If you can imagine, it’s been over two years since Marvel unleashed Avengers: Endgame into the world. To say the film left quite an impression on fans worldwide is an understatement. Raking in over $2.7 billion at the box office, it even became the #1 movie of all time, not adjusted for inflation. (Though Endgame dethroned Avatar, Avatar recently took back the top spot in March 2021.)
To celebrate the anniversary, star Robert Downey Jr. shared a behind the scenes clip cut from the final film. The scene was to show an intimate conversation between Tony and his grown daughter Morgan (played by Katherine Langford) following Thanos’ snap.
However, it confused test audiences, according to directors Joe and Anthony Russo. “What we realized about it was we didn’t feel an emotional association with the adult version of his daughter,” they said during a 2019 conversation with Happy Sad Confused podcast. “It wasn’t resonating with us on an emotional level which is why we moved away with it.”
It clearly would have been a touching sequence. That said, the scene was limited in where it could go in the movie because of the encounter it portrayed. Writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely commented upon this in 2019, too. “It only made narrative sense where it was, but it didn’t make pacing sense,” they said. “So it just had to go.”
By that point, fans probably had all the emotional scenes they could handle in Endgame. It’s a pity such stirring moments landed on the cutting room floor, but a lot of filmed content never sees the light of day for one reason or another. That’s how Hollywood works! That said, we are grateful for the peeks behind the scenes we get so we can imagine what could have been.