An early piece of concept art for Avengers: Age of Ultron shows MegaUltron. After the record-setting success of The Avengers, the bar was set very high for its sequel. Joss Whedon returned to direct and see through his hope to bring Iron Man’s A.I. nemesis Ultron to the big screen. James Spader joined the production to breathe life into the menacing robot. Ultron proved to be a worthy foe for the Avengers, but he didn’t completely avoid following a similar path.

While Ultron enlisted the help of Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) for much of the film, when the final battle came to a head, they had turned good and left Ultron with just an army of bots. The mindless CGI villain fodder was a returning tactic from The Avengers and something many blockbusters have done. But, it almost ended with a giant Ultron instead.

Artist Phil Saunders published some of his MCU-related designs and they include a look at what MegaUltron could’ve brought to Age of Ultron. The concept behind MegaUltron is simple, as the thousands of Ultron bots would’ve joined together to form a massive version of the antagonist. Saunders says this idea was scrapped pretty early on in development due to the tactical reasons for Ultron to do so and because of the sheer number of bots Ultron would’ve had to manufacturer throughout the film. Regardless, check out the design below.

The inclusion of MegaUltron would undoubtedly shake up how the Sokovia battle would’ve played out. The art depicts just Hulk and Iron Man fighting against the Ultron army, but this would’ve certainly challenged the Avengers in a new way. Instead of putting the entire team on bot patrol, they all would’ve joined together for this threat. It is possible, though, that such a finale would limit what Captain America, Black Widow, and Hawkeye could do.

Since Age of Ultron was the last time the MCU has seen all of these heroes fighting side by side, in retrospect it may have been better to differentiate the finale from The Avengers more. However, the beauty of Ultron is there is always a chance that he’s still out there somewhere. Fans have theorized that Vision didn’t actually kill him at the end of the movie and instead absorbed him into the Mind Stone. Bruce Banner even makes a point to mention that there’s still a bit of Ultron in the coding of Vision, so maybe he’ll return one day after all. If so, then maybe MegaUltron will be his play.

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Source: Phil Saunders

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