Avengers: Endgame is coming back to cinemas this September ahead of the release of Avengers: Doomsday, but it’s not going to be exactly as we remember it. It was confirmed last week by Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige that “new surprises” were going to be included, and now we know they will change the movie.
Originally, it was thought that the additional footage for the Avengers: Endgame re-release might have just been a new deleted scene as a post-credit segment. Marvel did this before when the MCU epic was re-released in June 2019, so it was expected to be the same this time around.
However, returning director Joe Russo has confirmed that the re-release will feature “footage that is set in the Doomsday story that we have added to Avengers: Endgame”, making it a “critical companion story” to the next Avengers movie.
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Related: All you need to know about Avengers: Doomsday
“It’s an opportunity to create a bridge from Endgame to Doomsday in a very unique way, and because the movie was so successful, we have an opportunity to re-release it,” he said at the Sands Film Festival (via Deadline).
“You don’t always get the chance to re-release because it costs money, so the fact that we can enhance the story of Doomsday by bridging it to Endgame and these characters that we worked with for years that we love so much, and continue their story. It’s a really unique opportunity.”
Russo went on to explain that the new footage will be a “set-up for what you’re gonna watch in December when you see Avengers: Doomsday”. So now the question for Marvel fans to speculate over is just what the new footage could be.
Given that we know it is new content, it seems unlikely that we’ll see the metal clanking sounds from the Avengers: Endgame credits retconned into it actually being the sound of Doctor Doom forging his mask, rather than a callback to the first Iron Man movie.
Instead, with the return of Chris Evans as Steve Rogers, it seems more likely that the new footage will be centred on him. Perhaps we’ll see him putting the Time Stones back at the various points in the timeline. This could lead to answering the long-running mystery of how the hell you return the Soul Stone, given the price you pay to get it.
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Related: Chris Evans breaks silence on Avengers: Doomsday return
It makes sense when you consider Feige said that “Doomsday picks up where Avengers: Endgame left off” when debuting the trailer at CinemaCon last week, suggesting it’s a direct sequel even though we’ve had seven years’ worth of countless TV shows and movies.
The change to the original Multiverse Saga of Kang as the Big Bad has called for a rapid rewriting, so a retcon to Avengers: Endgame makes sense as the cleanest way to do it. It doesn’t completely wipe out every MCU outing we’ve seen since as we know Doomsday is bringing back new(ish) characters like Shang-Chi, Yelena and more.
It just means that, maybe, you don’t need to do a complete Phase 4 and 5 rewatch before settling in to watch Avengers: Doomsday this Christmas. You will, however, apparently need to go and see the Avengers: Endgame re-release.
Avengers: Endgame is re-released in cinemas on 25 September, while Avengers: Doomsday is released in cinemas on 18 December.
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Movies Editor, Digital Spy  Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor.  Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world.   After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.
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