A version of Avengers: Endgame featured another hero making the Soul Stone sacrifice, until writer Stephen McFeely was convinced against this by female Marvel colleagues.
Warning! Spoilers for Avengers: Endgame follow...
Endgame features the sad death of founding Avenger Natasha Romanov, AKA Black Widow, who makes the ultimate sacrifice to ensure Hawkeye obtains the Soul Stone. But the movie's co-writer has admitted hesitating over killing Scarlett Johansson's character, with Hawkeye briefly in the frame to die instead.
During a post-Avengers: Endgame Encore screening Q&A in Minnesota this past weekend (thanks, Forbes), Avengers scribe Stephen McFeely said he had tried writing a draft of this sequence where Hawkeye perished — only for this version to be met with resistance from multiple women on the Marvel team.
"There was a sense of dread over the decision," McFeely began, discussing the early realization that Endgame's return to Vormir would mean a big death was necessary. "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," he continued. "So, even though it's a platonic relationship, they've been together as a duo in the Avengers the whole time.”
"In our mind, it was always going to be [Black Widow who died] 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."
Narratively, Black Widow's death makes more sense to complete her character arc and remove the "red in her ledger." And while Hawkeye had spent the past few years post-Snap as a brutal assassin, he does have a wife and kids to go home to if Thanos' decision is undone. Meanwhile, in sacrificing herself, Black Widow is protecting her own found family.
"When she found the Avengers, they were a new family for her," McFeely continued. "So, this idea that she could save her family, in the greater sense of that, was really important."
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.ign.com/articles/avengers-endgame-writer-tried-a-version-where-hawkeye-made-the-soul-stone-sacrifice-but-female-colleagues-convinced-him-who-it-needed-be
