Marvel always keeps its cards close to the vest, but perhaps no secret in the history of the MCU has received more attention and debate than the title of the sequel to Infinity War. Fans had been speculating about the title of the fourth Avengers movie since long before the third even came out, and that speculation continued until last December, when the title card was revealed at the end of the first trailer for Avengers: Endgame.
Marvel has let the limited amount of footage it has released speak for itself up to this point, but on Tuesday, Collider shared a telling quote from Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige which helped to shed light on the reasoning behind the studio’s decision to keep fans in the dark for such a long period of time.
Here’s what Feige had to say when Collider asked why it took so long to reveal the title of Endgame:
Well, I think I’d said that it all had gotten blown out of proportion to some extent. But it was a spoiler, because if you knew before Infinity War came out that the next movie was called Endgame, then you know that there wasn’t an ending to Infinity War. But that had been the title of the movie from the moment we conceived of doing the two films. In large part, because…it’s seeded right there. I mean, it’s seeded in Ultron.
, “it’s seeded in Ultron” is in reference to a line that Tony Stark says in Avengers: Age of Ultron. At one point in the movie, he refers to alien invaders as the “end game,” which is a phrase that was said once again by Doctor Strange in Infinity War. So not only did Marvel want to throw everyone off the scent, but the studio also didn’t want everyone to go into Infinity War with the expectation that it wouldn’t have a true ending.
In other words, it was all about ensuring fans would be as surprised as possible by the big finale of Avengers: Infinity War (even if we all know that something is going to have to happen to undo many of the deaths). Avengers: Endgame launches on April 26th, 2019, with Captain Marvel dropping two months earlier on March 8th.
