Avengers Endgame Writer Reveals Alternate Fate for Black Widow

With Avengers: Doomsday approaching, Disney released a slightly recut version of its predecessor called Avengers Endgame: Encore. Screenwriter Stephen McFeely shared a surprising detail about Endgame during a Q&A session after a screening of the re-release. Hawkeye was almost the character who sacrificed his life instead of Black Widow in the pivotal Soul Stone scene.

Hawkeye almost died instead of Black Widow in Endgame

“There was a sense of dread over the decision,” McFeely explained regarding the choice on 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.”

As the heroes tried to gather the Infinity Stones to reverse Thanos and his snap that killed half of all living beings, Black Widow and Hawkeye faced a fatal choice to 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.”

McFeely and co-writer Christopher Markus viewed Black Widow as the natural choice, but they also worried about removing one of the few female superheroes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. “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 noted that his biggest regret about the sequence was the lack of space for emotional resonance because the plot moved so fast. “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 debuted in theaters on September 25, 2026. The release includes two minutes of new footage filmed alongside Doomsday to bridge the two movies. The additions feature an extended ending where Steve Rogers and Agent Carter receive a visit from a 2012 variant of Loki, a sequence where Doctor Doom abducts Bruce Banner from a military complex following the events of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and a scene where the Time Variance Authority detects incursions threatening to collapse the multiverse.

Avengers: Doomsday arrives in theaters on December 19, 2026.

Source: Polygon