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Avengers: Endgame scripted but never filmed a “very funny” meeting between Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) and Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper), who was tasked with retrieving the Aether when time traveling to 2013 Asgard.

“There was a long scene between Rocket and Jane Foster that was very funny,” co-writer Christopher Markus told Backstory Magazine when asked about discarded concepts that never made it past the scripting stage.

“We never shot it because in the end all you needed was what you saw, which was Rocket sneaking past because you didn’t have a primary Avenger in the scene, therefore there wasn’t a ton of emotional repair work to be done. It was just funny, which is nothing wrong. It was just sort of him explaining the ridiculous situation to her and her grasping it and jumping ahead of him on the science.”

Though the scene was “satisfying,” Markus added, it ultimately failed to “justify its place.”

The meeting, set during the events of Thor: The Dark World, was excised in favor of spending more time with Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and mother Frigga (Rene Russo), who had been dead for a decade by the time Thor meets her again in Endgame.

“Once we figured out the sort of track we wanted Thor to be on, that he was really going to crumble — as any of us would, probably — that the only person who could put him together [would be Frigga],” Markus said at San Diego Comic-Con, where he and co-writer Stephen McFeely revealed a scrapped reunion between Thor and ex-girlfriend Jane.

“We wrote a scene with him and Jane, but Jane isn’t the person to put him back together. Odin is not the person to put him back together. Really, it only is his mother. And we couldn’t have him run, get the stone, then go talk to his mom — it would take a disproportionately amount of time. Plus, we never know how the Aether turns into a stone, no one’s ever seen it happen, it just happens.”

How Rocket manages to fulfill his task and claim the Aether, at the time embedded within Jane’s body, goes unseen. “It seemed for decorum, that maybe getting it out of Jane Foster was better left offscreen,” McFeely explained.

Portman next rejoins Hemsworth in Thor: Love and Thunder under returning Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi. Marvel Studios has dated that picture November 5, 2021.

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