The Endgame Cast Was Blatantly Lied To During A Huge Scene
Contains spoilers for Avengers: Endgame
Audiences were shocked a few times over during Avengers: Endgame, but it turns out that cast may have been even more gobsmacked while watching the superhero ensemble, as they were told a blatant lie while shooting one of the film's biggest and most emotionally impactful scenes.
It goes without saying that there are major spoilers for Avengers: Endgame ahead, so turn back now if you've yet to see the movie.
Chatting with Jimmy Fallon during his May 1 appearance on The Tonight Show, Sebastian Stan, who plays Bucky Barnes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, spilled the secret that he and his Marvel co-stars were told they were filming a wedding scene for Avengers: Endgame... when it was really the sequence for Tony Stark's (Robert Downey Jr.) lakeside funeral.
The topic of conversation came up when Fallon asked Stan if he and the rest of the Avengers: Endgame cast had even the slightest idea what they were filming or what lines they were saying while shooting. Stan said they did not, and that he personally found out everything he was shooting the day of. When he arrived on set one day to see everyone dressed to the nines, Stan learned that it was because two characters were going to get married. This was, as Stan and everyone who has seen Endgame now know, a complete lie.
"I was told there was a wedding. You know, that there was a wedding that we were filming. And I was like, 'Who's getting married?'" said Stan. "But everybody was dressed very formal, and, you know, I was looking around, and then two people weren't there, so I guess that was the bride and the groom."
Either Stan was joking about two people being missing as a way to not spoil the moment for the Tonight Show audience, or he was being totally serious, perhaps believing at the time that Robert Downey Jr., whose Tony Stark sacrificed himself at the end of the film's final battle, and Scarlett Johansson, whose Natasha Romanoff heroically gave her life to save her fellow Avengers, were the two heroes getting married. We know that they weren't present for the scene because they both died — but since Stan didn't know that the scene was a funeral and not a wedding, he also may not have been aware that Iron Man and Black Widow bit the bullet. Though it would be weird for those two heroes to tie the knot in Endgame, especially since Tony and Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) were together and raising their daughter in the film, they are the only characters we can think of who were likely absent for shooting on this particular scene. Who knows –maybe Stan was led to believe that Pepper was among the dusted and Tony found love again with Natasha.
The interesting (and ironic) thing about Stan's divulgence of the funeral scene being passed off as a wedding is that marriage came up in a separate interview with Bruce Banner actor Mark Ruffalo, Captain America actor Chris Evans, and Nebula actress Karen Gillan. During the conversation, Ruffalo, who has spoiled quite a few Marvel movies in the past, stated that Captain America gets married in Endgame. We know that genuinely ended up happening — Steve Rogers wed Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) after remaining in the past once he put all six Infinity Stones back in their rightful places — but perhaps Ruffalo was referring to the same scene Stan discussed with Fallon. Maybe the day of shooting was even more confusing than Stan described it, with actors coming and going and the directors shooting a ton of different variations of the sequence to make it impossible to discern what was really going on.
On the other hand, maybe Ruffalo, who admitted to receiving a script for Avengers: Endgame that was full of dummy scenes, never filmed a wedding scene but only read about it, and assumed it was a fake moment the Russo brothers included to throw him off.
As surprising as it may seem, Marvel actors are all too familiar with hearing and reading lies and half-truths during production. Spider-Man actor Tom Holland once shared that he had absolutely no idea what sequences he was shooting for Avengers: Infinity War, Scarlet Witch actress Elizabeth Olsen noted that the cast shot more characters disintegrating in Infinity War than actually ended up getting dusted, and Ruffalo recently revealed that the Avengers: Endgame directors had him film five different endings to the movie.
All of this effort, the purposeful misdirection and the shrouding of story details and the bold-faced lying, was to prevent the cast from accidentally spilling the beans on anything about Avengers: Endgame. And it worked — for the most part. A few spoilers still made their way onto social media ahead of the movie's theatrical release in late April, some from people with not-so-nice intentions and some from Marvel stars themselves, but the good news is that the Russos are soon going to loosen their grip on spoilers. Thanos demanded your silence to not spoil the Endgame, and before you know it, Marvel and the Mad Titan won't mind how much you blab about the movie. And hey, as soon as that happens, maybe we'll learn even more secrets from behind the scenes of Avengers: Endgame — like Chris Hemsworth actually playing Fortnite between takes, or Chris Evans needing to wear butt pads to turn Captain America's backside into America's... well, you know the rest.