Avengers: Endgame is not only the biggest movie of the year, but also holds the top spot on the list of the highest grossing films of all-time. Given the massive success that the MCU Phase 3 capper had, it’s been under intense scrutiny since before it even opened in theaters. And while most will agree that the sequel wrapped things up as well as could be expected, there were still some minor quibbles to debate.
On such issue is the overall usage of Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel. Many expected the heroine to be front and center but instead, she was relegated to a supporting player, and, in fact, was absent for the majority of the film. This is doubly surprising given that Captain Marvel was also a big hit for Marvel Studios. It released only six weeks prior to Endgame and ended its box office run with a total of over $1 billion.
Now, in response to the continued questioning, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, the writers behind the movie, have opened up on the topic. During a recent interview, they commented that the limited usage of the character was because of her extreme power set. Basically, they didn’t want her to “come in and solve all their problems.”
She was always going to be in it, but we didn’t have much to go on. They had cast her, and that was it. It is a tough balance to strike when you have a character that powerful, who you’re going to bring in, and you don’t want it to seem like, ‘Well, we just brought in this person who can clean the house, that we couldn’t [have] clean in the previous movie.’ So, we had to decide on a balance between not making it feel like a cameo, but not having her around so much that she solved all the problems for everybody.”
That does make a certain amount of sense. The folks at Marvel Studios, and Kevin Feige in particular, have continually said that Carol Danvers is the strongest character, hero or villain, who currently exists. In order to be able to move the story along and let all the MCU good guys get their moment then, it was necessity was to keep her away. However, McFeely stated that there is another, and slightly more poignant reason they chose to not have Captain Marvel be too integral to the story.
The point of the second movie was saying goodbye to the original six Avengers, so their stories were gonna be way up here. We had the same issue a little bit with Black Panther in Infinity War because people go, ‘Oh! Black Panther, he’s coming back two months from now! Alright, I’m gonna get a lot of Black Panther!’ And he got some. I mean, we went to Wakanda, but he wasn’t the lead character. It was not fair to the other six Avengers to have Captain Marvel come in and solve all their problems. It didn’t seem like good storytelling.
Fans can rest assured though, that even though Captain Marvel didn’t get much of the spotlight in Avengers: Endgame, she’s certainly going to be a prominent fixture in the MCU going forward.