Ever since Kevin Feige and Robert Downey, Jr. heralded the arrival of Avengers: Doomsday at Comic-Con 2024, fans have been clinging to any scrap of news they can find about this hotly anticipated sequel. What is Doomsday really about? Why is Downey playing this iconic Marvel villain? How will this film cap off the MCU’s Multiverse Saga?
At long last, the first trailer for Avengers: Doomsday is here, and we get answers to exactly none of those questions. Instead, Marvel has opted to tease the next Avengers movie by giving us a new glimpse of a familiar hero. Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers will be back for the fifth Avengers movie, and he’s got a baby in tow.
In some ways, this is indeed a big reveal, giving us hints about the plot and direction of Doomsday. But in other ways, it’s a surprisingly disappointing way of kicking off the film’s marketing. Why is a movie that’s supposed to bring together the current generation of MCU heroes so preoccupied with the former Captain America? Let’s discuss why this teaser has us so disappointed.
What Happens in the Avengers: Doomsday Teaser?
The cast of Avengers: Doomsday is going to be massive, as evidenced by the livestream from a few months back featuring dozens of actors’ chairs and culminating with Downey himself. But the first teaser focuses on none of those actors. Instead, we get the first confirmation of the pervasive rumor that Evans is reprising the Steve Rogers role in Doomsday. He’s not only back, but he apparently has a pretty big part to play if he’s getting his own teaser.
This short trailer is more a tone piece than anything that sheds much light on the plot of Doomsday. We hear a somber piano rendition of Alan Silvestri’s iconic Avengers theme and see sun-drenched scenes of Steve riding his motorcycle home, handling his old Captain America uniform, and cradling a newborn baby. Clearly, retirement and domestic anonymity are treating him well.
And that’s about it. The trailer then cuts to black and promises “Steve Rogers will return in Avengers: Doomsday.” The footage then ends with a countdown timer to Doomsday’s theatrical release in December 2026.
On the surface, this teaser doesn’t do much more than confirm Evans’ appearance in Doomsday. Which is nice and all, but it was already pretty widely assumed he’d be back in some capacity. Why not just throw a Chris Evans chair in along with the rest in that previous livestream and leave it at that?
The emphasis on Steve and Peggy Carter’s child is an interesting wrinkle, though. How will the baby factor into the plot of Doomsday? What does it mean that Steve and Peggy had a baby in the first place? There are a lot of lingering questions about Steve’s status quo at the end of 2019’s Avengers: Endgame. Did Steve affect the MCU’s Sacred Timeline by travelling back to the past and staying there? Will there be far-reaching, unintended consequences of that act?
Perhaps the biggest question is how Downey’s Doctor Doom factors into all of this. We’re still waiting to find out if Downey is actually playing Victor von Doom or if this character is a variant of Tony Stark. We have to wonder if Steve’s act of travelling back in time and fathering a child who shouldn’t exist creates a splinter timeline where things go wrong for the MCU. Is Doom also a product of that timeline? Does he harbor a grudge against Cap for altering the natural order of things? Steve may wind up having to atone for his decision to retire and muck about with time, however harmless his intentions. Yes, the poor guy deserved that long-overdue dance, but at what cost?
Those are all questions worth considering as we wait for more Avengers: Doomsday footage. But that’s not really why we’re here. Rather than being excited by the possibilities stirred up in this teaser, we come away merely with a feeling of resignation. Steve Rogers is back, and we couldn’t be more disappointed.
Why Cap’s Return Is So Disappointing
To be clear, we’re not disappointed that Evans is returning to the Marvel fold. Steve’s story in Endgame wrapped on enough of an open-ended note that there’s obviously still more to explore with the character. The problem is more the way in which this trailer suggests that Steve is going to be a focal point of Doomsday (and by extension Secret Wars, too). It’s no accident that Marvel is making Evans’ character the sole focal point of the first Doomsday footage. They’re telegraphing the fact that he has an integral part to play in this story about the Marvel multiverse collapsing.
Again, we have no problem with Steve playing a supporting role in Doomsday and Secret Wars. He’s still the hero so many other characters revere and respect. He has valuable experience to bring to the table. And as the walls between universes begin to crumble, there’s plenty of potential for Evans to have fun playing multiversal variants of Steve Rogers.
But why is he being positioned as one of the main characters of Doomsday? Hasn’t Steve had his time in the spotlight by now? What about the many, many characters Marvel has spent the past seven years and three phases introducing? Heck, we have a new Captain America in Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson. Why isn’t he getting his own trailer? Or what about other major players like Simu Liu’s Shang-Chi, Pedro Pascal’s Mister Fantastic, or Letitia Wright’s Black Panther? What about Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova and her fellow New Avengers?
Apparently, Steve is a bigger priority for Marvel than any of those characters. And not just him. Recent leaks have suggested that Marvel will be following up this Steve Rogers trailer with a second focused on Chris Hemsworth’s Thor and a third focused on Downey’s Doom before finally dropping a fourth, more traditional trailer. Assuming those leaks are true (and this trailer makes it seem like they are), that means Marvel’s early marketing for Doomsday will center entirely around the core trinity of Evans, Hemsworth, and Downey. This Avengers sequel is showing every sign of being centered around the same core trinity that the previous four films were. Is this 2025 or 2015?
That speaks volumes about Marvel’s approach to Doomsday and their lack of faith in the newer characters they’ve tried so hard to establish post-Endgame. They clearly don’t trust characters like Sam Wilson or the New Avengers to generate the excitement and hype they’re looking for. Instead, this is Marvel playing the old hits and banking on the proven favorites.
This suggests that Marvel has pretty much given up trying to salvage the Multiverse Saga as it has been. Not that we can entirely blame them. The MCU has grown far more inconsistent in recent years in terms of both quality and box office performance. Audiences have struggled to connect with these newer characters in the same way they did the classic Avengers lineup. Even with Marvel pivoting to more of a quality over quantity approach in 2025, the box office returns have remained pretty sluggish.
There have been some major successes during the Multiverse Saga, most notably 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home and 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine. But it’s also telling that both of those films trade so heavily on nostalgia for older superhero characters. No Way Home probably wouldn’t have soared past a billion dollars without the help of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, nor would Deadpool have without the help of Hugh Jackman coming back as Wolverine. Marvel must be looking at those numbers and deciding that nostalgia is the best, easiest way to ensure that Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars are successful. Forget the hardcore fans who have memorized every name and face in the MCU. It’s time to target the casual audiences who checked out of the MCU once Evans and Downey did.
We can certainly understand the studio’s reasoning here. It’s easier to pivot to nostalgia than try to fundamentally repair what hasn’t been working for the past seven years. But that doesn’t make it any less disappointing. Flawed or not, there’s still a lot of potential in the current MCU. The whole problem with the Multiverse Saga is that Marvel has spent so much time and energy introducing new characters and not nearly enough on bringing them together and building connections between them. Heck, the out-of-continuity Marvel Zombies series did more on that front than anything else.
Doomsday should mark the point where Marvel finally addresses that fundamental flaw. This is where we finally see two teams of Avengers butt heads while the fate of their world and countless others hangs in the balance. This is where those newer characters have to finally sink or swim. Instead, they’re all going to be playing second fiddle to the original Cap, Thor, and a guy who looks like Iron Man.
Will Marvel’s nostalgia ploy work? Probably. Again, casual audiences will be thrilled to see these old favorites again. These trailers will no doubt build additional hype for the next Avengers movies and help gin up the numbers for Avatar: Fire and Ash in the process, since they’re playing before the new James Cameron film. Throw in the inevitable return of key players like Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine and Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man in Secret Wars and it’s safe to assume that Marvel Studios has a giant pile of cash coming its way.
But that doesn’t change the fact that this is the easy, cynical way out. Marvel used to be skilled at making audiences care about heroes they had never heard of before. Just look at the success of the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy. Now they seem to have lost their touch, and they’ve given up trying to get that mojo back.
Nostalgia will probably help the MCU in the short term. But what about after Phase 6? What happens when the time comes again for Marvel to focus on a new generation of characters and new storylines. They certainly can’t count on Evans and Downey to stick around forever. What reason is there to assume things will be any different next time around? Is Marvel just hoping to coast along until the time comes to introduce the MCU version of the X-Men?
The most we can hope for is that Marvel ultimately finds a way to balance the classic Avengers trinity with the newer generation of MCU heroes. But with a cast this massive, that’s far easier said than done. Doomsday is a make-or-break moment for the MCU, and Marvel has opted for the easier path. We’ll see how well that works out for them.
For more on Avengers: Doomsday, see what the current status quo of the MCU is right now and brush up on every Marvel movie and series in development.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.
