At an astonishing 181-minute runtime, it’s almost hard to think that Avengers: Endgame, Marvel’s epic conclusion to Phase Three of its cinematic domination, had any deleted scenes. But every production has its own pile of clips and ideas left on the floor of the editing room. And now, one of the ones from Endgame has been revealed, and it only makes its biggest loss even harder to swallow.
Towards the end of production, there were reports that said 13 Reasons Why star Katherine Langford was cast in a mysterious role. There was speculation that she could’ve been the next Hawkeye, Kate Bishop, but the Russo Brothers squashed that theory after appearing on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, giving additional details about not only her place in the movie, but also the scene she was in, and why it was ultimately cut.
“There was an idea that we had that Tony was going to go into the metaphysical way station that Thanos goes in when he snapped his fingers. And that there was going to be a future version of his daughter in that way station,” stated Joe Russo. “The intention was that his future daughter–because these films are dealing with magic–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.”
With Langford as an older version of Morgan, her appearance was set to be another full circle deal, calling back the scene that follows Thanos into a different realm after the snap. There, he sees a child version of Gamora, who he’d killed in order to obtain the Soul Stone.
But there’s another reason this moment was cut from the film. And it makes a lot of sense.
“What we realized about it was we didn’t feel an emotional association with the adult version of his daughter,” Joe continued. “So, it wasn’t ringing to us and resonating with us on an emotional level.”
After all, unless there was some pointless dialogue that spelled it out, there’d be no way of knowing that Langford was Tony’s daughter. Avengers: Endgame, as the directors said, was complicated enough as it is.
With all that said, it does sound like the scene would serve, at the very least, as another powerful goodbye to Iron Man. But like I mentioned, this surely wasn’t the only idea scrapped from the project. For those who want to see Tony Stark in a new way, hopefully the moment will be available on the Blu-ray.