Avengers: Endgame Portals Scene Was Originally Completely Different (Exclusive)

Avengers: Endgame delivered some of the most iconic moments in cinematic history, with the culmination of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Infinity Saga seeing nearly all of its heroes emerge in the rubble of Avengers HQ. Some were already there to fight Thanos but most of them stepped through portals opened by Doctor Strange and Wong, having been revived when the Hulk snapped his fingers to undo the actions of Thanos from Avengers: Infinity War. As it turns out, the famous, “On your left,” and moments which followed played out quite differently in the first attempt at creating the unforgettable moment.

Dan Deleeuw, a Marvel VFX supervisor on several projects and now director with Loki‘s second episode of Season 2, talked with ComicBook.com about his time working on Endgame. “It was interesting because there was a lot of different ideas,” Deleeuw revealed. “There was a version of the cut, the day that we had all the actors together, and it was like this long panning shot across all the actors.”  As it turns out, the portals moments originally were not laid out in a way which gave each character their big return moments. 

“It was the day that everyone was there and it was like this giant, expensive in essentiality you had all the actors there, but it just didn’t play as well as we wanted,” Deleeuw recalled. “And so it was something that I got with pre-viz and Jeff Ford, our editor, and we just said, ‘We have to go with the portals and just you picking who comes out when.’ It was just something that for I think originally it was like we knew who survived and when they were coming back, but we needed to slow it down and give the audience a chance to welcome their heroes back. And so it was so interesting in terms of like, ‘Okay, who comes from Titan first? Okay, you get the Guardians and then Star-Lord’s going to show up.’ And then just being in the theater that day, it’s like starting, okay, we got to do Spider-Man last because Spider-Man!. So it was very much crafted to be emotional, and I think it was amazing for all of us that opening weekend, how well the fans responded to it.”

Avengers: Endgame has released several scenes which did not make the cut of its theatrical release which was ultimately a couple minutes longer than three hours. While a sequence with most of the actors together did make the cut of the film, leading to Captain America calling upon the Avengers to assemble, it seems there was a dramatically different version of this sequence. Much like the “I am Iron Man,” moment which followed, the crew found what worked best after several tries. 

Deleeuw served as second unit director on Avengers: Endgame before going on to make his directorial debut on Loki Season 2. ComicBook.com’s full interview with Deleeuw can be found on the Phase Zero channel on YouTube. Loki releases new episodes of Season 2 every Thursday on Disney+.