A scene cut from Avengers: Endgame was left largely unfinished because it was removed early on in the process, according to producer Victoria Alonso. The scene, which first surfaced on Disney+ as part of the Endgame special features, shows Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) interacting with an aged-up version of daughter Morgan — played by Katherine Langford instead of Lexi Rabe, who played a five-year-old Morgan — after making the sacrifice play against Thanos (Josh Brolin) and his invading alien army. Father and daughter meet for the last time in the metaphysical Soul World, the same place Thanos had an encounter with a younger version of adopted daughter Gamora (Ariana Greenblatt) after he snapped half the universe out of existence in Avengers: Infinity War.
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“The conversation we had was that a different soul meant a different environment, but you’re in the same moment so it’s all one core soul,” Alonso told Yahoo, where she explained visual effects artists abandoned the scene when directors Anthony and Joe Russo indicated the scene wouldn’t be included in the theatrical cut.
“The scene came out quite early on … so it wasn’t fully formed,” she added. “But the whole idea was that you have a father and a daughter in a moment of reckoning for their love of each other. So we really focused on that, not on trying to create a whole new background for it.”
Despite the emotional reunion between father and daughter, the Russo brothers felt the scene needed to be cut after test audiences found the exchange “really confusing.”
“There was an idea that we had where Tony was going to go the metaphysical way station where Thanos saw his daughter when he snapped his finger. There was going to be a future version of his daughter in that way station,” Joe Russo said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast.
The intention, Russo clarified, was that “[Tony’s] future daughter — ’cause these are [Infinity] stones we’re dealing with, so it’s magic — his future daughter forgave him, and sort of gave him peace to go. And the idea felt resonant. But it was just too many ideas in an overly complicated movie.”
Added Anthony Russo, “What we realized about it was we didn’t feel an emotional association with the adult version of his daughter. It wasn’t ringing to us and resonating with us on an emotional level, which is why we moved away from it.”
Avengers: Endgame is now streaming on Disney+ and is available to own on 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray.
