The wait is over. After what felt like a personal vendetta from Marvel Studios’ marketing team, the first official “Avengers: Doomsday” trailer is finally here.
And what a wait it was. Remember when we got a five-hour livestream of empty director’s chairs slowly revealing cast names…
A few months back, we got a Doctor Doom-themed pop-up coffee shop in London, courtesy of the Russo brothers, because nothing says doomsday apocalypse more than a flat white with your friendly neighbourhood supervillain’s face on it.
And then there was CinemaCon, where Marvel showed an entire trailer to a room full of theatre owners under security so tight it might as well have been Fort Knox, just so none of us mere mortals could see it.
And now here we are. We finally got that trailer. Just a heads-up: this is the same trailer attendees saw at CinemaCon. Now’s the time the general public is finally getting let in on what industry insiders have been sitting on for months. Which, fine, we’ll take it. We’ve watched it more times than we’re willing to admit, and we have thoughts. So many thoughts.
Because this movie has such a sprawling cast, we’re breaking down every faction the trailer actually confirms. There are a lot of characters to keep up with if you did not watch every Phase 4 and 5 project, and we understand it can get rather overwhelming, so we’re here to help.
Doctor Doom
First up, it’s the titular man himself.
Robert Downey Jr. playing a villain after fifteen years as Iron Man confused a lot of people at first, but Victor Von Doom is a completely different character, a genius inventor and ruler of the fictional nation of Latveria in the comics. He first showed up in the MCU during the “Fantastic Four: First Steps” mid-credits scene, meeting baby Franklin Richards, which is why his home reality is believed to be Earth-828 alongside the Fantastic Four.
Or maybe he isn’t?
Marvel’s own official synopsis describes an “existential threat” facing these heroes, and while it’s tempting to assume that just means Doom himself, the smarter read is that this is pointing at Incursions, the multiversal phenomenon where two realities colliding results in one of them getting wiped out entirely.
We’ve seen the concept surface before in “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” and “Loki,” and with this many universes crashing into each other at once, Doom might end up being less the source of the threat and more someone trying to control it, or exploit it.
The newly released poster adds another wrinkle to that theory. It shows Doom standing before a massive mural depicting a woman and a small child, and his posture alone suggests these aren’t strangers to him. Marvel hasn’t confirmed anything officially, but it’s fuelled the theory that Doom’s entire motivation traces back to losing a wife and child of his own, somewhere in his history. If true, that reframes everything else we’re seeing from him, as we are about to witness a multiversal grief.
In this trailer, he gets the superhero landing treatment in the mansion courtyard, mask on, full armour, main character entrance. Then we cut to him kneeling, face scarred underneath that mask, while his own voiceover warns of a decision so heavy it doesn’t have a name yet.
He’s speaking in an Eastern European accent, and it’s unmistakably Downey underneath it, but it is just as unmistakably not Stark. No quips, no charm offensive, just quiet menace.
And that menace gets a very literal demonstration. Thor swings Stormbreaker at him full force, the kind of hit that’s ended fights against gods and titans alike, and Doom stops it dead with two fingers. Doesn’t flinch, doesn’t brace, doesn’t even look particularly bothered.
If there was any doubt about how dangerous this version of Doom is supposed to be, that single moment answers it.
Sam Wilson’s Avengers
After Steve Rogers handed him the shield at the end of “Endgame,” Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) spent a few years figuring out if he even deserved it. Then came “Captain America: Brave New World,” where the Leader, Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson), dropped a warning serious enough to convince Sam the old way of doing things wasn’t going to cut it anymore. So he started building a team of his own, on his own terms.
How exactly Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) ended up on the roster is still a bit of a mystery, Marvel hasn’t spelled it out for us, but let’s be honest, it’s not exactly a stretch. The Ten Rings organisation has always operated in the same murky, high-stakes world the Avengers live in, and Sam recruiting someone with that level of combat skill and connections tracks just fine without needing a full flashback to explain it. Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) rounds out the group.
Curiously absent from this whole lineup is Hulk, who’s sitting this one out (for now). He’s off doing his own thing over in “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” instead, which feels like the first time in a while a big green rage monster has had somewhere better to be.
Roster:
- Sam Wilson / Captain America (Anthony Mackie), former Falcon, now the official shield-carrier
- Joaquin Torres / Falcon (Danny Ramirez), Sam’s protégé who took over the wingsuit
- Shang-Chi (Simu Liu), martial artist and keeper of the Ten Rings
- Scott Lang / Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), size-shifting hero and self-appointed dad of the group
The New Avengers
Here’s where the two-team situation actually makes sense. While Sam Wilson was off building his own roster after the Leader’s warning in “Brave New World,” Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) was busy running her own operation entirely, and it did not go the way she planned. If you skipped “Thunderbolts*” last year, here’s the crash course: Valentina spent years quietly assembling a black-ops team of expendable assets, only for that plan to blow up in her face when her own recruits turned against her. What she ended up with instead was a group of ex-assassins, government experiments, and one very unstable superhero, who by the end of the film decided to rebrand themselves as “The New Avengers,” whether Sam’s side liked it or not.
And apparently, there’s some hurt feelings there…
So really, there aren’t two Avengers teams because Marvel wanted to double the roster for fun. There are two teams because Sam built his out of genuine warning and purpose, while Valentina’s came together almost by accident, out of her own scheme falling apart. That tension between “the team that chose to exist” and “the team that got stuck existing” is probably going to be doing a lot of heavy lifting once these two sides are forced to work together.
We also get a clear look at their base of operations. Avengers Tower now sports a big red logo, unmistakably branded for the New Avengers, confirming this is where Valentina’s side has set up shop. It says a lot as they’ve claimed the most iconic building in the MCU as their own.
And unlike some of the other factions on this list, we don’t have to guess who’s showing up. Every member of this team has been spotted in the trailer, and several of them share screen time alongside Sam’s side, which lines up with Thor’s whole “these two groups need to stop treating each other like enemies” speech.
Roster:
- Yelena Belova / Black Widow (Florence Pugh), Russian-trained assassin turned reluctant hero, half-sister of the original Black Widow
- Bucky Barnes / Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), Steve Rogers’ brainwashed best friend from World War II, now trying to be one of the good guys
- Alexei Shostakov / Red Guardian (David Harbour), the Soviet answer to Captain America, mostly here for comic relief and dad energy
- Ava Starr / Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), a woman who can phase through matter thanks to a childhood lab accident
- John Walker / US Agent (Wyatt Russell), the government’s replacement Captain America who didn’t work out, still trying to prove himself
- Bob Reynolds / Sentry (Lewis Pullman), possibly the most powerful being in the MCU, and also host to a destructive alter ego called the Void
Thor
Now, who doesn’t know Thor (Chris Hemsworth) at this point? He’s been one of the original six Avengers since they first assembled back in 2012, and over a decade later, he’s still standing while most of that founding lineup has either died, aged out, or wandered off to do their own thing.
That history is exactly why this trailer puts him in an unfamiliar spot. With two Avengers teams now technically existing and not exactly seeing eye to eye, Thor isn’t leading either one, he’s playing peacemaker between them, basically doing Fury’s job, or Steve’s, depending on which era of the MCU you grew up on. It’s a role we’ve never really seen him in before, and it says a lot about how thin the ranks have gotten that he’s the one left to hold the room together.
We already caught a glimpse of Love in the shorter teaser, so we know his daughter factors into this somewhere, even if this particular trailer doesn’t dwell on it.
Where things really escalate is later in the trailer, when Thor stops playing mediator entirely and goes after Doom on his own. No backup, no team behind him, just Stormbreaker and a decision that looks less like strategy and more like desperation.
Loki
Tom Hiddleston is confirmed to return as Loki, and given how the official synopsis leans hard into multiversal collision as the film’s central threat, that tracks. His season two finale left him running the TVA’s Loom essentially by himself, holding the entire multiverse together through sheer force of will. So it’s no surprise he’s back here, and reportedly seen holding a TVA card in this footage, which all but confirms the Time Variance Authority itself has some role to play in how this whole crisis gets handled, or possibly caused.
Maybe a certain bearded Star Spangled man is the root of it all.
The X-Men
“To me, my X-Men!”
Here’s the part that trips people up: this isn’t the same universe as the rest of the MCU. These are the characters from the X-Men movies 20th Century Fox made from 2000 to 2020, before Disney bought Fox and folded that entire franchise into its own separate reality.
Now, we aren’t certain if these are the very same characters from those movies or variants of them, the same way Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine turned out to be a variant in “Deadpool & Wolverine.” Marvel hasn’t clarified either way, and honestly, it might not matter much once everyone’s sharing a battlefield.
There’s also a theory worth mentioning here: Monica Rambeau vanished into an unknown reality at the end of “The Marvels,” and the leading guess among fans is that she landed right here, in this universe, which is presumably how she crossed paths with Beast (Kelsey Grammer) in the first place.
Professor X (Patrick Stewart) reacting to an explosion outside his own window tells us this fight comes to their front door, not the other way around. We still haven’t gotten a good look at Nightcrawler or Beast in motion just yet, but Mystique (Rebecca Romijn) shapeshifting into Yelena and Gambit (Channing Tatum) squaring off against Shang-Chi will more than do for now.
Roster:
- Professor X / Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), telepathic founder of the X-Men and the mansion’s owner
- Magneto (Ian McKellen), Xavier’s oldest friend turned occasional enemy, master of magnetism
- Mystique / Raven Darkhölme (Rebecca Romijn), shapeshifter who can become anyone
- Gambit (Channing Tatum), Cajun card-throwing mutant, previously introduced in “Deadpool & Wolverine”
- Beast / Hank McCoy (Kelsey Grammer), blue, furry, and the team’s resident scientist
- Cyclops (James Marsden), optic-blasting field leader
- Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming), teleporting mutant with a tail and a strong moral compass
The Fantastic Four
Introduced properly last year in “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” this team lives on a retro, 1960s-styled alternate Earth designated Earth-828, named after Fantastic Four creator Jack Kirby’s birthday. They’re not from our MCU’s main timeline at all, they crossed over after the “Thunderbolts*” post-credits scene teased them hopping realities.
It remains to be seen how they got here, or why. Was Franklin kidnapped? Was Doom, who first met baby Franklin in that very same mid-credits scene, the reason they came looking in the first place? Or did the incursion simply happen to them, no choice involved, no villain pulling strings, just two realities getting too close for comfort? The trailer doesn’t say, but given how much weight this movie is putting on Franklin as a multiversal wildcard, we’d bet the answer isn’t a coincidence.
What we do know is the “desert” from the earlier teaser turns out to be nothing of the sort. It’s the ocean floor, fully exposed, courtesy of Namor parting the sea Moses-style, and it’s here that the Fantastic Four come face to face with Talokan and Wakanda. Which means, as far as we can tell, this is the very first time anyone from Earth-828 meets anyone from Earth-616 on screen. No easing into it with a quiet introduction either, they’re getting thrown straight into first contact with two entire nations at once, on the bottom of the ocean, which is a hell of a way to start a friendship.
Roster:
- Reed Richards / Mr. Fantastic (Pedro Pascal), stretchable genius and team leader
- Sue Storm / Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby), can turn invisible and generate force fields
- Johnny Storm / Human Torch (Joseph Quinn), can literally set himself on fire and fly
- Ben Grimm / The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), rock-skinned strongman, the heart of the team
- H.E.R.B.I.E. (voiced by Matthew Wood), the Four’s boxy robot assistant
- Franklin Richards, Reed and Sue’s son, whose actor hasn’t been confirmed yet but who’s already been teased as central to the incursion storyline through his appearance in Doom’s mid-credits scene
Wakanda and Talokan
Both from the mainline MCU. Wakanda is the technologically advanced African nation introduced in 2018’s “Black Panther,” while Talokan is its underwater counterpart, introduced in 2022’s “Wakanda Forever” as a hidden Mesoamerican-inspired civilisation that’s been quietly thriving beneath the ocean for centuries. Namor (Tenoch Huerta) is the one responsible for that ocean floor reveal, parting the sea Moses-style to bring Talokan and Wakanda into the same frame as the Fantastic Four.
Roster:
- Namor (Tenoch Huerta), winged, super-strong ruler of Talokan
- Shuri / Black Panther (Letitia Wright), Wakanda’s current Black Panther and resident tech genius
- M’Baku (Winston Duke), leader of Wakanda’s Jabari tribe
- Attuma (Alex Livinalli), one of Namor’s most trusted Talokani warriors
- Namora (Mabel Cadena), Namor’s cousin and right hand, last seen in “Wakanda Forever”
Steve Rogers
And here’s the big one. Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) shows up, greets Thor with a casual “hey pal,” and Mjolnir leaves Thor’s hand entirely to answer to him instead.
His reappearance is surprising considering how “Endgame” left his character, an old man who’d quietly lived out a full life away from the fight. But it might also finally answer the question that’s been sitting unresolved since then: where exactly did he go after returning the Infinity Stones?
Here’s the genuinely strange part. Every other faction on this list has a confirmed or at least strongly implied home universe. Steve Rogers doesn’t. Marvel’s own official synopsis for this film goes out of its way to describe heroes from “three distinct universes,” and Steve simply isn’t accounted for in any of them.
One theory making the rounds suggests he’s been living with Peggy Carter on Earth-828 this entire time, the very same reality the Fantastic Four call home. If that’s true, it would explain both his absence from the official three-universe count and give Marvel a tidy way to justify how he’s connected to everything unfolding here. It’s not confirmed, but it’s the theory that currently makes the most sense.
Who’s Missing? The Absent Avengers
For as stacked as this trailer already is, plenty of familiar faces are conspicuously nowhere to be seen. Here’s some of who’s sitting this one out, at least for now.
Tom Holland’s Spider-Man is the biggest omission, especially given how central he’s been to the last decade of MCU crossovers. His absence here likely comes down to scheduling, “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” is his own priority project releasing the same year, and that’s also where Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) has apparently gone instead, which explains why the big green guy isn’t around to help hold the fort either.
Beyond that, there’s no sign yet of the Punisher, Daredevil, Ms. Marvel, either Hawkeye, Captain Marvel, or the Guardians of the Galaxy. It feels more like Marvel simply hasn’t shown their hand yet. It’s worth remembering this is still just a trailer, not the full film, so a surprise appearance or two further down the line wouldn’t be shocking.
Watch the Avengers: Doomsday trailer here:
Avengers: Doomsday hits theaters on December 17, 2026.
