WILSON. SECRETARY ROSS. SHARON CARTER. SCOTT LANG. HOPE VAN DYNE. HANK PYM. NICK FURY.
At Fury, Carol bites back emotion.
NATASHA
World governments are in pieces, as you can imagine. But the parts that still work are trying to take a census. It looks like he did what he said he was going to do.JANE FOSTER. ERIK SELVIG. WONG. DR. STRANGE. THE BARTON FAMILY. QUILL. DRAX. MANTIS. GROOT. PETER PARKER.
Finally, Tony looks away. RHODEY turns it off.
Directors Anthony and Joe Russo previously told ComicBook.com their decision-making behind who would survive Thanos’ random snap was “very story focused.”
“How do we pay off each individual character story most profoundly? The first person to go is Bucky Barnes and it’s shot from Captain America’s (Chris Evans) perspective,” Anthony Russo said of the Wakanda-set climax of Infinity War. “We’re watching Cap go through the experience of watching him go away. We’re watching Okoye (Danai Gurira), whose number one mission it is in life is to protect the king. She watches the king go, in front of her. To see those characters react in those situations is very powerful and resonant.”
Screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely later explained to The New York Times the aftermath was also centered around Captain America and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.).
“We knew we wanted to see Cap and Tony dealing with the aftermath so that you could really see them suffer, quite frankly,” Markus said. “And that’s why Cap and Natasha (Scarlett Johansson) are relatively minimal in the first movie, because all they’d be doing is punching. We knew that they had a lot of story in the second movie, and there were other people who would have much more story in the first movie, like the Guardians.”
Ross next returns alongside Johansson’s Natasha in prequel Black Widow, out May 1. Wong returns with Strange and Scarlet Witch in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, out May 7, 2021, followed by Jane Foster’s return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Thor: Love and Thunder, releasing November 5, 2021.
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