Why Black Widow Scenes from Avengers: Endgame Trailers Were Cut from the Movie

Avengers: Endgame writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely lament deleted footage shown in trailers that highlighted Black Widow‘s (Scarlett Johansson) obsessive training after a five-year time jump.

“It feels silly to say things and they may not be on the DVD, but there was more footage — literally, you’ve missed no dialogue — but there was more footage of Natasha living alone, very much like a hermit, in Avengers compound before Scott Lang showed up,” Markus told the Los Angeles Times when promoting the Endgame home release, which includes six deleted scenes.

“That I found very interesting because she was training, sort of purposelessly training. She was gonna stay a hero no matter what, and it’s admiral, but it’s also a little bit sad, because the fight’s over. In the end, there was nothing that was getting across that we didn’t get from that scene where she’s talking to the holograms and she cries. But I like the sort of time it took with her.”

McFeely then joked the scribes “wrote many novels’ worth of things.”

“In a TV show we’d get those things,” added Markus. “But at three hours, you’re already asking a lot.”

“It’s a lean three hours, anyway,” McFeely said. “I defy you to look at the scenes and go, ‘Well, what are you gonna throw out?’ Where are you gonna go to the bathroom? It’s a tough call.”

Directors Anthony and Joe Russo previously explained Endgame would have little in the way of deleted scenes because its three-hour run time includes “almost everything in this movie that we shot.”

“We love tight, propulsive storytelling,” Anthony Russo said in an April interview.

“We like movies that are very dense in what they’re offering you moment to moment so that when you revisit them, there’s more there to keep chewing on. We try to structure movies that are very tight, and this is a tight three hours.”

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

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)