When Stan Lee passed away late last year, we wondered whether he’d make any other cameo appearances in the new Marvel movies. At the time, we knew Marvel had three movies planned for 2019 — Captain Marvel, Avengers: Endgame, and Spider-Man: Far From Home — and we assumed he would be in all of them.
We’ve already seen the first Stan Lee cameo to hit theaters after the comic book genius passed away — the one in Captain Marvel that created a hilarious paradox for the MCU. And now it sounds like Endgame will be Stan Lee’s last appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
“It’s his last one committed to film,” Endgame co-director Joe Russo told Mashable. Previously, he said he wasn’t sure if it would be Far From Home or Endgame. “I have to say, I think it’s astonishing that this would be his last cameo. It’s just kind of mind-boggling that he made it to the end of this run. I can’t believe it.”
While it is incredibly sad not to have Stan Lee cameos in MCU films going forward, something we always knew was going to happen down the road, it feels fitting for Lee’s final cameo to have been shot for the final movie of this 22-film arc in the biggest movie franchise in the world. Endgame is, after all, the culmination of a decade of Marvel superhero films, tying together multiple stories and closing different character arcs.
“We have all these movie stars on that set, and when Stan came to set, everybody would be like kids again,” Joe’s brother Anthony said. “It was always a lot of fun shooting these cameos because he was very charming, and he would maybe get the crew going, and everybody would be laughing and having a good time.”
A collection of every Stan Lee cameo ever, with the exception of Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame, follows: