WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Avengers: Endgame, in theaters now.
Avengers: Endgame star Anthony Mackie has finally shed insight into that jaw-dropping final scene from the movie and revealed how Chris Evans told him that Steve Rogers would be handing the Captain America's shield off to Sam Wilson, the Falcon.
"You know when we went into it we realized the gravity and the magnitude of that moment," Mackie said to IMDb. "It sends Steve off right. I didn't even know it was happening. We were at his house and he goes 'you excited?' I'm like 'what are you talking about?' and he goes 'you don't know?' I'm like 'no what' and he jumps up, runs out of the room, comes back in with the script."
"He's like 'read it!' And I read the scene and I'm like 'woah...' and he's like 'yeesssss!' We cried, we drank, we laughed, and it became this thing," he added. "I'm very happy that I got that moment with Chris, for him to not only pass me the shield but tell me what was happening in the script."
After Steve's time-traveling escapades to return the Infinity Stones the Avengers borrowed to their rightful place in history, he ended up staying in the past to live his life with Peggy Carter. Shortly after he disappeared, he returned to the modern MCU as an old man, where he passed his mysteriously-reconstructed shield down to Sam after years of being brothers-in-arms.
"What I wanted the audience to come away from it was that Steve got the ability to go and spend his life with Peggy Carter," Mackie continued. "We're catching Steve at the end of the life that he wanted to live. He found that happiness that Tony was telling him about."
In the film, this was, of course, altered as Steve didn't grow old because of his super-soldier blood being tampered with; he simply wanted a happy ending after realizing the importance of family in the wake of Tony Stark's sacrifice.
Directed by Joe and Anthony Russo, Avengers: Endgame stars Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Chris Evans as Captain America, Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, Brie Larson as Captain Marvel, Paul Rudd as Ant-Man, Don Cheadle as War Machine, Karen Gillan as Nebula, Danai Gurira as Okoye and Bradley Cooper as Rocket, with Gwyneth Paltrow Pepper Potts, Jon Favreau as Happy Hogan, Benedict Wong as Wong, Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie and Josh Brolin as Thanos.