In case you missed it, Marvel just wrapped up an hours-long stream announcing the cast for Avengers: Doomsday. The movie is the first of two big crossover movies bringing together heroes from across the MCU, including the Fantastic Four and, surprisingly, a ton of the X-Men. However, there are also some surprising omissions from over the course of the cinematic universe.
From the hip, here are some of the actors and characters that are seemingly not showing up in Doomsday:
- Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange
- Chris Pratt as Star-Lord (or any of the Guardians of the Galaxy)
- Tom Holland as Spider-Man
- Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch
- Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye
- Mark Ruffalo as Hulk
- Tatiana Maslany as She-Hulk
- Brie Larson as Captain Marvel
- Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau
- Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel
- Evangeline Lilly as Wasp
- Kathryn Newton as Stature
Some of those are less surprising than others, but given that this is supposed to be the next big “Everyone Is Here” moment, I’m surprised some of the major players like Doctor Strange and Spider-Man apparently aren’t making an appearance this time around. Granted, it’s not like the movie is lacking in characters, and it’s probably a good thing that Marvel isn’t squeezing every single one of them into an already-bloated movie. Will something terrible happen to some of the cast to make space for other heroes to play a role in Avengers: Secret Wars, the sequel premiering in 2027? Infinity War temporarily killed off half the cast so Endgame could focus on a smaller group of heroes, after all, and Cumberbatch has already been confirmed to appear in Secret Wars, so that’s at least one missing hero accounted for. It’s hard to even speculate about what Secret Wars will entail; the last time the MCU did a giant crossover film, it emerged after years of setup and foreshadowing, but that’s largely absent here because the series has been pivoting away from its previous plans in the wake of Kang actor Jonathan Majors’ domestic violence case. Anyway, the big takeaway here for me is that I guess I’ll just have to emotionally prepare myself to not see Star-Lord for at least two more years.
