Spoiler alert: Please don’t read this if you haven’t seen Avengers: Infinity War and are planning to. There’s a major spoiler reveal here.
Heading into Avengers: Infinity War, Marvel was hinting quite aggressively that some of our favorites — characters we’d gotten to know through Marvel’s 10-year, 18-movie history — would bite the dust. And of course, those of us who have seen the movie now know exactly which heroes meet their grim outcomes.
It wasn’t just one or two deaths. It was half the Avengers. It was half the universe.
But back in July 2017, Mark Ruffalo — a.k.a. Bruce Banner, a.k.a. the Hulk, a.k.a the weak link when it comes to Marvel spoilers — actually let slip that this very thing would happen. Speaking to Good Morning America at the Disney D23 Expo last year, Ruffalo and Don Cheadle, who plays fellow Avenger War Machine, were talking about what makes Infinity War different from the Marvel movies before it. And toward the end of their video, Ruffalo semi-spoils the movie (at around 2:16 in the clip above).
“In this next one, ha — everybody dies!” he says, beginning to say “half” the Avengers die before catching himself. Here’s the exact moment when Ruffalo spoils the film, and Cheadle’s semi-panicked reaction:
At the time, no one really knew what to make of this — was Ruffalo was actually spoiling 10 years of Marvel moviemaking by accident, or were he and Cheadle purposely throwing up a red herring? Months later, in October, Ruffalo would accidentally live-stream a portion of Thor: Ragnarok on his Instagram story, making it seem like he’s not only bad at technology but also possibly capable of accidentally spoiling the biggest movie in Marvel Studios history.
Looking back now, it’s entertaining to see the “oh, shit” moment when Ruffalo actually did spoil the ending of Infinity War, the realization on his face, and how he and Cheadle play it off — especially now that Infinity War’s record-breaking opening weekend has made it clear that spoilers, no matter how big or accidental, were never going to keep audiences away from this film.
