If Avengers: Infinity War has a big death, it’ll be permanent, says Feige

Kevin Feige, architect of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, knows that everybody wants to know about Avengers: Infinity War — and which of the Avengers make it out of the movie alive.

With the 10-year anniversary of the MCU coming up, Infinity War finally paying off the franchise’s Thanos subplot and many actors reaching the end of their initial contracts, speculation on who’ll live and who’ll die is running rampant. And nerds aren’t being paranoid. Feige admits that Infinity War is absolutely a both a turning point for the MCU and, in combination with its untitled 2019 sequel, an endpoint for a narrative arc that’s 22 movies long.

It’s just like a big Marvel Comics crossover event, he told Entertainment Weekly. “Every great event in the 50 plus years of publishing history would have an impact on the individual books going forward after that.”

And that means that a lot of thing’s are going to change in the MCU — the producers, screenwriters and directors at Marvel Entertainment are going to have a different set of toys to play with.

“You start to think differently about how the characters are interacting,” Feige explained, “what character’s stories are coming to a close, and what character’s stories are only just beginning. Those stories will continue. I think they’ll continue in surprisingly different and unexpected ways after these two Avengers films.”

Feige was clear that a story “coming to a close” doesn’t necessarily mean that that character will die — citing the example of the finale episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which Picard finally joins the crew’s poker game. But when asked whether Marvel would consider bringing a movie character back to life, he had a revealing answer.

“I mean, I could always list off the characters that we’ve killed in our movies that haven’t come back,” Feige said, “but the big ones, which I know they’re looking at …? [Pause.] I would just say, yes. People need to be careful what they wish for.”

Seems like some of our favorite Avengers will certainly be walking off into the sunset — but others definitely won’t. And we won’t be seeing them again anytime soon.