Avengers: Endgame had a lot riding on it, to put things mildly. The film had to deliver 21 movies’ worth of payoff, satisfyingly wrap up an entire era of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and, oh yeah, deal with the obliteration of half of all life in the previous Avengers film. Tasks, in other words, that would surely send many screenwriters running for the hills. Fortunately, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely were up to the challenge.
The Endgame screenwriters (who also penned Infinity War) recently sat down with EW to discuss how they approached the grand finale of a 22-film saga — free of explicit spoilers, in case you didn’t contribute to Endgame’s $1.2 billion opening weekend haul. It turns out, the pair relished the opportunity to provide a true sense of closure and what McFeely calls “a definitive third act.”
“The idea that… you were gonna end things, you were gonna escort characters off the stage, was really appealing to us as writers, because it allowed you to tell different types of stories,” he says.
“That’s what I like best about the movie,” Markus adds, “the characters who are escorted off the stage… really do feel like they have reached the end of their MCU story.”
Figuring out some of the plot mechanisms of the film was also a bit simpler than you might think. “We Google like everybody else,” Markus quips. “A big breakthrough came… when we Googled something in the Ant-Man universe.” As he puts it, “The puzzle piece fit in very nicely.”
You can check out the full video above. Avengers: Endgame is in theaters steamrolling over box office records now.
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