Warning: There spoilers ahead for Avengers: Endgame!
Avengers: Endgame boasts numerous callbacks to previous MCU entries, some of which manifest in the form of departed cast members reprising their roles from earlier films. Robert Redford, Rene Russo, and John Slattery were among the actors who returned for the Infinity Saga’s grand finale. However, one of the biggest surprises arguably came when Hulk came face-to-face with Tilda Swinton’s Ancient One when the heroes traveled back to 2012.
“It was a surprise to me, too!,” Swinton recently told IndieWire. “And it was a pleasure. But what was a real surprise was, we shot it one summer day, and then over a year later, I went back to reshoot it because a couple of lines had been changed, a couple of plot points had been changed. And there was a tweaking of my costume.”
Bruce Banner originally visited the Sanctum Sanctorum to find Dr. Strange and the Time Stone embedded in the Eye of Agamotto. But since the Chitauri invasion occurred a few years before Strange became a Master of the Mystic Arts, the Ancient One was still the owner of the Eye.
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According to Swinton, her reshoots focused on the explanation of this science. In her own words, the filmmakers re-tooled her lines about “the information that the Ancient One holds about the nature of the [Infinity] Stones, that they have to be put back, because otherwise…” She apparently then made a noise indicating a timeline split.
“That was amazing, and a whole other world of filmmaking,” added Swinton. “But, boy, was it worth it. They tweaked it into something extraordinary.”
What did you think of Swinton’s cameo in Avengers: Endgame? Would you like to see her make another appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Let us know in the comment section below!