Avengers: Endgame Directors Reveal 13 Reasons Why Star Katherine Langford’s Cut Role

Last October, when 13 Reasons Why star Katherine Langford was reportedly cast in a secret role in Avengers: Endgame, there was heavy speculation from fans as to whom she might be playing, given her direct involvement in the culminating chapter of a 22-film saga. Would Endgame introduce Langford as a new female superhero, who would go on to establish her own franchise? Or was she going to play a young Black Widow or the daughter of Tony Stark and Pepper Potts'? Even though Langford was nowhere to be seen in Endgame, the correct answer is one of those, directors Anthony and Joe Russo have confirmed.

Spoilers ahead for Avengers: Endgame.

In an interview on the MTV podcast Happy Sad Confused, the Russo brothers revealed that the 23-year-old Langford — best known for starring in the aforementioned Netflix series, and the 2018 indie film Love, Simon — was cast as the teenage version of Stark and Potts' daughter Morgan, who is played in Avengers: Endgame by 6-year-old Lexi Rabe. Langford was supposed to appear as the future self of Morgan to Tony in a vision, but her role was ultimately scrapped because it was confusing for test audiences.

“There was an idea that we had that Tony [Stark] was going to go into the metaphysical waystation that Thanos goes into when he snapped his fingers [at the end of Avengers: Infinity War],” Joe Russo told MTV. “There was going to be a future version of [Tony's] daughter in that waystation. We showed it to a test audience and it was really confusing for them.”

As Joe notes, Thanos went into the so-called ‘metaphysical waystation' when he snapped his fingers, where he met a younger version of Gamora, who had been introduced earlier as part of a flasback earlier in Infinity War. The directors had something similar in mind with Tony and Morgan as well, except with her future self, but it didn't work because Endgame never introduced future-Morgan.

“What we realised about it was that we didn't feel an emotional association with the adult version of his daughter,” Anthony Russo said. “It wasn't resonating with us on an emotional level, which is why we moved away from it.”

“The intention was that his future daughter — because these films are dealing with magic — forgave him and sort of gave him peace to go,” Joe Russo added. “And the idea felt resonant. But it was just too many ideas in an overly complicated movie.”

Instead, when Tony snaps his fingers in Endgame, we directly cut to the disintegration of Thanos & Co., which keeps the focus on said scene. And later, with the help of a holographic recording, we see Tony saying goodbye to the Morgan we know, in addition to an emotional call-back to one of the film's most adorable moments: “I love you, 3000.”