Warning: There are spoilers ahead for "Avengers: Infinity War."
"Avengers: Infinity War" ends on one heck of a cliffhanger.
After Thanos acquires all six Infinity stones he rids of half the universe with a simple snap of his fingers. Even if you had read the comic from which the movie was partly inspired, the sudden deaths of many fan favorites were very unexpected.
It was a perfect cliffhanger ending for next summer's "Avengers 4," but we could have had to wait until the beginning of the sequel to see the devastation go down.
"Infinity War" screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely told The New York Times a draft of the script had Thanos' snap happening in the second film.
"What we realized is, it would feel more like a cliffhanger than we intended," said Markus.
If the snap was in "Avengers 4," Markus said it "would be a continuation of exactly what you were watching before" and directors Anthony and Joe Russo have said that's not what they're aiming for with these two movies. The third and fourth "Avengers" films are two very distinct movies.
"It isn't a true two-parter," Joe Russo told a group of press on set of "Infinity War.""I think the two-parter concept came back when Marvel decided they were going to culminate the MCU, it was going to be a two-movie deal. But as we developed the movie, in execution, it ended up being more of two singular expressions."
Markus and McFeely didn't say where "Infinity War" would have ended if the big snap occurred in the second film, but it sounds like it would have been a bit more anticlimactic with Thanos simply acquiring all six gem stones. Even more bothersome would have been if the movie ended on the snap itself before fading to black.
Thankfully, we didn't get any of those things.
McFeely told The New York Times it made more sense to deliver all the way with a "tragic ending" in "Infinity War" to pave the path for a sequel "where mysterious things happen."
What are those mysterious things?
Many believe "Avengers 4" will involve time travel and diving into the quantum realm, which was introduced in "Ant-Man." We'll probably get more of a hint when "Ant-Man and the Wasp" comes to theaters July 6.
You can follow along with our "Infinity War" coverage here.
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