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Avengers: Endgame directors defend the film's divisive final shot

WARNING: Spoilers for Avengers: Endgame

With Avengers: Endgame having already been out in cinemas for several weeks now, directors Joe and Anthony Russo decide to finally discuss some of the film’s bigger secrets and surprises.

One of them has been fairly divisive within the Marvel fanbase: Endgame‘s final shot, which reveals that Captain America (Chris Evans) used time travel to return to the past and live a lifetime with his true love, Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell). The film closes with the pair slow dancing in the living room of a suburban house, finally reunited after years of grief and yearning.

While some have praised the sense of closure the moment brings, others have pointed out that, in Captain America: Winter Soldier, it’s established that Peggy Carter had a husband who Steve Rogers saved in World War II, alongside two children. Did Steve’s time travel essentially erase Peggy’s family? Or was Steve the husband that Peggy spoke about all along?

At a Q&A in Washington DC (via The Hollywood Reporter), which took place on 30 April but whose details were kept secret until now, Joe and Anthony Russo revealed the answer to fans’s queries.

“If you went back to that timeline, between the point where Steve went into the ice [in Captain America: The First Avenger] yet before Peggy met her husband, Peggy was available,” Anthony Russo said, with the brothers adding that Peggy’s family still “exist in a different timeline”.

The Russos have also revealed why Katherine Langford never appeared in the final cut of the film, despite the fact she was cast a mysterious unnamed character last year.

The pair told the Happy Sad Confused podcast that Langford was meant to play the adult version of Morgan Stark, the daughter of Tony (Robert Downey Jr).

She would have appeared in a scene that mirrored the sequence in Avengers: Infinity War in which Thanos (Joe Brolin) saw a vision of a young Gamora after he used the Infinity Gauntlet to cause the snap, but the moment proved too confusing for test audiences.