The Avengers: Age of Ultron director Joss Whedon was asked during a recent interview whether he would actually kill off one of the Avengers in the upcoming sequel. While he wouldn't give a definitive answer as to if one of these beloved superheroes will meet their demise, the filmmaker did give this intriguing response.

"I'm always joking about that. Um... maybe? But I'd have to have a really good reason, a really great sequence for [Marvel executives] to go, 'We'll cut off a potential franchise, that's fine!' They know as any good studio does, that without some stakes, some real danger, how involved can we get? We don't just rule it out across the board, but neither is the mission statement 'Who can we kill?' We try to build the story organically and go, 'How hard can we make it on these people?' You go to the movies to see people you love suffer - that's why you go to the movies."

Robert Downey Jr. revealed in April that he wants to retire the Iron Man character. However, in June, the actor signed on to reprise his role as Tony Stark in both The Avengers: Age of Ultron and The Avengers 3, so it is unlikely that his character's death is imminent.

There are already franchises based on Chris Hemsworth's Thor and Chris Evans' Captain America, so who does that leave, without a franchise attachment? Mark Ruffalo revealed in March that Marvel doesn't have any plans for a stand-alone Hulk movie, and there are no franchise plans that we know of for Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye and Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow. Could The Avengers: Age of Ultron include the death of one of these heroes? We likely won't know until this sequel hits theaters on May 1, 2015.