Captain America was originally supposed to enter Avengers: Infinity War late in the movie with a scene-stealing Wakanda entrance that eventually went to Thor, but directors Anthony and Joe Russo brought the star-spangled Avenger in earlier because no one at Marvel Studios liked Cap’s late entrance.

“Everybody at Marvel, I think other than Joe and I, they were mad at us because we were bringing him in the movie so late [laughs],” Anthony Russo told ET. “We thought it was the right spot to do it, but after a while we kind of gave into everybody’s, ‘We need more Cap!’”

A bearded and on-the-run Captain America famously steps from the shadows when rescuing Scarlet Witch and Vision from Proxima Midnight and Corvus Glaive in Edinburgh, Scotland, only later venturing to Wakanda to reunite with recently reformed best buddy Bucky and Wakanda ruler T’Challa.

Thor makes his dramatic return to Earth in the midst of the Wakanda-set battle between Earth’s mightiest heroes and the Wakandan army against Thanos’ Black Order and his legion of vicious foot soldiers, the Outriders, blasting into the fray accompanied by newfound allies Groot and Rocket Raccoon of the Guardians of the Galaxy.

Earlier on in the process, Cap would have resurfaced in a similar manner: “He had Thor’s heroic entrance in the Wakanda battle. That was originally Cap,” Joe Russo added.Our thinking was that he was on the run, nobody could find him, and so we thought that it would be this really compelling way to use the character — especially because we were trying to thin the ranks out so we could track everyone — and then we realized we had a really good spot to bring him in earlier in Scotland, to save Vision and Wanda. And so we started moving around heroic moments for characters.”

“But that choice about bringing Cap in, that was sort of at the heart of what we — the premise of the movie for us was always that because of what happened in Captain America: Civil War, because Cap and Tony had the falling out, because the Avengers are divided, this is why they lose to Thanos. Because they’re not together, they’re divided,” Anthony explained.

“So [we were] playing with this idea that it’s hard for Tony and Cap to get back together on the same team and having Cap sort of be late to the party because [Cap, Black Widow, and Falcon] are forced to live underground, and then hiding from the government. That was always the basic premise of the movie for us.”