MCU Actor Ross Marquand Has Pitched Avengers Endgame Spinoff for Seven Years

During a critical scene in Avengers: Endgame set in 2012, the future version of Bruce Banner played by Mark Ruffalo must persuade the Ancient One played by Tilda Swinton to let him have the Time Stone. With it, he and the other Avengers will be able to return to 2023 and bring back everyone who was snapped away by Thanos at the end of Avengers: Infinity War. As part of the deal, Banner promises that once they are done using the Infinity Stones, they will time travel back to where they took them from and return the stones exactly as they found them.

At the end of the movie, Steve Rogers or Captain America played by Chris Evans does exactly that. He disappears into the past and, after completing the mission, decides to stay there, living out a life with his true love Peggy Carter played by Hayley Atwell. We then see him in the present as an old man to pass the shield on to Sam Wilson played by Anthony Mackie. One final shot shows Steve and Peggy dancing together sometime back in the late 1940s or 1950s.

While that was a satisfying ending for Captain America even though we now know he is coming back in Avengers: Doomsday, a lot of fans felt like Marvel Studios glossed over what could have been a great story. For seven years now, fans have been advocating for a movie or show that reveals what happened when Cap returned the stones. They are particularly interested in what happened when he returned the Soul Stone, which was guarded by Captain America’s original nemesis, the Red Skull.

Among those clamoring for such a story is one of the actors who would play a critical role in it. Ross Marquand portrayed the Red Skull in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, inheriting the role from Hugo Weaving. In a recent interview with Polygon done for X-Men ‘97 where Marquand plays both Professor X and Apocalypse, we asked him about a potential return as Red Skull for a Captain America movie or television show about the Infinity Stones.

As an enthusiastic Marvel fan, Marquand had a lot to say.

I have no idea what Kevin Feige and, for that matter, Chris, have in mind for that, but I’ve been pitching it for the last eight years. So far, I haven’t heard if there’s an interest there, but I really hope there is, because even if it’s like a seven-part animated series, I think that’d be fun to watch.

Ross Marquand’s pitch for a Captain America Infinity Stones series

First off, Marquand specifically thinks a series is the best way to tell this story, with each of the six Infinity Stones getting returned in their own episode. He wants an extra episode or two to flesh out the story.

I would say maybe seven or eight episodes. Just because you want to have one episode that sets it up. Like, it would be Bruce and Cap, sitting down and saying, ‘Here’s what you might run into,’ just pre-planning right beforehand.

After that, each stone would get returned episode by episode, with the last stone being the Soul Stone. Marquand even had some thoughts about how the interaction between Captain America and Red Skull might go.

It would be massively awkward. For one, Cap would surely think that Red Skull was dead by this point, especially since the last interaction they had was him getting sucked into space after he touched the Tesseract. I would imagine awkwardness, then I would imagine a shift in the ghostly, almost defeated persona we’ve seen of Red Skull from Infinity War and Endgame — a shift of like, ‘Oh, I’ve been Atlas holding up the world for the last 80 years and now you have released me from this curse. Now it’s on.’ And we already know he can fly. We know he’s cursed with infinite knowledge. What else can he do? I feel like, once he’s free of the Soul Stone, there could be some really interesting stuff there.

After Captain America presumably defeats the Red Skull, Marquand says the final episode would just be everyone’s hunky-dory or whatever. Then there would be a tease of something sinister to come.

Of course, Avengers: Doomsday may already show some of this, but Marquand did not let on if he returns as Red Skull in that movie. One thing is certain though. If Avengers: Doomsday does not show Cap returning the Infinity Stones, the fans including Ross Marquand will not let go of this idea.

Avengers: Doomsday will be released in theaters on December 18.

Source: Polygon