Ross Marquand, who portrayed the spectral Red Skull in Avengers: Infinity War, admits he doesn’t know if the once Hydra commander was spared or even affected by Thanos’ (Josh Brolin) snap that obliterated half of all life in the universe.
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“That’s a great question, I have no idea. I don’t know, to be perfectly honest, I have no idea,” Marquand told DubaiLAD at Middle East Film & Comic Con.
“Because that was a question that I had as well. But Marvel is very tight-lipped about it, they don’t really reveal a lot of those secrets, so your guess is as good as mine, I have no idea. He might be in the Soul Stone with everybody else, you never know.”
The Walking Dead star assumed the role from Hugo Weaving, who vacated the role after battling newly minted super soldier Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) in 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger.
Portraying a ghost-like former supervillain now forced to serve as keeper of the Soul Stone on the isolated planet of Vormir is “great,” Marquand added when explaining his version of Red Skull is “vastly different than the one that Hugo played ten years ago in Captain America.”
“Because he’s been broken by his ambition. He’s 85 years in the future and his goal was to kind of dominate the world, and he lost. Not only did he lose, he lost his life, kind of,” he said.
“He might be kind of a ghost now, and he can float, he’s not the same Red Skull that we [know] — you almost feel bad for him, because he’s clearly a slave to the Soul Stone, he’s locked into there. And his sole purpose is to do the bidding of the Soul Stone, that’s it. So I think that you don’t hate him as much anymore, you kind of just feel bad for him. So I think it’s a really sympathetic version of Red Skull, and a version of him that we’ve never seen before.”
Marquand wouldn’t reveal if he reprises the role in Avengers: Endgame — which sees Earth’s mightiest heroes attempt to reverse the snap — but the star, a lifelong Marvel Comics fan, said in December he’s hoping to return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
“I loved playing Red Skull, I hope I can come back and play him again. We’ll see,” Marquand said at San Jose Fan Fest.
“That’s one of the characters that I drew the most as a kid. I would draw Sabretooth, I would draw Omega Red — a lot of Omega Red, surprisingly — Mephisto, and Logan [Wolverine], obviously. But Red Skull was probably one of the first characters that I learned to draw, so this is like the craziest, most amazing dream.”
Avengers: Endgame opens Thursday.
