Avengers: Endgame star Hayley Atwell revealed why an ending scene got omitted from the final film.
While the MCU has gone on past Endgame, the Russo Brothers' Inifinity Saga-capper served as an end for that era of Marvel Studios storytelling.
Fans said goodbye to heroes they had been on this journey with for more than a decade, including Robert Downey Jr.'s Iron Man, who died in the film's climactic battle.
And Chris Evans' Captain America got his last hurrah moment, not necessarily by dying, but by traveling back in time to be with his long lost love, Peggy Carter (played by Atwell).
One Endgame Scene Was Missing
According to Avengers: Endgame star Hayley Atwell, there is a good reason one major scene was omitted in that film's ending.
Speaking on the Happy, Sad, Confused podcast with Josh Horowitz, Atwell broke down her cameo in Avengers 4 and Steve Rogers' reunion with her character, Peggy Carter, at the end of the movie.
She called the sequence "an amazing moment to end everything" for Steve and Peggy:
“That’s a really good question. I genuinely can’t remember because it was also two days of filming… Or maybe, was it like a day and a half? And it was so secretive that I just kind of went, and did it, left, didn’t tell anyone, and went back to… I think I was maybe doing a play or something at the time. But when they told me I knew I was like, it’s such a… what an amazing moment to end everything, for that sweetness for them to get that dance, and the song that they chose."
She added that she loved that when the film picks up for that moment, "the doors would already be opened" and the pair would already be dancing. She said the Russos didn't want to have Cap "knocking on her door, and her answering it, and her reaction" because that would have been "obvious and very literal:"
"And when they told me there’ll be this long shot of the house and the doors would already be opened… They said at first, they didn’t want– I think that’s really smart of them to do… They didn’t want him knocking on her door, and her answering it, and her reaction, because that seems to be obvious and very literal."
Atwell noted that without this knocking-on-the-door scene, the whole sequence is "more evocative" as the audience is dropped in after the pair have had that initial moment and the audience is forced to fill in the blank with its imagination:
"But there’s something for me when I watch it now more evocative by the fact that you just see the door opened, the song’s already playing, it’s like that they had that initial moment at the door just for themselves, right? So, how that then lives in the audience’s imagination is they get to fill in the emotion of that for themselves, rather than seeing Peggy have that emotion, and then you go in, and they’ve already found each other, and it feels like… it’s a voyeuristic kind of discovery of them both together, which I thought was so sensitively done.”
Was Endgame the End of Steve & Peggy?
While other heroes got more definitive ends in Avengers: Endgame, Steve and Peggy got the happily ever after the two had always deserved.
But will the duo ever be seen or heard from again in the franchise?
Hayley Atwell's Peggy has already made a return as the Multiversal hero Captain Carter (as well as an appearance in the animated What If...? series). However, Evans' star-spangled man with a plan has remained absent from the MCU since Endgame.
Atwell previously teased she would "love" to come back if "Marvel did find a home for her" Captain Carter character. Evans has remained tight-lipped about a potential return.
Given that Steve and Peggy got their last dance (that Atwell described above), it would be fitting for the two to never be heard from again in the franchise.
But with reality-bending movies like Avengers: Secret Wars on the horizon, there is always the chance the MCU's first power couple could come back in some capacity.
Avengers: Endgame is streaming now on Disney+.
