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Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame redefined what a blockbuster event could be. Released in 2018 and 2019, respectively, the two films were the payoff of a 21-movie narrative experiment that had never been attempted at that scale in Hollywood history, drawing on years of audience investment to deliver a spectacle that felt genuinely earned. The results were staggering, as Infinity War grossed over $2 billion worldwide, while Endgame surpassed it entirely in just 11 days on its way to a $2.79 billion total, making it the second-highest-grossing film ever made. Critics matched that enthusiasm, with Endgame landing a 96% score on Rotten Tomatoes. What followed, however, was a prolonged creative slump, with the Multiverse Saga producing high-profile misfires like The Marvels and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Avengers: Doomsday is the franchise’s most significant attempt yet to change that conversation.
“What we’ve been laboring long and hard over… we can’t beat it. We can’t stand on the shoulders of these giants of Infinity War and Endgame,” Robert Downey Jr. told attendees during a surprise appearance at a special Infinity War screening panel at SXSW London (via CBR). The actor was the face of the Infinity Saga as Tony Stark, and will return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the villainous Victor Von Doom. “So we’re literally zeroing out the board, and we’re going to try to earn your trust and respect all over again. With the likes of [directors Joe and Anthony Russo], I think we’ve got a pretty good shot.” The remarks directly echoed statements made by Joe Russo at the same event, who said Doomsday “is starting over from scratch. We want to make sure everybody feels like this isn’t leaning on anything from the past.”
Can Avengers: Doomsday Reach the Same Heights as Infinity War and Endgame?
On paper, Avengers: Doomsday is the most ambitious Marvel Studios production since Endgame itself. The confirmed cast alone includes Chris Evans returning as Steve Rogers as well as two Avengers teams, one led by Anthony Mackie’s Captain America and the other by Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova. They are joined by the Fantastic Four: First Steps lineup of Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby, who cross over from their separate reality into the Sacred Timeline. Most surprisingly, the original Fox-era X-Men cast — Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, James Marsden, and others — return to the screen for the first time since that continuity was ended by the Disney and Fox merger. Anchoring all of it is Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom, widely considered the quintessential Marvel villain in the comics, a character whose intelligence, grandiosity, and genuine conviction that he is saving the world make him a far more layered antagonist than Thanos ever was on the page.
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The ambition is real, and the ingredients are promising. However, the honest challenge facing Doomsday is that Infinity War and Endgame functioned as the finale of a decade-long experiment in serialized cinema. Every character death and every callback landed due to the emotional weight 21 films had spent years building. That context is irreproducible, and no amount of star power or multiversal spectacle can manufacture it artificially for a franchise that audiences now regard as casual fun, cherry-picking the movies and TV shows they watch.
The post-Endgame still has major hits. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was a genuinely moving send-off for that ensemble, Thunderbolts* delivered a surprisingly character-driven action film, and Deadpool & Wolverine broke records on the strength of nostalgia. Yet none of those films moved the larger needle, because the Multiverse Saga has never established the slow-burn dread that made Thanos (Josh Brolin) so effective as a unifying threat. On the contrary, the franchise spent years attempting to position Kang the Conqueror as its new central villain before Jonathan Majors’ dismissal forced a pivot, leaving the saga without a coherent path heading into its supposed climax. Downey Jr.’s own words at SXSW London acknowledged as much, as he explicitly said their goal is to regain the audience’s trust, which Marvel Studios is aware they lost. Whether the proposed reset is enough remains a question that only the release of Avengers: Doomsday can answer.
Avengers: Doomsday is scheduled to be released in theaters on December 18, 2026.
Are you confident that Avengers: Doomsday can surpass the Infinity Saga, or has that window closed permanently? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the Forum!
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