Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige confirms Avengers: Endgame will return focus to the original six members of Earth’s mightiest heroes when Captain America (Chris Evans), Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) reassemble in an attempt to reverse Thanos’ (Josh Brolin) devastating actions that obliterated half of all life in the universe.

“People would point out that that Cap wasn’t in Infinity War a whole lot,” Feige told Empire Magazine. “And Iron Man didn’t really speak for that last half hour because of what was going on. But those characters, and all of the original six, are very much the focus of Endgame in a very personal and emotional way.”

As seen in its trailers — kept as unrevealing as possible — the Avengers’ loss to Thanos is particularly unacceptable for Steve Rogers, who admits the surviving heroes are incapable of moving on. “[Cap’s] been our guy since we started at Marvel,” added co-screenwriter Christopher Markus, who penned the Captain America trilogy and these two-part Avengers films with writing partner Stephen McFeely. “He’s the barometer for the team. You go look for Captain America and if he’s still fighting, you keep fighting. But if he’s sitting on his butt in the dirt, saying, ‘Oh God,’ that really, really means you lost.”

That ending, and the ensuing reactions from shocked audiences, “was always about delivering on the promise that we had set up,” Feige previously said of the back-to-back Avengers epics, first unveiled in 2014.

“And that ending, which we had been working on for many years, and I do remember people, on all of the movies we’ve made and I’m sure on many of the movies we’ll make in the future, whenever the good guy wins, which is often — good guy, good woman, good hero wins — they go, ‘Eh, it’s kind of predictable. Good guy wins.’ Well, sometimes that’s fun. But for years I remember thinking, ‘I wonder what they’re going to do when they don’t?’ Because we knew that was coming. And it couldn’t have been better. The reaction was the best. The reaction. Was. The. Best.”

Endgame is expected to be the last hurrah for the original six Avengers first assembled in 2012’s Joss Whedon-directed blockbuster as it marks the expiration of the stars’ original contracts.

“Myself, Downey, Hemsworth, we all kind of started roughly at the same time, and I think we all, through Avengers 4, kind of wrap it up,” Evans said of Endgame, already an addendum to his original contract, during an April 2018 appearance on Good Morning America. “So at this point, I don’t know what’s next, but yeah, by 2019, that’s it.”

Avengers: Endgame releases April 26.

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