The Original Mission to Retrieve Time Stone in Avengers: Endgame Was Pretty Weird

Original Mission to Retrieve Time Stone in Avengers: Endgame-

We could imagine that the most fun part about Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame would have been the writing. Sure it was hectic as well because writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely claimed that the original draft of Infinity War kinda sucked. But, the fun part would have begun when the writers got to play with the alternate missions that they could have sent various heroes on.

In Infinity War, there was an instance where instead of Spider-Man, Falcon went to space with Tony Stark. They played with so many different possibilities. Then come Endgame, they had even more to design when it came to the Avengers going back in time for the Infinity Stones. Tony Stark got to visit Asgard and fight Heimdall in once instance.

The writers told Fanango:

“Yeah, our first draft was a version where Tony and Thor go to Asgard, because I like the idea of Tony going, like, in theory going to Asgard and seeing science versus magic, and stuff like that. And then he fought Heimdall, who could of course see him even though Tony had an invisible stealth suit on or something.

And we did that because there is, in Dark World, to get technical about it, during that time when the Reality Stone is there, the Space Stone is also in the vault. So at the end of Dark World you might remember that Volstagg and Sif go to the Collector and pass off the Reality Stone because they don’t want to keep two stones in one place. So that was one attempt at it, and I think Joe Russo read it and he goes, ‘Why aren’t we going to Avengers? It’s only the most exciting movie.’ And so we went yep, let’s do that.”

Now, this was about retrieving the Reality Stone. But they also had alternate versions to get the Time Stone in the film. We saw Smart Hulk, Ant-Man, Tony Stark and Steve come back to 2012 to collect the Space, Time & the Mind stones. While Steve, Tony, and Scott were tasked for Space and Mind stones, Bruce was given the duty of getting the Time Stone from the Sanctum Sanctorum.

But in an earlier version of the script, some different characters would have gone to the Sanctum and they’d have to go through a wild romp through the magical halls of the Sanctum. Imagine Thor’s visit to the Sanctum but only weirder. Christopher Markus said:

“At one point, we had a different way of getting to the Time Stone which involved some characters breaking into (Doctor Strange’s) Sanctum Sanctorum and being pursued by all the weird stuff that happens to be trapped inside there. It was totally off story and unnecessary and it got cut, but it was fun to write.”

Well, we could imagine that the different set of heroes involved in this weird mission could be Scarlet Witch and Rocket Raccoon. At Comic-Con, the writers revealed that in an early draft, Wanda didn’t turn into dust. But rather she would have had screen time with Rocket Raccoon. In fact, they would have gone on a road trip. At Comic-Con, Markus said:

“There weren’t terribly outrageous ones, there were a lot more boring ones. You can go to the Triskellion – it’s a building… There was an iteration where Wanda was alive, she hadn’t been blipped… Wanda and Rocket drove a car from the Triskellion to Doctor Strange’s house, then used the doorway to go to Kamar Taj and get [the Stone].”

We had already seen a little car journey involving Rocket and the Hulk when they took a trip to New Asgard, so another one of those would have messed with the pacing of the film. So, we’re glad that the Time Stone mission happened in the way that it did. That’s because the scene was used to bring the Ancient One into the story, and it was also used for the exposition of MCU’s Time Travel rules.