With Avengers: Doomsday on the horizon, Disney has released a slightly recut version of the film’s predecessor, Avengers Endgame: Encore, which ties more naturally into its sequel. Screenwriter Stephen McFeely revealed a surprising tidbit about Endgame in a Q&A session following a screening of the re-release. In short, McFeely divulged that in the film’s pivotal Soul Stone sacrifice scene, it was almost Hawkeye who sacrificed his life instead of Black Widow.
Hawkeye almost died instead of Black Widow in Endgame
“There was a sense of dread over the decision,” McFeely explained when it came to who was going to be sacrificed at Vormir. “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.”
For those who don’t recall, as the heroes try to gather the Infinity Stones to correct Thanos’ “snap” that killed half of all living beings, Black Widow and Hawkeye are forced to make a sacrifice so they can retrieve the Soul Stone.
“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,” McFeely said. “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.”
While McFeely and co-writer Christopher Markus felt that Black Widow was a natural choice, they also had some trepidation about killing off one of the few female superheroes in the MCU. “Because it’s not a small thing to kill off a principal female character in the MCU, 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.’”
McFeely said his biggest regret about the scene was that they didn’t have space to add more emotional resonance because the plot was so jam-packed. “The sacrifice is at the end of act two, which meant there was a lot of movie left,” McFeely said. “There was not that much time to mourn Natasha because we got to snap everybody back and Thanos has to bomb us, and the Avengers have to fight their biggest fight in the MCU and Captain America has to wield Thor’s hammer … we had a lot to do.”
What’s different about Avengers Endgame: Encore compared to the original film?
Avengers Endgame: Encore premiered in theaters on Sept. 25, 2026. More than a re-release, this version includes two minutes of new scenes filmed alongside Doomsday that let it lead more naturallyinto the next film. For those who don’t mind spoilers about what was added, there are three major additions: an extended ending, where Steve Rogers and Agent Carter are visited by a 2012 variant of Loki (which may explain how Captain America appears in Doomsday); a section where Doctor Doom abducts Bruce Banner from a military complex after the events of Spider-Man: Brand New Day; and a sequence where the Time Variance Authority detects “incursions” between universes that indicate the multiverse is about to collapse.
We’ll see how significant these scenes are when Avengers: Doomsday releases on Dec. 19, 2026.