Never-Before-Seen Endgame Footage Revealed By Disney+
We've yet to see the end of Endgame bonus footage.
At the November 12 debut of Disney's hotly anticipated new streaming platform Disney+, 2019's biggest superhero movie (that went on to become the top-earning film in cinematic history) arrived as a launch-day title. But Avengers: Endgame didn't simply hit the Disney+ content shelves like the hundreds of other previously released, Disney-owned movies did. Rather, it came along with a few added delights: deleted scenes that didn't make theatrical cut of Endgame, some of which weren't included on any physical or digital release of the film earlier this year.
From an alternate take of a divisive death sequence to moments that were clipped in the editing bay to keep the film tidy and trucking along at a quick pace, here's all the never-before-seen Avengers: Endgame footage revealed by Disney+.
The Disney+ version of Black Widow's death scene in Endgame
The death of Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow, the former KGB assassin and powerful Avenger otherwise known as Natasha Romanoff, was one of the most devastating moments in Avengers: Endgame. Watching Widow and her fellow hero Hawkeye (a.k.a. Clint Barton, played by Jeremy Renner) engage in an emotional tug-of-war over who would sacrifice themselves to obtain the Soul Stone was heartbreaking enough, but witnessing Widow jump off the cliff on Vormir and tell Hawkeye to let her go when he catches her sent audiences over the edge — literally.
As it happens, that was just one version of Black Widow's death in Avengers: Endgame. On the Disney+ app (via DigitalSpy), an alternate take of the heroine's demise sees her die in a different manner. She does ultimately meet her maker after free-falling and crashing onto stone below her, but Disney+ reveals never-before-seen footage of Black Widow getting shot by Thanos' (Josh Brolin) Chitauri minions, who arrive on Vormir and begin firing at her and Hawkeye. As she's running toward the cliff's edge, Black Widow suffers several wounds, including one to the torso that leaves her crawling across the ground. In the end, she manages to turn around and shoot an enemy who was about to kill Hawkeye, then sacrifices herself as she does in the standard cut of Endgame.
New Endgame footage on Disney+ shows off the Quantum Realm suits
A less-intense Avengers: Endgame scene bundled on the Disney+ app centers around designing the silvery Quantum Realm suits the heroes used during their time travel missions. We watch as Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) walks into an area at Avengers HQ where Professor Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) is outfitting a fellow Avenger, who appears in the footage as an ambiguous CGI figure rather than an actual person, with a Quantum suit (via Reddit). Iron Man inquires about the status of the "thingamajigger," then admires how the Quantum suit design blends technology made by Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) with "Stark styling" and a "noggin bubble" courtesy of Nebula (Karen Gillan) and the Guardians of the Galaxy, whom he jokingly refers to as "Rings of Uranus." When Professor Hulk states that someone will have to test out the Quantum Realm suit, Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) says "not it!" before Hawkeye steps into the scene and offers to take the suit for a spin.
In the theatrical version of the film, this scene includes more dialogue about the logistics of time travel — which is helpful for the heroes in the movie and the audiences watching alike, given how confusing it can be to understand all the time travel in Avengers: Endgame.
Two deleted Avengers: Endgame scenes center on Hulk and the Ancient One
On Disney+, fans can also find two deleted Avengers: Endgame scenes focused on Mark Ruffalo's Hulk and Tilda Swinton's Ancient One, the leader of the Masters of the Mystic Arts who explains to Banner how messing with the Infinity Stones can alter reality if they aren't returned to the exact moment in time from which they were taken.
One sequence shows Hulk meeting with the Ancient One, who's relaxing with a drink in her hand and a pair of sunglasses on her face. She's completely unsurprised by his visit — quite different from the version audiences saw in theaters, which featured Hulk jumping up to the Sanctum Sanctorum's roof in search of Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch). In this cut, she explains to Hulk that he's "five years too early," and that Doctor Strange has no knowledge of the Time Stone for which Hulk and the Avengers are searching. The deleted scene ends with Hulk asking who the Ancient One is.
The second deleted scene is an alternate take of the time travel explanation sequence. Here, the Ancient One is speaking with Hulk instead of Bruce Banner — evidence that she didn't knock Banner's soul out of Professor Hulk's body to better connect with him in conversation. The discussion goes mostly the same as the one seen in the theatrical cut of Avengers: Endgame, but the deleted scene included on Disney+ features the Ancient One admitting that she was aware of Thanos' potential for destruction but didn't do anything about it, since taking precautions with Thanos could have altered something else in the universe.
Avengers: Endgame co-directors Joe and Anthony Russo explained that these scenes were changed during reshoots to "help better convey to the audience" the laws that the film was playing by and how the in-movie rules would influence the plot, specifically the Time Heist. They were also modified to simplify the conversation between Hulk and the Ancient One.
The heroes team up in the trenches during Endgame's final battle
Another never-before-seen Endgame moment revealed on the Disney+ is a scrapped scene that shows Earth's Mightiest Heroes assembling in the trenches during the epic battle against Thanos. The deleted sequence shows heroes like Iron Man, Ant-Man, Hawkeye, Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), Spider-Man (Tom Holland), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), Captain America (Chris Evans), Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), and more teaming together and discussing strategy.
As Joe and Anthony Russo explain on the commentary track, the moment is "essentially nonsensical" to audiences, given that it's "an extremely raw version of what would have been built out to be a much larger, more elaborate, more full scene." The sequence was meant to be a "building block" for the climax of Avengers: Endgame, but the Russos would up abandoning the idea for a variety of reasons — namely that the moment was missing narrative substance and wasn't all that interesting.
Per Joe Russo, the "In the Trenches" scene was originally crafted as a way to press pause on the fight with Thanos and allow the Avengers and co. a chance to talk to one another. But when the Avengers: Endgame team went to execute the sequence in the editing bay, the Russos realized that the scene was "contrived" and "brought the proceedings to a standstill." Ultimately, they opted to keep the battle focused on small groups of characters interacting at various moments while tensions flared.
An Endgame deleted scene shows heroes meeting up in the Mirror Dimension
One more sequence cut from Avengers: Endgame that was unveiled through the Disney+ version of the flick is an off-shoot of the Russos' idea to have heroes reunite during the battle against Thanos to strategize and lock in their next moves. One such assembling that the Endgame team filmed takes place in the Mirror Dimension — the parallel dimension in which practitioners of magic can do things outside the public eye — and sees Doctor Strange, Star-Lord, Iron Man, Black Panther, Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), Mantis (Pom Klementieff), Drax (Dave Bautista), Okoye (Danai Gurira), and more speaking to one another while Thanos' army rains fire down on the battlefield. We see Star-Lord breaking up a disagreement between Iron Man and Doctor Strange, during which the Armored Avenger gruffly grills the Sorcerer Supreme about the 14 million-plus potential outcomes he envisioned during Avengers: Infinity War, then watch as Hawkeye hands Black Panther the Infinity Gauntlet. As the Russos detail, the heroes would have exited the Mirror Dimension and returned to battle after settling on a plan of action.
In the end, the Russos decided that splitting up the climactic fight against Thanos, his Black Order underlings, and his band of Chitauri with a full sequence would harm the film rather than help it — bringing the action to "a screeching halt" and potentially ruining the mood. Like Anthony Russo so aptly put it, "If everybody's in this trench, why is there a battle raging on?" Thus, the Russos went with snippets of communication between heroes instead of a complete scene to maintain momentum and make the battle sequence one of the most unforgettable movie moments of 2019.
The Disney+ version of Avengers: Endgame includes the scene of Tony at the Way Station
The final scene snipped from Avengers: Endgame that's loaded onto Disney+ centers around Tony Stark in the moments after snaps his fingers, defeats Thanos and his army, saves the universe, and sacrifices himself for the greater good. Post-snap, he's transported to what Joe and Anthony Russo refer to as "the Way Station" — the metaphysical location where Thanos himself went after he killed his adopted daughter Gamora to obtain the Soul Stone in Avengers: Infinity War. There, Tony meets a grown-up version of his daughter, Morgan, played by 13 Reasons Why actress Katherine Langford.
At first, he doesn't recognize the young woman he's speaking to — but when Morgan quips that the two of them are "pretty close," Tony realizes she's the same person who often told him she "loved him 3,000" as a child. Morgan explains that her father's sacrifice worked, that she got to live and grow up and be happy. When Tony admits that he's scared he "made a mistake," Morgan says she understands, but she's very proud of him. She also assures her father that she's okay without him: "I'm strong, like Mom. And I'm happy. I'm happy we had the time that we did, and that you were there for me — until you couldn't be."
Of course, the scene wraps up the way all scenes between Tony and Morgan Stark should: with Tony telling Morgan, "I love you 3,000."
According to the Russos, the "Tony in the afterlife" scene didn't make it into Avengers: Endgame because it "felt like it ground the movie to a halt." It saved audiences a ton of tears as well, but you didn't need the Russos to tell you that.