Avengers: Endgame’s opening Marvel intro video removed all of the snapped victims who died in Avengers: Infinity War, and this wasn’t truly discovered until the sequel movie released on home video. Leading up to Infinity War, Marvel Studios heavily marketed the film as an event of a lifetime, seeing superheroes from all corners of the Marvel Cinematic Universe come together for the first time to take on an extinction-level threat - Thanos. So when half of those heroes died, it caused some concern for Avengers: Endgame.
Fans wondered how Marvel Studios would acknowledge those dead heroes in their marketing - particularly in the trailers - for Avengers: Endgame. While the studio outright avoided putting them in most trailers, one of the TV spots did highlight the history of the MCU and included those dead heroes quite quickly at the start of the promo. But overall, they were hardly used in the long-run. But as it turns out, Marvel’s mandate to avoid showing off the dead superheroes returning in Endgame extended to the film’s intro as well.
Now that Avengers: Endgame is out on digital HD (and soon coming to DVD and Blu-ray), it’s been spotted by fans that the opening intro video all Marvel movies have - the one that replaced the classic Marvel Comics pages - didn’t have the dead heroes from Infinity War. Everyone from Black Panther and Scarlet Witch to Falcon and Doctor Strange. Given that the intro plays quite quickly and fans must have been excited to finally get to see Endgame, it’s certainly reasonable to understand that many people didn’t spot all the missing characters when the film was in theaters.
What’s interesting is that Ant-Man is also missing from the Marvel intro - he usually shows up towards the beginning, right after Black Widow and Black Panther. Even though he didn’t die in Infinity War, he was presumed dead due to being stuck in the Quantum Realm, which was shown in Ant-Man and the Wasp’s post-credits scene. It wasn’t until five years after Thanos’ snap that he managed to escape the micro dimension, albeit by accident.
It’s great that, while people knew the snapped superheroes would return at some point in Avengers: Endgame, Marvel Studios truly treated them as if they were gone. Sure, some of the dead heroes, like Vision, won’t return on the big screen (for now) since they were killed outside of the snap, having the heroes back means they can return in the Marvel intro in future movies in Phase 4 and beyond. But given how many characters are on the way, it’ll soon become much more crowded than it already is.
Next: Every Upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe Movie
- Black Widow Release Date: 2021-07-09 The Eternals Release Date: 2021-11-05 Shang Chi Release Date: 2021-09-03 Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness Release Date: 2022-05-06 Thor: Love and Thunder Release Date: 2022-07-08