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The climax of Avengers: Endgame went through multiple revisions, but screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely never intended to include a resurrected Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) as one of the assembled Avengers.

“I don’t think we ever put him in,” Markus said at San Diego Comic-Con. “It was [because] we have such a traffic jam of heroes and so much power, that to have a guy who, in combat, would just be firing a gun... it doesn’t come off well for Nick Fury, frankly.”

Fury is instead reserved for a cameo, making a silent appearance at the funeral for Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr).

Jackson will next loan his voice to Marvel Studios’ first-ever animated series, What If...?, available exclusively on the Disney+ streaming service in summer 2021. The Marvel Cinematic Universe veteran also hopes to stay on in his iconic role and wishes to one day see Fury journey to the African kingdom of Wakanda.

“There hadn’t been discussions about [Fury in Wakanda] previously from anybody except Sam [laughs]. What the future holds, who knows,” Marvel Studios president and producer Kevin Feige recently told BET when promoting Spider-Man: Far From Home.

“Sam was very funny in this roundtable we did talking about how he’d disappeared for a while. He shows up in Avengers: Age of Ultron, and then he’s not in Captain America: Civil War and hadn’t been in a number of the movies for a while. I remember meeting with him two years ago and saying, ‘I know it’s been a while, Sam. Here is our plan. 2019 is going to be the year of Fury.’ And we walked him through young, two-eyed Fury in Captain Marvel, the one poignant shot of him in Endgame and seeing him in [Spider-Man]. And it’s fun now to see the year of Fury complete.”

Avengers: Endgame is available to own on Digital HD July 30 and on 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray August 13.