The final scene of sees the Corleone brothers gathered around the dining table for a family celebration. It’s a flashback sequence, including James Caan’s Sonny Corleone, who was killed off in the first Godfather movie. Yet arguably the biggest character in the saga, Marlon Brando’s Don Vito Corleone, is notably absent from the scene. Vito only appears off-camera for a birthday surprise at the tailend of the sequence, leaving the young Michael Corleone alone with his thoughts. However, the original version of the scene was meant to include a cameo from Brando.

Marlon Brando famously rejected his planned cameo in The Godfather Part II, simply by not showing up to his single scheduled day of shooting for the movie. The actor was hurt by the dismissive attitude he received from Paramount Pictures executives prior to the release of the first movie. With Brando missing, The Godfather’s writer-director . As it turns out, the final version in the movie makes far more sense than what was originally in the script, for Michael Corleone’s story, in particular.

While the setting of the original flashback sequence is much the same as the final version, the lines of dialogue written for the elder Don Corleone would have made all the difference. His final line would have cast the entire transformation of Michael Corleone into a tragically ruthless replacement for Vito in The Godfather in a wholly different light. Rather than accidental factors leading Michael to veer off course dramatically from college boy and war hero towards a criminal path, it would have been part of the plan all along.

In the script, Vito expresses his disappointment that his son has signed up to fight for the US in World War II. In the end, he relents, telling Michael, This line of dialogue was initially intended to be the final one spoken in the entire Godfather movie saga. Yet, it completely upends everything that went before.

Vito Corleone’s instruction that Michael come to him “the way a son should” and ominous declaration that he has “hopes” for his son’s return to the family runs contrary to what Vito told his son in the first Godfather movie. in the family business, and is inheriting his role as mafia don. “I never wanted this for you,” he tells him, even suggesting that he wanted Michael to become a US senator. But The Godfather Part II’s original final line directly contradicts this sentiment.

If Vito Corleone was already expecting Michael to come back to him and his family as early as 1939, six years before The Godfather’s story begins, and had great “hopes” for his son’s return to the fold, it implies that Michael was already being lined up as the heir to Vito’s role as Godfather. But part of the genius of The Godfather is that throughout the movie, it’s made clear that Michael was never supposed to be Don Corleone.

, became a highly-educated American patriot, and allowed his father to live the American Dream vicariously through him. Fate stood in his way, and thrust the role of mafia don upon him. It’s no exaggeration to say that the character’s transformation during the course of the movie is up there with a Shakespearean tragedy like Macbeth or King Lear. The implication that this was all a lie, and that Vito Corleone actually always planned for his son to lead the family, takes something fundamental away from Michael Corleone’s story.

What’s more, it’s important to remember that Brando’s Vito Corleone was out of the picture throughout The Godfather Part II. Yes, the movie covers Vito’s origin story, thanks to an award-winning performance by Robert De Niro. But Michael’s descent into despotic misery and loneliness is the main focus of the movie’s present-day narrative. The mob boss has already lost his older brother Sonny to mafia warfare, yet plans to kill his only other living brother by birth, Fredo Corleone, due to his apparent betrayal of Michael earlier in The Godfather Part II.

Fredo’s murder on Michael’s orders, while he watches, is the most chilling moment of the entire Godfather trilogy. The agony of this moment is underscored by a flashback scene that focuses on the relationship between the Corleone brothers, Sonny, Fredo, Michael, and their adoptive sibling Tom Hagen. Vito Corleone’s presence would have distracted from this focus. It’s all the more poignant that the last time we see Fredo in The Godfather Part II, he’s the only brother to congratulate Michael on his army service. Fredo might have been a traitor, but he still loved his brother more than anything.