'Avengers: Endgame' Almost Had One Of The Avengers Be The Soul Stone

Last night, there was an Avengers: Endgame watch party featuring the involvement of directors Anthony & Joe Russo. The duo hopped on Instagram live for the first hour, but they live tweeted the movie throughout the entire three-hour runtime, which included answering some questions posed by fans. One such question resulted in the intriguing revelation that the filmmakers once considered turning one of The Avengers into the Soul Stone. But which of the Marvel superheroes would it have been?

A Twitter user asked this question during the Avengers: Endgame watch party last night:

Here's what the Russo Brothers had to say on their official Twitter account:

That's right, there was a brief moment early in development of Avengers: Endgame when Captain America could have potentially been the Soul Stone. That's not to say that Cap would have been physically turned into the Soul Stone through some kind of transfiguration, but that he likely somehow contained the stone within him. It's easy to see why that idea was abandoned, because explaining how that's possible would likely require a lot of exposition, and it's already hard to accept on the surface.

Outside of the logistics of making Captain America the Soul Stone, that idea also feels like it's a little too similar to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. In the final chapter of the fantasy franchise, it's revealed that Harry Potter is the final horcrux, one of several items Voldemort used to hold part of his soul in order to stay alive. In the climax of the story, Harry has to die in order to release the horcrux from his body, but he's able to return by way of a Resurrection Stone. It's not clear whether Captain America would have survived if he was turned into the Soul Stone, and the filmmakers themselves likely don't know either since that's an idea they abandoned quickly.

It's hard to imagine the Soul Stone being attained any other way than it is in the final cut of the movie, especially since it creates such a harrowing situation for Hawkeye and Black Widow, resulting in the latter sacrificing herself on Vormir to save the only family she has left. That decision in itself was rather controversial among some fans, but I imagine the reaction would have been much more unfavorable if Captain America turned out to be the Soul Stone.