Brie Larson wore her original Captain Marvel suit on set of Avengers: Endgame but had a different one in the movie because Marvel Studios changed their plans. The studio officially announced plans to bring Carol Danvers into the Marvel Cinematic Universe back in 2014. At one point she was considered to have a cameo in Avengers: Age of Ultron, but plans solidified to have her MCU debut come in her solo Captain Marvel movie.
Thanks to some reshuffling of the Phase 3 release schedule, Captain Marvel arrived in theaters just a few months before Carol was set to appear in Avengers: Endgame. The origin movie saw Carol change to her usual red, blue, and yellow suit by the end, but that isn’t how she appeared in the team-up film. When Carol came back to Earth after several decades, she had changed her costume - and did so again in the five-years that happened after The Snap. But, set photos from Avengers: Endgame show Larson still wearing Captain Marvel’s original costume - and that’s because it was intended to be her suit for this movie and not Captain Marvel.
In the recently released The Art of Avengers: Endgame book, Director of Visual Development Andy Park confirmed that Captain Marvel’s “original” suit was designed for Avengers: Endgame. He fully intended to see the suit in both movies as that was the plan. But, it was later decided that it’d make more sense for Carol to have changed her look at some point in the three decades since audiences last saw her, giving Park an opportunity to come up with some alternate looks - like one with Ms. Marvel’s traditional scarf.
This information from Park provides us with an inside look at Marvel Studios’ process and just how unusual the productions for Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame were. They wouldn’t be in this position under normal circumstances, but the earlier timeline for Endgame meant Larson was filming scenes for her second MCU appearance before she worked on Captain Marvel. Instead of having production completed on her solo film and knowing how the movie was shaping up, Marvel was left to make changes to Carol’s MCU journey in post-production. This could also explain why Captain Marvel had her original suit in all of the marketing materials for Avengers: Endgame.
“The way it worked was I designed her look first for the Russo brothers for Endgame, because she initially filmed her Endgame appearances before her solo film. It was a very odd situation I haven’t had in all my years that I’ve been here, to design a character for one director knowing right away she’s going to have her own solo film with a different director. So she acted in Endgame with her solo-film costume, and then it was decided later that they wanted a new costume for Endgame, because why would she wear this exact same costume decades later? That’s when they approached me about exploring new looks. They ranged from weathering her current look as if she’s gone through many years of adventures, but she kept the same costume - maybe with little additions like the sash - and then I started doing the range of pushing that design further, breaking up the colors, changing the colors a little bit, introducing a little bit more blue.”
With four suits in two appearances, the changeover that Captain Marvel’s suit has gone through is not likely to stop here. Her suit has the built-in capability to change colors on the fly and is something Marvel’s already taken advantage of. They figured out an explanation for these changes in the movies, but there is the bonus that these new suits give Marvel the ability to cash in on new Captain Marvel merchandise. That may not be the driving force behind the change for Avengers: Endgame, but it could be if Carol has another new look the next time she appears.
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