Now You See Me: Now You Don't Added A Major Star's Role Entirely During Reshoots

Don't play any tricks if you haven't seen "Now You See Me: Now You Don't" — major spoilers ahead!

At the very end of "Now You See Me: Now You Don't" — the threequel helmed by Ruben Fleischer that reunites the magical franchise's core cast of Jesse Eisenberg, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco, Woody Harrelson, and Morgan Freeman — we see a holographic appearance from Mark Ruffalo's character Dylan Rhodes, a veteran of the FBI who now works for the universe's mysterious organization the Eye. According to Fleischer, they hastily added this hologram to the film once Ruffalo was "available" ... and hope Ruffalo will be able to appear in the already-confirmed fourth "Now You See Me" movie.

Dylan "will play a bigger role in the next adventure, pending Mark Ruffalo's schedule," Fleischer told Entertainment Weekly before making a joke about "seven more 'Avengers' movies" in the Oscar nominee's future (Ruffalo plays the Hulk in the Marvel Cinematic Universe). "But my hope for the movie would certainly be to have more Dylan in the film," Fleischer went on. "I'm going to tell you a little secret, which is that originally he wasn't even going to be in this movie because he wasn't available at all during our principal photography."

So how did Fleischer fit Ruffalo into this film? Green screens. "Luckily, at that time, he was available to be shot on green screen independent of our shoot, but still, we managed to get him in there," Fleischer told the outlet. "Obviously, we would have preferred him to be knocking on the door and coming into the scene [at the end in person], but he is a busy man, and the hologram version of Dylan was one that I was more than happy to accept."

While Dylan Rhodes does make an all too brief appearance in "Now You See Me: Now You Don't," another legacy character meets a tragic end. Thaddeus Bradley, the character played in the first two movies by Morgan Freeman, shows up in the third film to welcome new and old magicians back into the fray ... only to be killed by stray gunfire. In that same Entertainment Weekly piece, Isla Fisher, who returned for the third movie after originating the role of escape artist Henley Reeves in the first, said filming Thaddeus' death scene was devastating.

"That was a really hard scene to film," Fisher recalled, saying that she cried through the three-day shoot. "I hope it's a magic trick and he comes back in the next one and they say that it was all a stunt." Ask Ruben Fleischer, though, and he'll tell you that unfortunately, it's no trick.

"We thought about it, but it felt like maybe it would undermine the cause of the Horsemen," Fleischer said of bringing Freeman back for a fourth go-around. "Because we toyed with the idea, maybe at the end he's playing with his grandchildren doing a magic trick or something like that. But we chose not to, just to allow for Veronika truly to be as bad as she's perceived. Morgan felt like it was the right thing to do, so I wouldn't have done it if he felt otherwise." Still, Fleischer said he cried watching Freeman's death scene: "I burst into tears watching him perform that because it was so emotionally evocative. He is like a grandfather to all of us in a way, and it was really powerful seeing him perform that."

There is some good news for fans of the "Now You See Me" franchise, despite the loss of Morgan Freeman's Thaddeus Bradley. In a move that helped fix a major problem from the second film, Ruben Fleischer brought back Lizzy Caplan as Lula May. In case you forgot, Caplan's Lula "replaced" Isla Fisher's Henley Reeves in the second film when Fisher's real-life pregnancy prevented her from filming "Now You See Me 2."

Fleischer, for his part, is thrilled that he got to include both Caplan and Fisher. "I am so glad that we were able to feature both women because they're both incredible actors and both so funny and so talented," Fleischer told Entertainment Weekly. To that point, he was excited to feature a moment where Lula and Henley — alongside Ariana Greenblatt's newcomer June — bond over the lack of female magicians in their field.

"I love that moment when Jesse's character says, 'You two knew each other?' And they're like, 'Yeah, how many female magicians do you think there are in the world? And the fact that there's three of us in the room right now is kind of blowing my mind,'" Fleischer told the outlet. "It really just kind of calls out the sort of male-dominated magic world, but also I think it gives them power and that they have a relationship independent of the Horsemen, which no one else was expecting."

"Now You See Me: Now You Don't" is in theaters now, and a fourth "Now You See Me" movie — which will hopefully feature more of Mark Ruffalo — is in the works, according to Fleischer.