‘Avengers: Infinity War’ Directors Explain Why Doctor Strange Didn’t Reveal the One Timeline They Win

Fans are waiting with bated breath to find out what the Marvel Cinematic Universe has in store after Avengers: Infinity War, and the film’s directors have a good reason for why it wasn’t revealed sooner.

During Collider‘s recent Infinity War screening and Q&A, Joe and Anthony Russo were asked about the large number of possible futures that Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) said he saw in the film, and why he didn’t warn Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) about the one ideal future where they win. And apparently, the answer why is relatively simple.

“He dies.” Joe Russo explained. “That’s why he doesn’t tell him. He’s getting his ass kicked in the time in between.”

To an extent, this reasoning does make a lot of sense, especially given the emphasis Strange made on the “only way” before giving the Time Stone to Thanos (Josh Brolin). Plus, telling Tony what lies ahead would essentially have negated the year-or-so of MCU storytelling that has been following Infinity War.

“Put yourself in our positions two years ago,” Infinity War and Avengers 4 Stephen McFeely explained earlier this year. “We’re looking at a blank wall, and it says Avengers 3, Ant-Man and [the] Wasp, Captain Marvel, Avengers 4. So there are four big shoeboxes, and we’re responsible for the bookends. As we’re going through deciding what we want to do, we have these two shoeboxes in the middle that you can either look at as burdens or opportunities.”

“My hope is the conversation you and I will have a year from now, you’ll have a sense of the choices we’ve made over the course of an entire year of Marvel movies,” McFeely continued. “There’s a relationship between them all.”

And with the Avengers 4 trailer (hopefully) just hours away from debuting, it sounds like fans will get their first inklings as to what that one ideal timeline might look like.

“I don’t think there are any comics that correlate to it,” Joe Russo told ComicBook.com earlier this year. “I think we’re in pretty fresh territory with Avengers 4. If anything, I think it’s interesting after to go back and look at some of the Marvel films and view them through a different lens. But I can’t think of any comics in particular that would have value.”

“Our job as we said a million times is to tell the story of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, not to do direct adaptations of the comics because we’re comic book fans,” Joe Russo continued. “I have no interest as a director in telling a story that’s already been told or in seeing one that’s already been told. If I know all the events story as they’re going to happen then what’s the point of going to the film? We want to keep surprising audiences and continue the story that started with Iron Man One a decade ago.”

Avengers 4 will land on May 3, 2019. Other Marvel Cinematic Universe movies include Captain Marvel on March 8, 2019 and Spider-Man: Far From Home on July 5, 2019.