Many fans went into Avengers: Endgame fully expecting Captain America to meet his demise, given his status as the selfless leader of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, as well as the constant admittance from the filmmakers that plenty of characters wouldn’t make it out of the movie alive. People were braced for Steve Rogers to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to save the universe, and it came as a shock that not only did he make it to the end, but he was also given the happy ending he deserved after giving up his entire existence to protect the planet from war.
It turned out that Iron Man was the one to give up his life for the cause, and with Cap finally getting to grow old with Peggy Carter, the Marvel Cinematic Universe lost its two most prominent heroes under wildly different circumstances. Steve and Tony were the heart and soul of the entire franchise, and the driving force behind some of the studio’s biggest and most important movies, and in a new interview, Endgame writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely have revealed why Captain America was never going to perish during the course of the Infinity Saga’s concluding chapter.
“We realized over the course of the movies that Cap and Tony were on crossing arcs. Cap, who had started as completely selfless and was jumping on grenades willy-nilly, was becoming more self-interested. Not to say selfish, but if you watch Civil War, particularly, he’s making decisions based on what he wants, even if it breaks up the Avengers. And Tony started as the brash billionaire playboy, and the stakes are growing for him, the responsibility’s growing for him. We realized at one point, late in 2015, that for Steve to be his best self, he was going to have to get a life, and for Tony to be his best self, he might have to lose his… And that’s why Captain America can’t die in this movie. Because he was willing to die in the first one. And that’s not a journey.”
That’s the kind of storytelling that the MCU has become famous for, with two of the franchise’s marquee characters set on mirrored narratives that play out over the course of a decade. Tony’s father knew and respected Steve, which caused some deep-lying issues between them when they eventually became teammates, and the whole crux of Civil War is based on the divide between the friends-turned-enemies, with only the threat of Thanos thawing tensions between the two.
Cap began as someone who would happily devote their entire life to protecting a cause, while Tony was only interested in what was best for himself. By the time the end credits rolled on Avengers: Endgame though, Tony had come full circle as a husband and father willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for the greater good, and Steve finally allowed himself to put the shield down and live the life with Peggy that he’d always wanted.