“You never say never,” was Chris Evans’ response to colleague Scarlett Johansson when she asked if he’d consider returning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But his feelings are actually a lot deeper than that.
The casual chat was as part of Variety’s Actors on Actors and mostly centered on the two Avengers sharing a lot of love for their characters and their time spent with the other MCU actors over the last ten years. And even though Johansson and Evans’ storylines came to a close with Avengers: Endgame, ScarJo will be picking back up with the Black Widow prequel soon. Evans on the other hand, sounds like he’s just fine retiring his Captain America.
“It’s not a hard no, but it’s not an eager yes either,” he gave Johansson as another answer. “There’s other things I’m working on right now. And, you know, the worry is you don’t wanna...I think Cap had such a tricky arc to stick the landing, and I think they did a really nice job letting him complete his journey.”
As Evans continued to ponder the idea he explained that if Disney was ever to bring Cap back, he wouldn’t want it to be a “cash grab” or just because it would simply excite fans.
He said, “What are we revealing? What are we adding to the story? You don’t want it to just be that one you know, ‘Man, they had this great thing and that little thing over there that we’ll just forget about.’ So a lot of things would have to come together but it doesn’t feel, at this time, like that would be the thing that I’d be looking to do, no.”
Johansson went on to express her affection for the “beautiful” ending for Steve and Agent Peggy Carter, as confusing as that might be, which made Evans add one more thought on his theoretical return. “It’d be a shame to sour that,” he said. “I’m very protective of it, you know what I mean? It was such a precious time, and jumping onto the movie was a terrifying prospect to me. I said no a bunch of times, and there’s a million, a million and one ways it could have gone wrong. And it could have backfired and I could have regretted it. And it didn’t happen. And to keep on testing that is just...it almost feels like, you know, maybe you should let this one sit.”
As much as some of us might miss Evans’ Cap, he sure had a great run. Now it’s time to tell some new stories.
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