Avengers: Endgame remains Marvel Studios' biggest achievement, and the movie's shadow has loomed large over the entire Multiverse Saga. Topping, or even matching, the heights of the 2019 blockbuster has proven near-impossible for the MCU.
We'll find out this December whether Avengers: Doomsday can reach those same heights. In the meantime, writer Stephen McFeely—who penned Avengers: Endgame's script with Christopher Markus—revealed the moment that received the biggest pushback from Marvel Studios.
In Avengers: Endgame, Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff head to Vormir to retrieve the Soul Stone. However, the only way to get the ancient cosmic artefact necessary to defeat Thanos is for one of them to make the ultimate sacrifice: a soul for a soul.
Black Widow takes the fall, stopping Hawkeye from doing so in the hope that he'll eventually be reunited with his family. It's a tragic, heartbreaking moment and one that wasn't easy for the writers.
"It’s not a small thing to kill off a principal female character in the MCU," McFeely told Forbes. "We tried a version of Hawkeye [dying] and a number of the female employees at Marvel, when they read [the script], grabbed me in the hallway and said, 'Don’t you do this to her. Don’t you take her heroic moment and give it to him.' And I said, 'Oh, that’s a really good point.'"
"There was a sense of dread over the decision. 'Okay, we’re going to go to New York—great. We’re going to go to Asgard—great. We’re going to go to Vormir—that’s bad,'" he recalled. "So, in the design, we needed to make sure that two people who loved each other went, and [Black Widow and Hawkeye] were the obvious pairing."
"So, even though it’s a platonic relationship, they’ve been together as a duo in the Avengers the whole time."
Ultimately, they decided this was the best direction to take Black Widow. "In our mind, it was always going to be [Black Widow] because she was, I would argue, the greater hero in some ways, but selfishly, just as part of what my job is, I want to make you feel the worst you can feel."
"But also, in the big picture, she’s got red in her ledger, and she’s been trying to make up for that her entire life. That’s why when she found the Avengers, they were a new family for her. So, this idea that she could save her family, in the greater sense of that, was really important."
Some fans have argued that Iron Man's eventual demise completely overshadowed Black Widow's sacrifice, but Avengers: Endgame intentionally mentions her passing several times right up until that moment. That was important for the movie's creative team.
"We were mentioning her all over the ending of the movie, where Hulk says, ‘I tried to bring her back,’ and Hawkeye is lamenting her loss with the Scarlet Witch," McFeely said. "It was about the best we could have done, given there was another character that was going to sacrifice himself."
Scarlett Johansson later reprised the role in a Black Widow movie set between the events of Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War. That served as her final farewell, and Florence Pugh's Yelena Belova has since inherited the "Black Widow" mantle.
The grave course of events set in motion by Thanos that wiped out half the universe and fractured the Avengers ranks compels the remaining Avengers to take one final stand in Marvel Studios’ grand conclusion to twenty-two films, Avengers: Endgame.
Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo and written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, the movie features an epic ensemble which includes Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Don Cheadle, Paul Rudd, Brie Larson, Karen Gillan, Danai Gurira, Benedict Wong, Jon Favreau, Bradley Cooper, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Josh Brolin.
"Avengers: Endgame is a masterpiece which not only delivers on every expectation you had but exceeds ones you didn't even think about," we wrote in our review of the re-release. "This isn't just a movie; it's an experience and one that only gets better for its Encore."
Avengers Endgame: Encore is now playing in theaters.