‘Avengers: Endgame’ Almost Had Thanos Sitting On A Throne Of Skulls

Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige put things into context after Avengers: Endgame directors Joe and Anthony Russo revealed they almost had a scene with Thanos decapitating Captain America’s head and tossing it back to Cap himself in 2023.

During a Q&A with Empire, Feige went into more detail about how the scene came about and why they didn’t use it below:

“I think there are behind the scenes pictures of this. Us having the giant omnibus of the Infinity Gauntlet comic collection and saying, ‘we need to do justice to this’. One of those images was Thanos sitting on a throne of skulls, ruling over everything. We wanted to get that in there. One of the ideas was when they finish the time heist, [the Avengers would] returned to a world [in 2023] that Thanos had already conquered. That involved all of that, the throne made of bones and skulls and had him tossing, like a bowling ball, Captain America’s severed skull head, still in the cowl, to Captain America. And it was pretty cool, but the logic to get there defeated us.”

This dark scene was in such serious consideration for the film that they were very close to using it. You can check out what Feige had to say about it below:

“I think it ended up in a set of pages at one point in the script. There might be a piece of concept art somewhere with it. Thanos is not just a purple guy with a big chin who sits in chairs and smirks. Which is basically all he had been up [to] until Infinity War. So much of the time we spent in a conference room in Pinewood in Atlanta that someday I want to have a plaque: ‘It was here that nine people almost lost their minds developing and writing Infinity War and Endgame.’

After the events of Infinity War, Thanos had a personality that Feige felt they needed to stick to for Endgame:

“I would keep opening the book and saying, ‘but we need to do this [or] We need something like this [or] Thanos can do this.’ Some of that led to things you saw in Infinity War in Knowhere where he turns Drax into a pile of cubes or turns [Mantis] into that spiraling ribbon. Or [Thanos] has bubbles come out of Star-Lord’s gun. His casual, sadistic use of the stones was something that we kept wanting to do.”

Thanos decapitating a different version of Captain America’s head would have been a brutal scene to see on the big screen, but it just didn’t fit the story.

Did you want to see Thanos decapitate Captain America’s head in Avengers: Endgame? Let us know in the comments below!

Avengers: Endgame will be out on DVD everywhere, August 13th.