Avengers 4 directors reveal why Red Skull guards Soul Stone PLUS ‘Hugo Weaving was asked’

It was one of the biggest shocks in Marvel‘s Avengers Infinity War. Red Skull had survived his encounter with the Space Stone in Captain America The First Avenger after all and was transported to Vormir to become Keeper of the Soul Stone. Last night at a special Q&A screening of Avengers Infinity War in Hollywood the Russo Brothers revealed what’s happened to him since and why they chose him. They said: “First of all, he had a very mystical ending at the end of Captain America The First Avenger.”

They continued: “He’s been on a journey since then. He’s a wraith now, he’s a slave to the stones.

“He’s no longer the same person. He’s transcendent. He’s a ghost.

“Maybe played around once or twice in it not being him, but we needed someone the audience would trust, so that when he explained the rules of how you obtain the stone, that they would believe the character.”

Marvel fans discovered that Ross Marquand played the Red Skull in Avengers Infinity War instead of Hugo Weaving.

When asked if Weaving was originally meant to return to the role, the directors diplomatically replied: “He may have. He was asked.”

On the location of the Soul Stone, they said: “We knew that we need to do something special with that. So we knew that it also needed to have an emotional connection to the plot and to Thanos as a character.

“I think it was the last Stone that we figured out where it was because it was the hardest story to come up with.

“The point where we decided the movie was Thanos’ movie, we needed the lowest moment in the film to belong to him.”

They added: “How could we create pain, how could we dimensionalise him so that he went on a journey in the film because if he was just this mindless villain it was going to become a two-dimensional story.”

Ross was recently asked if he was returning as Red Skull in Avengers 4.

He said: “I don’t know. I can’t answer that question. I really don’t know.”

Avengers 4 will be released in UK cinemas on April 26, 2019.