In the months leading up to the release of Avengers: Infinity War, rumors swirled about what characters we’d see in the film. Joe and Anthony Russo finally explain why one certain hero never made an official appearance.

Major spoilers ahead for Avengers: Infinity War, so read on with caution!

Infinity War promised to be the biggest, most ambitious team-up film that MCU fans had seen to date. With the promise of all of our heroes in one film, fans started to wonder if we might get our first look at the newest member of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Captain Marvel.

Related: Our first look at Brie Larson as Captain Marvel

Unconfirmed rumors were flying for months ahead of the film’s premiere on whether or not she’d show up in Infinity War. When directors Joe and Anthony Russo came out to say she definitely wouldn’t appear, most of us gave the statement begrudging acceptance, while still holding out secret hope for a Carol Danvers appearance.

But, as we now know, Captain Marvel really didn’t appear in the film. Yes, the post-credits scene does invoke her with Nick Fury bringing out a beeper that shows her logo, but we never see her. In a recent interview with ComicBook.com, the Russos explained why they kept fans from that cameo we all wanted so badly.

In short? They didn’t want to give us anything to make that ending feel more hopeful.

As Anthony Russo told the website, “It was very important to us to commit… we wanted to commit to this ending very hard. We didn’t want to go past the ending very much.”

In fact, that commitment to the brutal ending of watching half of the earth disintegrate (including every single new MCU character) almost kept us from any post-credit scene at all. But they ultimately went with one to keep the movie from feeling too hopeless.

After all, whether you loved the ending of Infinity War or hated it, we all know this isn’t where our story ends. We know (at least some of) our heroes are coming back somehow, and we know Captain Marvel is coming to save the day and kick ass. So by teasing the arrival of Captain Marvel rather than showing her face, the movie managed to get us excited and bring us some hope for where the MCU is headed without directly showing us anything to give us hope or a clear path out of the horror Thanos brought.

So while Captain Marvel fans out there are probably still a bit bummed they didn’t get their first big screen peek at Carol in action, we’ve got to admit that keeping her off the big screen a bit longer does make some narrative sense.

Thankfully, while we’re still processing our emotions from Infinity War, our first official meeting with Captain Marvel isn’t too terribly far away. Captain Marvel premieres in theaters on March 8, 2019.