Avengers: Endgame Writers Explain That First Major Death

*Spoilers ahead*

One of the scenes in the first half of Avengers: Endgame features a surprisingly anticlimactic end for the Mad Titan Thanos, one that almost seems too easy for the surviving superheroes. Their revenge is quickly won as they strike up a plan, set out for a garden in space, and tag-team Thanos into a chokehold in no time at all.

But they come out with Thor’s ego crushed, even after he abruptly chops Thanos’s head off after learning he had destroyed the Infinity Stones. So, the mission proves to be a failure.

While the scene is certainly a game-changer for the characters, as they defeat Thanos extremely early on in the film, it turns out, it was hard to put on paper. According to screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, it was one of the more difficult scenes in the movie to pen.

"We always had this problem. The guy has the ultimate weapon. He can see it coming," McFeely explained in an interview with The New York Times. "We were just banging our heads for weeks, and at some point, Trinh Tran went, 'Can’t we just kill him?' And we all went, 'What happens if you just kill him? Why would you kill him? Why would he let you kill him?'”

Thanos puts up no fight in his execution because he believes his destiny has been fulfilled. He doesn't have the stones anymore, so what else could he accomplish? "It reinforced Thanos’s agenda. He was done," Markus continued. "Not to make him too Christ-like, but it was like, 'If I’ve got to die, I can die now.'"

Thanos’s death simply serves as temporary vengeance, but the loss of the stones gives the remaining heroes something to fight for throughout the movie. If Thanos never destroyed them, their fight would be over and there would be no conflict.

The scene ultimately served as a great way to introduce the problem in the film while giving the characters and fans the pleasure of seeing the villain killed early on.