Avengers: Infinity War stunned the world with Thanos’ snap which led to many of our favourite MCU heroes and characters become victims of disintegration. It wiped out so many names just like that! You may think that the Russos were making room for other characters to shine in Avengers 4, but they actually chose the victims to maximise the impact on the survivors.
The Russos strategically chose who would survive and who would die with the Snap. They chose the ones whose deaths will have a major impact on other characters, like Bucky and Sam went out, which will really motivate Cap, Spider-Man died in the hands of Tony, so he will be motivated, Groot died calling out his dad Rocket, Black Panther went out in front of Okoye, so it all would work to drive character arcs in Avengers 4. Here’s what Joe Russo had to say about how and why they chose the victims who would be erased by Thanos’ big finger snap:
“The movie sort of keeps twisting at the end there in ways that you can’t believe it’s going one step beyond and that the fate of our characters and the fate of our universe are still at play. In terms of our choices of who Thanos would end up eradicating with his snap, it was very story focused. How do we pay off each individual character story most profoundly? The first person to go is Bucky Barnes and it’s shot from Captain America’s perspective. We’re watching Cap go through the experience of watching him go away. We’re watching Okoye, whose number one mission it is in life is to protect the king. She watches the king go, in front of her. To see those characters react in those situations is very powerful and resonant.”
One thing which has been confirmed is the fact that all the snap victims will surely make their return in Avengers 4. Kevin Feige confirmed the fact that none of the snap victims and other dead characters will be part of any of the marketing material of the upcoming movie but we all know it for a fact that all of them have to return.
“There was one scene, I think, we had where everybody was there. I can’t really talk about that scene, but I knew it took them three months in planning this scene to have everyone there. You look around and you just saw everyone from Samuel L. Jackson to Michael Douglas to Michelle Pfeiffer. Everybody was there.”
Since these characters are considered permanently dead, the only two ways by which these characters could be brought back would be through Time Travel as the Avengers would try to go and prevent the Snap from ever happening. But then these characters won’t know a time when they were dead, which means that we will be losing some of their character development in the future films.
The second more obscure way would be to introduce the Multiverse which will be less likely. But it could bring in alternate versions of the dead characters from other Earths, but then we would lose the character developments of those altered characters which would again affect the future movies.
These snap victims will surely return into the plot of the movie but their roles may be reduced as they might not actually return until the second, half. Tom Holland revealed in an interview along with Benedict Cumberbatch that he has a lot of lines about the Quantum Realm, so Doctor Strange will have an important role to play which has to do with the intricacies of the Quantum Realm.
Evangeline Lilly said in an interview that she really enjoyed working with Brie Larson on set so this means that the Wasp will share scenes with Captain Marvel. We will probably see all this towards the end. As Sebastian Stan has confirmed that all the characters will be there, including the likes of Nick Fury, Janet Van Dyne, Hank Pym (who are amongst disintegrated characters), we could say that there are story arcs for all the dead characters as well.
Their bit will mostly have to do certain things in the third act when the final battle against Thanos (and probably other villains) will take place. Avengers 4 will come out on May 3 and Here’s the official Synopsis of Avengers 4:
“A culmination of 22 interconnected films the fourth installment of the Avengers saga will draw audiences to witness the turning point of this epic journey. Our beloved heroes will truly understand how fragile this reality is and the sacrifices that must be made to uphold it.”
