The Avengers: Endgame Cast Had No Idea About 'The Blip' Until They Were About To Shoot It
The ending sequence of "Avengers: Infinity War" was an extremely shocking twist for Marvel Cinematic Universe fans. During the last minutes of the film, the evil Thanos manages to obtain all of the Infinity Stones, allowing him to snap his fingers and immediately wipe out half of all living beings in the entire universe.
The rapid disappearance of half of the Avengers, or "the blip" as it's become known, both in-universe and among the fandom, is a surprising and heart-breaking scene. Of course, the permanence of these characters' deaths was always in doubt, especially since Spider-Man had been killed when he already had another movie in production. Try as Marvel might to make fans think the movie could easily take place before his tragic death, fans knew Spidey and all those dusted characters would be back. Even so, for the cast, their fate came as quite a surprise.
According to a recent interview by Variety with Scarlet Witch actress Elizabeth Olsen, the actors didn't know that the blip would be happening until they began filming it.
"I didn't know I got blipped away until we shot it. That was told to us that day. All of us went to the van where they had a bunch of equipment to show us pre-viz: Scarlett [Johansson], Chris [Hemsworth], Chadwick [Boseman], Sebastian [Stan]. We were all just in this van, and they said, 'This is what's happening. You guys will disappear.' And we're like, 'OK.' It was shocking. I mean, we didn't know. We thought the movie ended differently."
We all know that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is meticulously planned out, with major secrets being kept using extremely serious security measures, but the fact that they were able to hide the movie's huge twist from the actors themselves is quite an accomplishment.
Tightly guarded secrets
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is the biggest and most profitable franchise on the planet, so it's no wonder they go to such lengths in order to shield their secrets. Any major leak for fans could cost them millions or even billions of dollars in people who no longer need or want to go see the films. Even the actors themselves are potential liabilities, exemplified by when Tom Holland spoiled a major detail of "Spider-Man: No Way Home" in an interview.
According to Olsen, in the Variety interview, most of the actors in the ensemble "Avengers" films will only get the parts of the script that strictly relate to their characters. "I mean, those movies, I really don't know what's going on. I just get my pages, so I understand the part of the story I'm fulfilling. I get a story that is told to me from the Russos about what's happening in the rest of the movie," said the actress, referring to directors Joe and Anthony Russo.
Olsen also says that the movie's master script is kept in a very secure location. "You could read a script in an office, with a security guard, on one specific iPad."
With all these measures in place, they were able to successfully keep the blip a secret from the ravenous fans of the franchise. And by doing so, they created a twist ending that rocked audiences to their core and changed the course of the Marvel Cinematic Universe forever.