Avengers: Endgame writers address Captain Marvel’s limited screentime

The writers of Avengers: Endgame explain why they reduced Captain Marvel’s role.

As the culmination of the Marvel Cinematic Universe up to this point, Avengers: Endgame featured a slew of characters, each with larger and smaller roles. One character who fell on the latter end was Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel. It’s surprising that she was given a minor role, but the writers had a reason for doing so.

Co-writer Christopher Markus explained to Vanity Fair that Danvers was always meant to appear, but he and Stephen McFeely found it difficult to effectively use her. This was mostly because she had just been cast when they began their work, and she possessed a power set that could easily resolve the plot:

"“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.”"

McFeely also pointed out that the goal of Endgame was to serve as a send-off for the original six Avengers, and giving Captain Marvel too much screentime could have been a disservice to their arcs:

"“It also wasn’t the point of the movie. The point of the second movie was saying goodbye to the original six Avengers, so their stories were gonna be way up here…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.”"

More from Marvel Cinematic Universe

• Loki season 2 finale does set the stage for Kang Dynasty
• Marvel: (Spoiler) exits Avengers: The Kang Dynasty
• Will Loki air a new bonus episode tonight? (November 16, 2023)
• What If…? season 2 gets premiere date (and there’s a major twist)
• Marvel rumors hint Pedro Pascal has been cast in key Fantastic Four role

Interestingly, McFeely revealed that they ran into a similar problem with another fan-favorite character in Avengers: Infinity War:

"“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.”"

When Captain Marvel was first announced in 2014, most assumed she would be involved with the two Avengers films in some capacity. This role became clearer after the post-credits scenes of Infinity War and Captain Marvel. However, her role didn’t prove to be quite as vital as expected.

The two writers make reasonable arguments, as it would have been hard to find a logical way to keep Danvers around and not have her end the threat on her own. Carol’s eventual popularity among audiences after her solo film may have also caused her to take some shine away from the veteran characters.

Even though it would have been nice to see her with a larger presence, Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel still got her moments in the sun. And anyone eager to see more of her will certainly get their fair share as the MCU moves forward.