Avengers: Infinity War | Marvel Studios

Some Captain America fans were disappointed that the character didn’t have a whole lot to do in Avengers: Infinity War. After all, we don’t even see him for 40 minutes, and after that, he doesn’t have as much of an arc as someone like Tony Stark. Well, it could have been a lot worse.

Infinity War has just been released on video-on-demand, and in the audio commentary for the film, the screenwriters reveal that an early draft had Steve Rogers not appear until well into the third act.

In the completed film, there’s a scene near the end where Corvus Glaive is about to kill Vision on Wakanda, but Steve Rogers runs in and tackles Glaive. In an early draft, this was actually Captain America’s entrance.

“There was a draft where that tackle was Cap’s first appearance in the movie,” Christopher Markus said on the commentary. “They called us insane. And we may well have been.”

In retrospect, the writers and directors of the film laughed at the idea of having an Avengers movie with no Captain America until about two hours in. But it wasn’t so obvious at first that this was a bad idea, especially since Infinity War was such a massive project and no one really knew how to go about handling all these characters in one film.

“We had no model for this movie when we all set out to start to make it,” Anthony Russo said. “Never has a movie been made with this number of characters…there was a trial and error process to figuring out how you fine tune this thing.”

Avengers: Infinity War | Marvel Studios | Marvel Studios

Joe Russo explained that the idea would have been that Captain America shows up at a key moment in the battle for the first time in order to save Vision.

“And then after we read the draft, we did conclude that we were all insane,” Joe Russo said.

Co-writer Stephen McFeely agreed, saying that it wasn’t at all satisfying to have so little Captain America. So they still gave Steve Rogers that moment of coming in to save the day, but they just had it happen much earlier: when he comes to rescue Vision and Wanda.

Additionally, McFeely provided a tease for Avengers 4 by promising that Steve Rogers will have a lot more to do in that film.

“We have a unique opportunity here…we know we have two movies to tell character arcs, and so some characters are going to be better served in the second story,” McFeely said. “I think it’s okay to say Cap has a big story in the second one.”

Captain America does get a decent amount to do in Infinity War, playing a key role in the Battle of Wakanda and getting to go up against Thanos at the very end. Chris Evans also gets the last line in the movie, getting to play Steve as being totally devastated by the apparent death of Bucky Barnes.

But there’s also plenty left to explore with Captain America in Avengers 4, especially his relationship with Tony Stark, who he has still not spoken to since Civil War. Fans can look forward to that and now, they can be grateful that Infinity War included as much Steve Rogers as it did.