With Avengers: Infinity War ready to stampede into theaters with the biggest collection of Marvel Cinematic Universe superheroes yet, it's hard to believe that it was only six years ago that Marvel's The Avengers brought Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow, and the rest of the gang together for the first time. Interestingly, though, fans almost saw a very different version of the 2012 film.

　　Given how early in the MCU Marvel's Avengers came--writer-director Joss Whedon started on his script before Thor or Captain America: The First Avenger hit theaters--the plan for the superhero team-up changed quite a bit. "We went through a lot of insane iterations of what might be," Whedon tells Thrillist in a wide-ranging oral history of the film. "At the very beginning, I wrote entire drafts that had no bearing on what I would eventually film."

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　　Should any of those drafts become the one that was used for filming, Avengers would have been a very different movie. For instance, what if it hadn't featured Black Widow? "There was a moment where we thought we weren't gonna have Scarlett [Johansson], and so I wrote a huge bunch of pages starring The Wasp," he reveals.

　　As it stands, it wasn't until Ant-Man in 2015 that the idea of The Wasp entered the MCU picture. With Ant-Man and The Wasp set for theaters in July, it'll be the first starring role for the character--who will be portrayed by Evangeline Lilly. Of note, Sebastian Stan (Winter Soldier) teased the possibility of Michelle Pfeiffer appearing in Avengers: Infinity War as the original Wasp, so perhaps the superhero will get her due in an Avenger movie anyway.

　　Another unknown at the time was how audiences would respond to the villainous Loki (Tom Hiddleston). While he's clearly gone on to become one of the MCU's most beloved characters, this was before anyone had seen Thor. That left Avengers to pin its hopes on an unproven baddie. Whedon had a solution, though.

　　"I also worried that one British character actor was not enough to take on Earth's mightiest heroes and that we'd feel like we were rooting for the overdog," he says. "So I wrote a huge draft with Ezekiel Stane, Obadiah Stane's son, in it." Obidiah, played by Jeff Bridges, was the villain in the first Iron Man movie. His son would most certainly have an issue with Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), but seemingly everyone involved knew that would not be the best fit for the movie.

　　"[Marvel Studios president] Kevin [Feige] looked at it and said, 'Yeah, no,'" Whedon remembers. "[Marvel Studios co-president] Louis D'Esposito actually at that point said, 'Yeah, Kevin, it's all wrong, but look how good it is. Like this is really good wrong.' That was a nice boost."

　　Of course, in the end, Loki became a fan-favorite character and a very worthy villain for the Avengers--one that's still chugging along. And it's hard to argue that the final script Whedon and Marvel settled on was anything less than great. The movie made over $1.5 billion at the worldwide box office, while the MCU keeps getting bigger and better. Avengers: Infinity War is in theaters on April 27.