A deleted scene from Avengers: Endgame has created a room of possibility for the villain Thanos to make a return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, after being killed at the end of the film. The deleted scene is an alternate version of the interaction that takes place between Bruce Banner and the Ancient One during the battle of New York, in which she explains the concept of alternate realities. In the scene, that is available on Disney Plus, the Ancient One tells Banner that removing an Infinity Stone creates a new timeline, but then adds something that didn’t make it to the final cut of the film. She tells him that she has used the Time Stone to see beyond her lifetime. She tells Banner that Thanos’ snap, which was believed to have killed half the universe’s population, didn’t exactly kill them. Thanos instead ‘willed’ them out of existence, thereby leaving open the possibility of their resurrection.
Here’s what she exactly tells him, “If someone dies, they will always die. Death is irreversible, but Thanos is not. Those you’ve lost are not dead. They’ve been willed out of existence, which means they can be willed back. But it doesn’t come cheap.” So according to Ancient One’s theory, Thanos isn’t dead. He has simply been willed out of existence. At the end of Endgame, Tony Stark uses the Infinity Gauntlet to reverse Thanos’ snap, and sacrifices himself in the process. But while it is theoretically possible for someone to once again travel through time, gather all the stones and bring back Thanos, it is also worth noting that the scene was deleted for a reason. Avengers: Endgame is the highest-grossing film of all time surpassing James Cameron’s Avatar.
