While Avengers: Infinity War will definitely unite every hero introduced in the MCU to date, there has also been a lot of talk about it introducing a new face to the franchise, as well. Namely, Brie Larson’s Carol Danvers, who’s set to get her own solo outing in 2019’s Captain Marvel. It’s long been the expectation that the heroine would appear in at least a cameo in the upcoming event movie, but it turns out that that’s not the case.
As we now know, Infinity War will not make room for Carol and instead, the studio is saving the character for Avengers 4, by which point, audiences will already be familiar with her thanks to her aforementioned standalone outing. That wasn’t always going to be the case, though. At one point, directors Joe and Anthony Russo actually planned to include Captain Marvel in their upcoming event movie.
Comic Book Resources reports that during a set visit back in January, Joe revealed that scenes involving the hero were indeed shot, but ultimately, they were cut from the film. Why they were removed, we don’t know, but we imagine it’s for one of two reasons.
It’s either that something changed in regards to the direction that Captain Marvel is heading in and as such, the studio wanted to wait until then to debut her. Or, it could be because they simply felt that Infinity War was already too crowded and didn’t want Carol to get lost in the shuffle as she’s a pretty important character. Regardless of why they decided not to put her in the pic, it’s still interesting to learn that at one point, she was set to appear.
And just in case you need more proof of that, in an interview with ET from a while back, Joe Russo said the following:
“Yeah, we have some great female characters in this. Captain Marvel is in it, Black Widow, Scarlet Witch, we have Wakanda is coming in and there’s a whole group of characters that are coming from the Wakandan universe, from the Black Panther universe.
Amazingly strong characters, strong-willed characters, and we have the Guardians, and two of the Guardians are daughters of Thanos so there’s a really strong connection to the main villain of the story and I think you’ll see in the film that they’re very pivotal to the storyline and I think the arcs are fantastic so, we’re really really proud of being able to introduce Captain Marvel in this one.”
So again, it’s clear that Carol Danvers was originally supposed to show up in Avengers: Infinity War. And while some fans may be disappointed that they won’t be seeing her on the big screen come April 27th, it’s certainly for the best.
Like we said above, this movie is going to be pretty jam-packed as is. As such, it makes far more sense to simply wait a year and let Captain Marvel make her debut in a film entirely dedicated to her, where she can be properly introduced, ahead of her joining Earth’s Mightiest Heroes for Avengers 4.