AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR Writers Offer Up Lots of New Info on Why Netflix Characters Weren't Used, Hawkeye, and More
Avengers: Infinity War screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely recently sat down with Collider for a lengthy interview to talk about the film. They discussed all kinds of spoiler-filled goodies. Some of the things they talked about are why they opted not to include any characters from the Netflix series, if Hawkeye was ever involved with the story, and how they didn't kill off as many characters as they did in earlier drafts of the script.
When it comes to their decision on not using any of the characters from the Netflix Marvel series, McFeely said:
"We talk about that all the time. I don't know anything about animosity [between Marvel Studios and Marvel Television]. In a movie this big, we certainly had the conversation, 'Should we put Luke Cage in this? Here we are in New York...' That kind of stuff. As you could probably tell, it would be just a glorified cameo at this point. We're trying to honor the MCU movies and if we then further tell the audience, 'Oh, you should also have a good knowledge from this streaming service over here that you may or may not be subscribing to.' That's really asking a lot. We're already asking a lot."
As cool as it would have been to see Luke Cage, Daredevil, Iron Fist, Jessica Jones and The Punisher show up, it was probably for the best that they didn't if they were only going to get a glorified cameo. Fans would have wanted to see more of them! Markus went on to say:
"They'll have seasons next year. We couldn't bring in that many people and not blip a bunch of them just an odds thing. You know? Next year, Daredevil starring Rosario Dawson!"
When Hawkeye is brought up in the conversation, it is revealed that Hawkeye was never involved with Infinity War at any moment in development. He was always meant to show up in Avengers 4. McFeely explains:
"We've said this before, the idea that some characters have great stories in the second movie. And we also gave ourselves permission to use both movies to tell complete arcs for the characters. And that might mean that somebody like Cap or Natasha you might feel like, 'Oh, they didn't have as much to do as say Thor or Doctor Strange, and that surprises me.' It's likely because they have a lot to do in the next one."
It's going to be really interesting to see what they end up doing with Hawkeye in Avengers 4. One thing we know is that it's going to be big, and it will most likely involve his transformation into Ronin.
Another thing that they talk about is how in the early drafts of the script they didn't kill off as many characters. When asked if there were any heroes who were supposed to die that ultimately didn't, McFeely said:
"Um, no it was more the reverse that some people in earlier drafts made it to the next movie and we decided that we didn't have enough story for them and so they... disappeared."
They wouldn't say which of the characters almost survived, but they went on to say:
"We had so many characters in movie 1, and we knew it was a two-movie conversation. Some characters were better served in movie 2 after this event. We were making some choices based on some characters we knew were going to leave us at the end of the first movie, so they got highlighted in the first movie. And some who were going to be in the second movie more maybe got less attention or less screentime [in Infinity War] — I'm thinking of Cap and Natasha, specifically. It's about the story we wanted to tell in movie 2, mostly."
It's going to be interesting to see what that story for Avengers 4 ends up being! There's a lot of rumor and speculation going around right now, but there's nothing factual about any of the plot information involving Avengers 4 that has been released.
You can watch the full 45-minute conversation below in which they discuss.