Chris Evans Gave Mackie Early Endgame Script to Reveal Captain America Handover
Chris Evans slipped Anthony Mackie the script for Avengers: Endgame early so Mackie would learn in private that he was about to become Captain America.
Mackie described the secret handover in an interview with Cigar Aficionado, reported by Variety on Sept. 27, 2026. Evans trusted his co-star with the ending before most others had seen it.
The reveal came at the close of 2019's Avengers: Endgame, when Evans's Steve Rogers passes his shield to Mackie's Sam Wilson. Evans had first played Captain America in 2011's Captain America: The First Avenger, according to Variety. The two actors had spent five years making Marvel films together as Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson, the Falcon.
Mackie has spoken before about how emotional that moment was. "We cried. We drank. We laughed," he said of the conversation in which Evans told him he would succeed him, as quoted by BuzzFeed in 2019.
The story resurfaced as Endgame returned to theatres. The re-release, with extra footage under the title Avengers: Endgame Encore, took $26 million domestically, the United States and Canada, and $60 million overseas for an $86 million global weekend, in studio estimates reported Sept. 27 ahead of Monday's actuals, per Variety. That is a strong hold for a film seven years old.
Before the re-release, Endgame had grossed $2.79 billion as the second-highest-grossing movie in box office history. After the weekend, its total stood at $2.88 billion.
For Mackie, the shield handover led to a new run. He played Sam Wilson in Marvel's series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, then took the lead in the next Captain America film, with Malcolm Spellman, head writer of that series, attached to write it, as reported by Variety in 2021. His first feature film as Captain America was 2025's Captain America: Brave New World. Mackie has called taking the shield the honour of a lifetime.
What makes this stand out is the low-key way it was done. No announcement. No press release. Just one actor handing pages to another.
The next team-up is already dated. Avengers: Doomsday is scheduled for release on Dec. 18.
