Thanos may have died (twice, no less—first decapitated, then later snapped out of existence) in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, but that doesn’t mean Josh Brolin wouldn’t reprise his role as the MCU’s initial big bad if he were asked to return.
“The Thanos thing, if they called me in London right now, and said, ‘Let’s do this,’ I’d be like, ‘I’ll be there tomorrow,’” Brolin said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast when asked if he’d ever consider returning to the MCU as the iconic cosmic villain.
Since the character’s demise in Endgame, Brolin has reprised his role as Thanos variants via voice-over work in three episodes of the animated Disney+ series What If…? between 2021 and 2024.
As for what the actor thinks the MCU has in store for the upcoming Avengers films Doomsday and Secret Wars, Brolin said he knows it’s going to be lots of fun.
“Of course they’re going to come up with something fun. Who knows? That [Infinity Saga] was a 10-year in-the-building kind of thing, and that was its own bookended deal. I don’t know what they’re going to do, but I’m sure it will be interesting. I think they do that very, very well,” he shared.
When asked if he ever worried early on during his role in the MCU that fans would not buy him as “the purple guy on screen,” the star of The Goonies shared he simply leaned into the “absurdity” of the larger-than-life franchise.
“There’s a level of absurdity that I enjoy so much … I’ve said it a million times, but it goes back to black box theater, where you have no money and you’re pretending that this thing [gestures to random object] is a gun. If you have enough conviction, people will actually start to think it’s a gun. There was a level of that in [Avengers],” Brolin explained.
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“They were afraid [plot details were] gonna get out, so they would give us a phony scene and then give us the real scene when we’d get there, which, to me, is hell, because I can’t prep [for my scenes] … I’m thinking about the lines, and all this kind of stuff, but it all worked out. And by the way, that was supposed to be like a cameo. When it was first brought to me, I was doing the Everest movie and I was in London, and they brought me this huge bible, and it was just this little thing and I’d be in it for 10 minutes or something. And then they changed it. It turned into this whole thing,” he added.
The actor also revealed he keeps in touch with his Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame co-star Robert Downey Jr., who played Tony Stark/Iron Man, as well director duo the Russo brothers.
“I talk to Downey probably four to six times a year. I talk to the Russos probably four to six times a week. I talk to Joe a lot … I love both of them. I think they’re amazing,” Brolin gushed.
Interestingly, Brolin also admitted he was “glad” his work as villain Cable in 2018’s Deadpool 2 was just “one experience.”
Brolin’s new horror film Weapons is in theaters now. Avengers: Doomsday hits theaters on December 18, 2026.
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