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Like Hollow Knight: Silksong was or Grand Theft Auto 6 is for video games, Avengers: Doomsday will certainly be one of the biggest comic book-inspired movie releases ever, maybe rivaled only by Avengers: Endgame or this summer’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom may be all that many modern Marvel fans need to thrill them about the MCU’s future, yet cynics and skeptics aren’t wrong to be wary of Avengers: Doomsday.
To be fair, Avengers: Doomsday’s 2026 holiday season release date is far enough away that it’s impossible to say, one way or another and with any assurance, whether it is destined to be good or bad. Still, early warning signs point to a movie that is resting on misguided laurels.
The MCU is Cannibalizing Its Own Nostalgia
The MCU’s heyday is behind it, and that thought is probably frightening for a franchise that previously had anticipation for theatrical comic book adaptations and superhero-related media in a chokehold. There are myriad valid concerns as to why the MCU may no longer have the quality or luster it once did, but Avengers: Doomsday’s course correction is regrettable because it is choosing to recycle itself to artificially generate excitement in a dormant fanbase.
However, this sort of nostalgia-cannibalizing is not new to the MCU, as Spider-Man: No Way Home’s entire plot was devised to excuse the appearances of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s Peter Parkers, as well as some of their most iconic villains and the actors who portrayed them. There are also a ton of holes that are torn in the story’s fabric for anyone not wearing nostalgia glasses to see.
For example, Electro being brought to the MCU’s universe via Doctor Strange’s botched spell—a woeful error for the ex-Sorcerer Supreme to allow—despite not having known Spider-Man’s true identity, and many ‘explanations’ for these plot holes are assumptions, stretches of the imagination, or unverified in the movie itself.
If nothing else, Avengers: Doomsday appears to be the MCU’s safety net—a Hail Mary that will bring audiences to theaters, and it’s doing so as transparently as possible. So, whereas The Avengers and Avengers: Endgame’s plots were hard-earned with well-laid brickwork and felt like the culmination of a handful of movies, Avengers: Doomsday’s plot is curiously still a mystery and upheld wholly by the cast it has boasted since the Avengers: Doomsday chair reveal livestream.
Doomsday is the MCU Avengers’ Antithesis
It’s possible that every MCU movie and TV show since Avengers: Endgame has been laying brickwork for Avengers: Doomsday seven years later, but it simply can’t be said for certain. Loki’s multiverse throughline seemed to be the most paramount in terms of what could have an enormous impact later on, but, with Kang the Conqueror out of the picture for now, its significance has dwindled and hasn’t been touched on much.
These movies and TV shows have introduced new characters, many of whom are already confirmed to appear in Avengers: Doomsday’s star-studded cast. Meanwhile, absolutely nothing has been officially revealed about what the movie’s story will entail aside from what appeared to be a hilarious spoiler teaser of Thor and Deadpool in Deadpool & Wolverine, as well as abrupt post-credits scenes in The Marvels, Thunderbolts*, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
There was no obligation for the MCU to somehow capture lightning in a bottle a second time, nor could it feasibly be expected to strike twice and as successfully as it did initially. That said, its formula was a winning one, and instead of mimicking it by relying on the characters it has debuted—like Shang-Chi, Ms. Marvel, or She-Hulk—Avengers: Doomsday is simply going all-in on the actors and characters that have been popular in the MCU to try to reclaim the legacy it lost.
This is going to be favorable for anyone who dislikes or hasn’t watched much of the MCU’s Disney+ television content, and Avengers: Endgame returning to theaters in September, possibly with a brand-new post-credits scene bridging it somehow to Avengers: Doomsday, suggests that nothing between them will be so important as to demand audiences watch it prior. Maybe with The Fantastic Four: First Steps as an exception, since Susan Storm witnesses Doctor Doom with her and Reed’s son, Franklin Richards.
As promising as that throughline could be, it will be nearly impossible to perceive Avengers: Doomsday’s Doctor Doom as his own character if it’s Robert Downey Jr.’s likeness plastered onto him. Indeed, the narrative will hopefully have a brilliant way of explaining why Doctor Doom looks like the MCU’s Tony Stark without it being a poorly developed ‘multiverse variant’ cop-out.
Going as far as recasting Robert Downey Jr. and drawing Chris Evans back to a role that was gracefully shelved is all the evidence required to witness that little respect or trust has been given to new MCU characters, even if they do appear in Avengers: Doomsday. But hey, at least Chris Hemsworth’s Thor has an opportunity to bounce back from the detestable Thor: Love and Thunder.
Avengers: Doomsday Can’t Be All ‘Hype Moments and Aura’
It hardly seems like a coincidence that the first Avengers: Doomsday character teaser chose to reveal Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers, who is undoubtedly one of the most popular characters in the MCU aside from Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark. These actors’ MCU absences have been felt in the last several years, and it is hilariously plain to see how inseparable Chris Evans is from the MCU now, when he had a heavy-handed cameo in Free Guy and reprised his role as Johnny Storm’s Human Torch in Deadpool & Wolverine.
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Likewise, acknowledging how beloved the X-Men ’97 show was—its portrayal of Cyclops, in particular—it isn’t at all surprising that Avengers: Doomsday’s X-Men teaser ends with a shot of James Marsden’s Scott Summers wearing the iconic yellow-and-blue costume for the first time. Avengers: Doomsday obviously has its finger on Marvel’s popular culture zeitgeist and knows full well how to exploit what has succeeded for it in the past to create an amalgamation of beats and characters that will be iconic.
The shot in question has Cyclops removing his visor and spraying a raw blast of psionic energy into the sky, on his knees in a reddish, seemingly apocalyptic landscape with Sentinels roaming around. It’s admittedly a neat bit of imagery and has the potential to be astounding in the movie, yet it’ll be little more than vanity or ‘aura farming’ unless it is narratively meaningful.
No doubt about it—Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen are inspired as Professor X and Magneto, respectively, in Fox’s X-Men universe. But with them already having returned once for the rebooted series starring James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender, and Patrick Stewart recently reprising the role of Professor X in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, it is egregious to once again reprise them for what’s sure to be fleeting roles in the MCU.
Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, both in their mid-80s, deserve to be able to divorce themselves from brand synergy (perhaps they truly do deeply enjoy playing these iconic characters, though, as Ian McKellen is also playing Gandalf again in Andy Serkis’ upcoming The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum). Nonetheless, their characters are seemingly only going to be introduced to the MCU so that current audiences can get one last whiff of nostalgia before Professor X, Magneto, and whatever batch of X-Men characters is desired are inevitably portrayed by a new slate of actors.
