WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War, in theaters now.
Tom Holland's Spider-Man met a tragic end in Avengers: Infinity War, but that wasn't always the case. According to the movie's co-writer Christopher Markus, Peter Parker's fate was much different in an early draft.
In an early version of the script, Peter Parker wasn't the one that joined Tony Stark aboard Ebony Maw's ship to rescue Doctor Strange. Instead, Anthony Mackie's Falcon was set to make the trip to space. The teenage web-crawler would have stayed on Earth and just might have actually survived Thanos' culling.
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“There was one [version] where Spider-Man did not go to space, and where Falcon went to space,” Markus told Yahoo! Entertainment. “And it was fun, it was interesting, it’s always great to have those guys in various situations and there was a lot to do with them in both situations, but we weren’t getting as much emotion as we could if we brought them back to people who know them.”
In the final cut, Falcon stayed with Steve Rogers and Black Widow and joined allies like Bucky Barnes and Black Panther to defend the Vision in Wakanda. Meanwhile, Spidey went off to Titan to join the fight against Thanos, where he eventually perished.
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That proved to be a smart decision not only because of the character's humorous exchanges with Iron Man and the Guardians of the Galaxy, but also because of his emotional death scene that broke the hearts of audiences everywhere.
In theaters now, Avengers: Infinity War stars Robert Downey Jr., Josh Brolin, Mark Ruffalo, Tom Hiddleston, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Jeremy Renner, Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Olsen, Sebastian Stan, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Bettany, Samuel L. Jackson, Cobie Smulders, Benedict Wong, Zoe Saldana, Karen Gillan, Vin Diesel, Dave Bautista, Pom Klementieff, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Holland and Anthony Mackie.