Avengers: Endgame: Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow almost had a different storyline, Anthony Russo reveals

Warning: the story below contains spoilers for Avengers: Endgame

Scarlett Johansson’s Marvel character Black Widow almost had a completely different storyline in Avengers: Endgame, one of the film’s directors has revealed.

In the early stages of the movie’s development, one possible idea saw Black Widow taking care of the many children left without parents in the wake of Thanos’s infamous snap, which wiped out half of the galaxy at the end of Avengers: Infinity War.

Anthony Russo, who co-directed Endgame with his brother Joe, detailed the possible scenario in a conversation with the podcast The Gist.

“One thing that we talked about a lot and I thought was really profound, but it was almost too large of an idea for us to wrangle, but we did try for a while – is just the idea that one quarter of all children have no parents. Assuming you started with two parents,” Anthony Russo said.

“So that’s a lot of global orphans. Just the staggering number of that. I believe at one point really early in development, Black Widow was actually leading the organisation in DC that was in charge of orphans, basically. That was what she was heading up five years later. But yes, it’s fascinating when you start running it down.”

While Black Widow, along with the rest of the Avengers, are indeed shown trying to cope with the consequences of Thanos’s snap, that specific storyline never materialised.

Instead, Johansson’s character sacrifices herself to collect the Soul Stone during the Avengers’ collective effort to reverse Thanos’s actions – leaving many fans disappointed by the character’s fate.