This article contains spoilers for Avengers: Endgame, so for the five of you who haven't seen it yet... look away.
So, Avengers: Endgame eh? Thanks to some time-travelling shenanigans, our superheroes got to revive everyone who was killed in the Snap and take down Thanos, but there were some casualties along the way.
Travelling to Vormir, Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) fought over who would sacrifice themselves to get the Soul Stone, and obviously the Widow won...
This choice caused a bit of upset, seeing as a) Black Widow has a solo film planned and b) she is the first female Avenger in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Speaking to The New York Times, screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely explained why it had to be her.
"Her journey, in our minds, had come to an end if she could get the Avengers back," McFeely said. "She comes from such an abusive, terrible, mind-control background, so when she gets to Vormir and she has a chance to get the family back, that's a thing she would trade for.
"The toughest thing for us was we were always worried that people weren't going to have time to be sad enough. The stakes are still out there and they haven't solved the problem.
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"But we lost a big character – a female character – how do we honour it? We have this male lens and it's a lot of guys being sad that a woman died."
Markus then added: "Tony gets a funeral. Natasha doesn't. That's partly because Tony's this massive public figure and she's been a cipher the whole time. It wasn't necessarily honest to the character to give her a funeral.
"The biggest question about it is what Thor raises there on the dock: 'We have the Infinity Stones. Why don't we just bring her back?'"
"But that's the everlasting exchange," McFeely said. "You bring her back, you lose the stone."
When asked if they thought about killing Hawkeye, the pair state that there was a draft where they did but Jen, their visual effects producer, told them not to "take this away from (Natasha)" and that it would be "melodramatic" not to reunite Clint with the family.
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Avengers: Endgame is out now.
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Disney/Marvel Studios Avengers: Endgame 4K Includes Bonus Disk [Blu-ray] [2019] [Region Free]
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Disney/Marvel Studios Avengers: 1-4 Complete Blu-ray Boxset Includes Bonus Disk [2019] [Region Free]
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Joe Anderton is a freelance news writer at Digital Spy, having worked there since 2016. In his time, he's covered a host of live events and interviewed celebrities big and small. A big fan of TV and movies both mainstream and obscure, Joe also enjoys video games and in particular PlayStation. Joe currently does not use Twitter, but he only ever used it to tell people to watch the film Help! I'm a Fish.
