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Credit: Marvel StudiosThe Avengers will officially be back next year, despite Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige’s statement that they were no longer active.
The 2026 release of Avengers: Doomsday will mark seven years since the last Avengers entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Both Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019) cemented themselves as two of the highest-grossing movies of all time–the latter actually did top the list for a short time before James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) got a re-release.
Directed by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo—AKA the Russo Brothers—Infinity War and Endgame saw the Infinity Saga reach its climax as the Avengers, led by Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers/Captain America, battled the Mad Titan Thanos (Josh Brolin). After many production woes, including a creative overhaul and title change, the Russos will return to helm Avengers: Doomsday and its 2027 follow-up, Avengers: Secret Wars.
Doomsday is set to begin filming imminently with Robert Downey Jr. returning to the MCU, not as Tony Stark/Iron Man, but as the famous comic book villain, Victor Von Doom/Doctor Doom. Downey Jr.’s villain replaces Jonathan Majors’ Kang the Conqueror, who was dropped from Marvel after his guilty verdict at the end of 2023.
For a time, it was unclear who would be starring alongside the MCU veteran in the new Avengers movie, but a record-breaking live stream in March 2025 confirmed the cast so far.
From the return of characters like Scott Lang/Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) and Bucky/Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) to confirmation that new heroes like Pedro Pascal’s Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic and Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova will be appearing in Avengers: Doomsday, the movie is already stacked with more names expected to be announced. Avengers: Doomsday is set to open in movie theaters on May 1, 2026, and is part of the MCU’s Phase Six.
There’s a lot of hype surrounding Doomsday, and as the Phase Four and Phase Five movies have received incredibly mixed reactions, this will be a big moment for Feige’s superhero studio. Many still believe the MCU died with Avengers: Endgame, but with the Russos recently confirming Doomsday isn’t the end of something but a “new beginning,” the hope is the MCU will be able to escape its predecessor’s incredibly long shadow.
Endgame was notable for its large cast and successful culmination of multiple overarching storylines. It also successfully introduced a number of new characters, such as the Black Order, AKA the Children of Thanos. Notable members of this elite squad were Ebony Maw and Proxima Midnight, played by Tom Vaughan-Lawlor and Carrie Coon, respectively. Both characters appear in Infinity War, but only one of the actors played the role in each film.
Carrie Coon was absent from Avengers: Endgame despite Proxima Midnight appearing in the feature film. Coon, who provided the voice and facial capture for the member of the Black Order, and faced off against Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff in the stunning fight sequence of Infinity War, turned down the role for the sequel over pay disputes. According to her husband, Tracy Letts, Coon asked for more money but was turned down.
“I believe [Marvel] went to her for the second one, and they asked her to be in the second one,” Letts said on his Big Picture podcast (via Variety). “And she said, ‘Well, the first one is the most successful movie ever made. Are you going to pay me any more money?’ And they said, ‘No. We’re not going to pay you any more money.’”
“She said, ‘Wow, you’re not going to pay me any more money, then I don’t think I’m going to do it,’” Letts continued. “And they said, ‘Well, you should feel yourself fortunate to be part of the Marvel Universe.’ So she declined… We would’ve made a bigger deal out of this, but it would have involved us watching the movies, and we weren’t going to do that.”
Coon did return, however, in a voiceover capacity for the What If…? episode, “What If…T’Challa Became Star-Lord?” from the show’s first season on Disney+. The actress, known for her roles in The Gilded Age and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024), spoke about being a part of the Infinity War cast in 2018.
“I was also pregnant when I did it. I flew down to Atlanta and did some [motion-capture], mostly the facial capture,” Coon told Entertainment Weekly. “Of course, I can’t take credit for all of it — it’s a gifted team of animators that are taking on the bulk of that performance. But it morphed from a voiceover job into a mo-cap job, and then suddenly I realized I was in the highest-grossing movie of the year.”
It will be interesting to see who else gets announced for Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars moving forward. Recent reports claim that in the original Avengers: The Kang Dynasty storyline, the Avengers would be teaming up to fight the many Variants of Kang, while Doom was expected to lead the charge in the next saga.
Following the conclusion of the current Multiverse Saga, it is expected that the MCU will move into the Mutant Saga, which makes sense, considering the Fox X-Men characters are being featured in Doomsday.
How do you feel about the current cast of Avengers: Doomsday? Let Inside the Magic know in the comments down below!