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Chris Evans appears to have hung up Captain America’s stars and stripes for good — or at least for now.
On Thursday, Evans tweeted that filming has wrapped on Avengers 4, the bookend to this year’s Avengers: Infinity War and seemingly the last chapter in Marvel’s Avengers team-up movies. (Marvel has not announced another Avengers movie beyond Avengers 4). But the wording of his message indicates that he’s also wrapped his tenure as Captain America:
Officially wrapped on Avengers 4. It was an emotional day to say the least. Playing this role over the last 8 years has been an honor. To everyone in front of the camera, behind the camera, and in the audience, thank you for the memories! Eternally grateful.
— Chris Evans (@ChrisEvans) October 4, 2018
Talking about being “eternally grateful” and playing the role in past-tense sound like more than someone who is relieved to be finished with a movie shoot; it sounds like Evans is finished playing Steve Rogers.
Evans’s tweet echoes what he’s been saying for the past several months about being done with the character after Avengers 4. In March he told the New York Times that he had no plans to return to the franchise once reshoots wrapped on the film, which he reiterated in an interview with Good Morning America during the Infinity War press tour, suggesting that there were no plans for him to play the character beyond 2019.
“I don’t know what’s next — but by 2019, that’s it,” he said.
Marvel has not yet confirmed anything about Cap’s future or what comes next for the Avengers, and the exact details of Evans’s contract are still unknown. But Evans finishing his turn as Rogers in Avengers 4 makes sense in the context of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s broader plot. Infinity War contains a looming theme of death that seemed to turn on Rogers’s worldview about “trading lives” and his willingness to sacrifice himself for the greater good.
Marvel is also introducing Captain Marvel in her own solo movie in March, and presumably to the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s characters in Avengers 4, based on the Infinity War post-credits scene. That would make the film the perfect moment for the Avengers’ current leaders, like Steve Rogers, to pass the torch to the next generation of heroes like Captain Marvel, Black Panther, and Spider-Man.
Given what Evans has said in interviews and the way the movies themselves have pointed to Rogers’s death, Evans’s gratitude tweet feels like confirmation that he’s saying goodbye to Cap — making Avengers 4 even more of a can’t-miss Marvel moment than it already was.
Avengers 4 is set for release on May 3, 2019.
