The Russo Brothers Defend Their Choice to Change the Ending of AVENGERS: ENDGAME in ENCORE

Marvel recently released Avengers: Endgame Encore in theatres, a re-release of the 2019 film that gave fans a second chance to watch the film on the big screen, but also gave us some extra footage.

The first of the new material was an unfurled final scene, which played out the way we remembered, with Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) dancing with his beloved Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell), which then continued on to reveal the pair being interrupted by a knock at the door.

When Peggy answers, Loki is there to tell her and a hiding Steve that he needs to speak to them. While the scene ends there, we know Loki’s there to tell them about the time rift Steve’s caused.

The Russo Brothers, who directed both Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, as well as the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars, talked about their justification for the changed scene in a recent interview with Empire, where Anthony began:

“We really thought about that ending [in Endgame] as the perfect ending for Steve Rogers. And the idea of just going one moment past that perfect ending, and thinking about how radically that moment can change by just taking one step past it… That was a big part of the delight in the new idea for what Doomsday is and where the story goes.”

Joe went on: “Yeah. The Marvel Universe is a giant experiment, and has been for years. I think part of the fun of coming back was, we thought, ‘Could we reach back to pull the story forward?’ And nobody's done that before. Nobody's ever had an opportunity to do it before. And this is a fluid universe, right? So you could do it in this universe, and it felt like an interesting way to start the story of Doomsday.”

The directors went on to confirm that these scenes (the ending, and the newly added post-credits scenes) will not be in Avengers: Doomsday. They’re just meant to bridge the gap and give us a bit more context as to what’s happening with Steve and Peggy, Bruce Banner, the TVA, and Doom himself leading into the next big battle.

Avengers: Doomsday is set to hit theatres on December 18, 2026. Tickets are available now.