Avengers: Endgame’s deleted Soul World scene would have created an Infinity Stone plot hole. It’s gradually becoming clear that Marvel conducted a surprising number of reshoots for Avengers: Endgame, which means there are a lot more deleted scenes than were released on the Blu-ray. In a smart move, Disney has chosen to hold a lot of these back for the launch of Disney+, their new streaming service.

That includes what’s become the most sought-after deleted scene in Marvel history. The original script of Avengers: Endgame included a scene set immediately after the snap, in which Tony Stark was granted a vision of the future. There, he encountered the teenage version of his daughter Morgan played by Katherine Langford of 13 Reasons Why fame. Test audiences found the scene confusing, and so it was cut. It’s probably a good job, as it’s not particularly well-constructed and features rambling, surprisingly incoherent dialogue.

It would also have introduced some pretty significant Infinity Stone plot holes. The scene is intended as a mirror of Thanos’ experience in Avengers: Infinity War, when the Mad Titan’s own snap resulted in his entering an altered state of consciousness. He entered a bright orange realm, which comic book readers instantly identified as the Soul World contained within the Soul Stone, and there encountered the younger version of his daughter Gamora. All this made perfect sense; Gamora had been sacrificed to the Soul Stone, which would have consumed her soul and would have been feeding on her inner darkness, reducing her to the form of an innocent child. But the appearance of a teenage Morgan is, frankly, impossible to explain away.

Each Infinity Stone allows the bearer to manipulate a particular aspect of reality, and it’s possible to identify which Stone is active by looking at the colors of energy released. The orange background means that both Thanos and Tony Stark are having experiences through the Soul Stone - and yet Tony’s experience involves time travel. There is no way the Soul Stone should have been able to grant Tony the ability to interact with his daughter’s future self; that is the province of the Time Stone, meaning the background should have been green.

Making this even stranger, Thanos was able to interact with Gamora because her soul had been consumed; her sacrifice was a major part of his arc in Avengers: Infinity War. The symmetry between Thanos’ experience and Tony’s only works if future Morgan is herself contained within the Soul Stone as well. Thankfully, that’s impossible; the Infinity Stones have been destroyed in Morgan’s timeline, meaning Tony Stark’s daughter can never suffer Gamora’s fate.

It’s a good job Marvel cut the Morgan Stark deleted scene. It may be powerful from a conceptual point of view, but it’s fundamentally flawed, to the extent that it creates a major plot hole. The only way to fix it would be to suggest that, in both cases, the Soul World visions weren’t real at all; they were just illusions generated to bring Thanos and Tony Stark peace. That interpretation would have robbed them both of all emotional impact.

More: Phew, It’s Good That Avengers: Endgame Cut Iron Man’s Soulworld Scene

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