For a while, Marvel could get by on momentum. The machinery was huge, the audience was trained, and even the lesser entries carried the faint hum of inevitability. “Avengers: Doomsday” does not arrive with that luxury. It arrives with expectation, scrutiny, and the kind of pressure that only really attaches itself to franchise movies when the audience has started asking whether the whole thing still has the juice. But ‘Doomsday’ does not feel like continuity bookkeeping or multiverse logistics. This first-look teaser trailer feels urgent; a film that has to feel like a collision again.
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Directed by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo, “Avengers: Doomsday” is the fifth Avengers film and the 39th entry in the MCU, bringing together Thor, the Wakandans, the Fantastic Four, the New Avengers, and the original X-Men to face Robert Downey Jr.’s Victor Von Doom in a December 18, 2026, showdown. The cast list is absurdly stacked: Chris Hemsworth is joined by Vanessa Kirby, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Letitia Wright, Paul Rudd, Simu Liu, Florence Pugh, Winston Duke, Tom Hiddleston, and legacy X-Men players like Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Rebecca Romijn, James Marsden, Alan Cumming, and Channing Tatum, among many others.
There is also a more interesting creative hook than sheer scale alone. The screenplay comes from Stephen McFeely, whom Marvel announced as the writer when it unveiled the film at San Diego Comic-Con in July 2024. McFeely is not just another house writer passing through the machine; with Christopher Markus, he wrote the “Captain America” trilogy as well as “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame,” which means “Doomsday” is being handed back to one of the key architects of Marvel’s most effective large-scale storytelling.
Marvel’s rollout has also been fairly deliberate in how it has framed the movie so far. The first four teasers do not try to sell the whole board at once; they parcel out the stakes character by character, starting with Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers, then Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, then the Fox-era X-Men trio of Patrick Stewart’s Professor X, Ian McKellen’s Magneto, and James Marsden’s Cyclops, before shifting to a fourth spot built around Letitia Wright’s Shuri, Winston Duke’s M’Baku, Tenoch Huerta Mejía’s Namor, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s Thing. That progression matters less as plot than as positioning: old guard, god-tier Avenger, mutant legacy, Wakanda, and Fantastic Four — a slow build toward the idea that “Doomsday” is less one team-up than a full-universe convergence.
It is also hard not to read “Doomsday” as a kind of last hurrah for the Fox-era X-Men characters, who now seem headed for some kind of one-way collision with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, with Doom likely somewhere in the middle of that convergence. That bridge is not coming out of nowhere, either. “The Marvels” already leaves Teyonah Parris’ Monica Rambeau stranded in another universe, where she wakes up across from an alternate Maria Rambeau—Binary—and Kelsey Grammer’s Beast, effectively planting the MCU’s cleanest connective tissue yet between the Marvel Studios timeline and that older X-Men world. Add in Marvel’s own “Doomsday” teasers spotlighting the return of Fox-era players like Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, and James Marsden, and the film’s crossover ambitions become pretty clear.
“Avengers: Doomsday” opens in theaters on December 18, 2026. Watch the new trailer below.
Born in Chile, raised in Canada, now living in Brooklyn, NY, Rodrigo Perez is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Playlist, which he launched in 2007. He has worked in entertainment journalism since 2000, including at MTV, and has written for SPIN, IndieWire, Pitchfork, Complex, Magnet, MuchMusic, and various music, film, and entertainment publications over the past two decades.
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