Marvel announced the cast of Avengers: Doomsday in the most elongated way possible. Here’s what all of it could mean and what we can expect from the film.
Warning! The following contains spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame as well as potential spoilers for all of Marvel’s upcoming projects, including Avengers: Doomsday and Secret Wars. Or maybe not, we’re not sure. Err on the side of caution just in case.
Marvel broke the internet on Wednesday as it announced the cast of Avengers: Doomsday in a very, very long video. The piece, streamed live to nearly three million viewers across over five hours, included a long row of chairs with cast names on the back of them. A new chair was revealed every 12 minutes.
The livestream played out like an arrogant showcase of star power – Ryan Lambie elaborates on that here – but as Film Stories’ resident Marvel fan, I am curious about what it all means. It’s a suspiciously large cast and while it includes the usual suspects, such as Chris Hemsworth back as Thor and most of the Thunderbolts, there were some surprises along the way.
Most of the cast is made up of well-known Marvel heroes, but one name was genuinely surprising: Tenoch Huerta Mejía, who played main antagonist Namor in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Marvel fans were expecting villains such as Galactus, who will be played by Ralph Ineson in the upcoming The Fantastic Four: First Steps, to show up, but no one saw Namor returning.
Oddly, Ineson’s name was not to be found on the back of a chair.
It was already quite clear that most of Marvel’s upcoming films would heavily include the concept of the multiverse. If it wasn’t clear enough then, it certainly is now, as a large number of former X-Men actors were announced. Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart are set to return as Magneto and Professor X, but more surprising inclusions were Rebecca Romjin as Mystique, Kelsey Grammer as Beast and Scott Marsden as Cyclops. Even Alan Cumming is returning as Nightcrawler, it seems.
Funnily enough, Famke Janssen and Halle Berry, who played Jean Grey and Storm respectively, were not among the cast names announced, nor was Hugh Jackman.
Channing Tatum was also revealed as part of the cast. We’re sure Tatum is excited to be able to reprise his role as Gambit from Deadpool & Wolverine, a role he chased for over a decade, but considering the character – or at least one of his variants – met his makers in that film, it’s hard not to wonder if Marvel is running out of ideas and trying to fabricate viral moments for social media rather than craft meaningful stories.
Speaking of viral moments, we already knew Robert Downey Jr. will return to the MCU, just not as Iron Man. His casting was announced at Comic-Con in 2024, which was met with a rapturous response inside the legendary Hall H. The Oscar-winning actor will appear as Victor Von Doom, a notorious villain often seen battling the X-Men, which explains why Marvel is turning to the original mutant-franchise’s cast.
But what brings them into an Avengers film?
One theory that has been discussed in my household is that the X-Men and Avengers aren’t fighting together against Dr. Doom. Perhaps Dr. Doom somehow pits the two superhero groups against each other for his own benefit? Otherwise, it seems a bit excessive to have over 20 superheroes against one dude. Granted, that dude has pretty serious powers, but still, surely there’s a catch here?
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In the comics, Doom creates something called a Battleworld. Without going into too much detail – otherwise you’ll be reading this article for hours – the Multiverse basically collapses and the survivors are trapped in Doom’s new world where he reigns supreme. Secret Wars then focuses on the survivors breaking free from the world. There’s much more to all of it, but we’re just giving you a condensed version of the basics.
2027’s Avengers: Secret Wars is most likely based on the major storyline of the same name in the comic-book canon, so we’d assume Marvel is keen on tackling that. Doomsday, on the other hand, isn’t the name of a storyline specifically, so we might be wrong here – but it seems likely that Battleworld comes into it in some capacity.
Is this bad? No, but it is uninspired. While it makes sense to bring Secret Wars to the big screen, Marvel seems to be repeating the same formula it used for Infinity War and Endgame to great success. Doomsday will potentially end with our heroes losing the battle and suffering great losses, allowing Doom to emerge as the winner of their battle, trapping our heroes in a kingdom of his making. Secret Wars will then bank on all our heroes teaming up together to take Doom down.
The issue with Infinity War was that after Thanos snapped his fancy golden globe, wiping away half of the world’s population, we always knew Spider-Man, Black Panther, Doctor Strange and the rest of the group would return in the next film. The two films still worked well, but will the same trick work again?
Aside from the plot ramifications for Doomsday, the announcement also potentially slightly ruined Marvel’s upcoming films.
While it was already confirmed that all of the Fantastic Four would appear in the film, it seems that we already know who might and who might not survive Thunderbolts*. The only actor not listed from the main Thunderbolts* cast was Olga Kurylenko, who plays Taskmaster in the film. This would imply she won’t make it through to the end credits, but Lewis Pullman clearly does.
Pullman is set to play Bob, or Sentry, traditionally a villain in the comic books. Maybe he turns into the group’s ally or simply escapes their grip, but it seems that he’s alive and well in Doomsday.
The multiverse seems to have become Marvel’s secret escape hatch. The multiverse and endless variants of each character allows it to basically bring anyone back from the dead if the public reception isn’t what they hoped it would be. Case in point: Wolverine. The character had a powerful end to his arc in James Mangold’s Logan, but a variant of Hugh Jackman’s most beloved character was brought back for Deadpool & Wolverine.
The comic-books have obviously brought characters back from the dead for decades, but it doesn’t work for films quite as well. Films need stakes and as it stands, the MCU has few of those. I’m still very excited for this year’s Marvel offerings as well as both Avengers films, but Marvel needs to show it’s still creating films that aren’t just made for social media.
Marvel is already teasing that more cast members for Avengers: Doomsday will be announced in due course, so there might be another chair video in our future. If it goes on for longer than an hour… we riot at dawn.
Avengers: Doomsday is in cinemas 1st May 2026.
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