Who’s Not in Avengers: Doomsday? My Thoughts!

Who’s Not in Avengers: Doomsday? My Thoughts!

A couple days back Marvel Studios announced the cast of Avengers: Doomsday. We got told the 27 cast members that will be in the movie. BUT…there were several names not mentioned in there that raised some eyebrows. Here’s my thoughts on some of the big names not mentioned for the Avengers: Doomsday cast. 

NOTE: One thing to talk about here after the announcement was made The Hollywood Reporter said not all of the cast was announced. That could mean two things. First, it could mean the names not announced are some of the surprises and cameos so they don’t want to spoil too much or that could mean there’s some other people they haven’t announced that aren’t spoilers but they’re majors names and they want to extend the excitement of the course of a while. Also, some people are theorizing that maybe they’re holding on some of their heavy hitters for Secret Wars. They don’t want to include some people because they want Secret Wars to be even bigger with the characters included. Keep that in mind, several of the people that weren’t announced I bet are in Doomsday because they want to save some surprises for Secret Wars. 

• Chris Evans & Hayley Atwell: This really shocked me because it was reported back in December that he was coming back. In the report it is said Chris Evans was in talks to return for Doomsday not Doomsday and Secret Wars, just Doomsday. I may be reading too much into it, but they only mentioned Doomsday. Evans is in an interesting spot because he’s played two different Marvel superheroes. He could return as Human Torch or Captain America, he had a great cameo in Deadpool & Wolverine as Human Torch. Clearly, he’s open to returning to the MCU. The fact that this name wasn’t announced is a bit surprising to me. We are getting CinemaCon starting on Monday, I believe April 3rd Disney is doing a presentation there. Maybe they’re going to announce Evans there and make it more of an event. But I do find it surprising that Evans wasn’t there. I was expecting him to walk out with Downey and tease what Evans’ role in this would be. Assuming the report that was released in December was correct, he’s probably going to have a major role there. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s a villain there with RDJ taking down The Avengers. The other one that wasn’t talked about a lot but was reported, Hayley Atwell is coming. This one isn’t as groundbreaking or shocking because she was in Multiverse of Madness and was a prominent voice actor on What If…?. But her name also wasn’t announced. She didn’t get a chair. Marvel seems to really like Captain Carter on What If…? and if Atwell wants to do it in live action. Seeing a variant of Captain Carter go up against or fight with Chris Evans’ Captain America could be very cool. Whether it’s a big or small role, I feel Evans and Atwell are in Doomsday and guaranteed to be in Secret Wars. 

• None of the Spider-Man: These three actors, mainly Tom Holland seem to be the ones that people are most shocked by. Tom Holland’s Spider-Man has cost Disney and Sony a lot of money. Specifically with Holland’s Spider-Man it’s especially impactful and interesting to have Holland see Downey without the mask. Holland’s mentor, his Uncle Ben, was Tony Stark, Robert Downey Jr. I was a bit surprised that he wasn’t announced during this. There’s a couple of things with his Spider-Man that’s definitely affecting this. First up, Tom Holland is currently filming Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. Therefore he’s probably not available to be filming and then after he’s done filming that he starts filming Spider-Man 4. It could be a scheduling conflict issue, in fact I guarantee that’s a good portion of the reason why. The other thing is from Jeff Snieder who is a leaker. He leaks movie news, not spoilers and when he reports something most of the time it’s right. He has sources and he’s been right about a lot of things. He said that Spider-Man 4 takes place during Doomsday. I would imagine that Spider-Man 4 heavily sets up Secret Wars. As far as the other Spider-Men, we don’t have Tobey and Andrew. Tobey and Andrew are two of the examples that I mentioned earlier of wanting to save some of their heavy hitters for Secret Wars. If Tobey and Andrew aren’t in Secret Wars then that’s just weird. That would be stupid if we never saw them again. The fact that we’re getting a Spider-Man less Avengers movie is a bit weird. I’m a bit surprised that I would have figured we would have gotten at least one of them showing up. At least Tom would show up and they’d save Tobey and Andrew for Secret Wars but no, no Spider-Man are in this movie. 

• Captain Marvel + Friends: Another one that was surprising to a lot of people not to be included. The reason why this one is weird is because they included Kelsey Grammer’s Beast. The last time we saw Grammer’s beast was in The Marvels with Monica Rambeau. As soon as Grammar was announced I was certain that Teyonah Parris, Monica Rambeau was going to be announced. That didn’t happen, neither did Brie Larson, Captain Marvel. We know this movie is multiverse centric and cosmic. Captain Marvel is a very cosmic character so it would make sense for somebody like her to be in this movie. I’m curious how much of this has to do with Captain Marvel’s reputation. The original movie has a very solid score on Rotten Tomatoes with a 79%. It’s also viewed as one of the weakest MCU movies. A lot of people view it as bottom five, bottom three MCU. The Marvels got even worse reviews and is a disastrous bomb for the MCU. It didn’t even make $200 million worldwide against a $275 million budget. That’s bad, it is easily the weakest performing MCU movie. I’m wondering how much of her not being included ties into that. Marvel probably had some conversations about what’s next for Captain Marvel after they saw the box office numbers and reviews for The Marvels. I also don’t think that Marvel would figure out who’s included and who’s not included based on reviews and box office. It is something to keep in mind and a possibility.

• No Disney+ Characters: Transitioning from The Marvels crew to Disney+ with Kamala Khan. It’s not as shocking that Kamala isn’t in here given that Brie Larson and Teyonah Parris aren’t. What’s more interesting about Kamala not being in here is you realize nobody from Disney+ besides Wyatt Russell, John Walker was announced. No Moon Knight, She-Hulk, Kate Bishop, and more were not announced. I know he didn’t originate from Disney+ but his show is currently streaming on Disney+, Charlie Cox was not announced. That’s a bit surprising considering his personal trainer put on his Instagram that Cox was training for Doomsday. The other thing with Cox not being in there is he’s filming Daredevil: Born Again season two. Similar to how Tom Holland had scheduling conflicts with The Odyssey, Cox probably has them too. I wouldn’t be surprised if Cox shows up in Secret Wars. What’s frustrating about there being no Disney+ characters is that it feels a bit pointless to have done multiple tv shows introducing new characters and not have them show up in your Avengers movie to end The Multiverse Saga. When Marvel’s problem has been quantity over quality and the main reason for the quantity is Disney+ and none of them are here, that’s frustrating. I always had that question: how does Moon Knight tie into the rest of the MCU. It’s not obvious how other MCU characters would know who Moon Knight is. With She-Hulk she’s cousins with Bruce Banner, there’s a connection there. For lack of a better word it makes me think several of these Disney+ as pointless since they clearly don’t mean much. 

• Some X-Men Included, Other X-Men Not Included: One of the big surprises of the announcement was just how many X-Men were in there. I believe they announced seven different mutants would be in the movie. There’s some names they didn’t mention, the big ones being Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds. They announced Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Alan Cumming, James Marsden, Kelsey Grammer, and Rebecca Romijn to be in the movie. But didn’t mention some massive heavy hitters with Jackman and Reynolds. I thought that Jackman and Reynolds were basically locks to be in this movie. Especially with how much money Deadpool & Wolverine made, they felt like locks. But once again they’re probably in Secret Wars and want to save some surprises. The other thing with Reynolds not being in the movie is that people are wondering how much of the lawsuits involving him and Blake Lively affect this. I don’t know the status of that, I haven’t really been following what happened. I know that people are mad at Reynolds and Lively for all of it. It might not look good on Reynolds’ image to leave that lawsuit and go film a movie and get paid millions of dollars. I don’t know how much of that is affected by this but I think you have to mention it. The other thing I’ve heard people talk about, no Halle Berry or Famke Jensen. We got several X-Men returning but not Storm and Jean Grey. Those are two of the most iconic X-Men. Halle Berry is still going strong with her career. As soon as James Marsden was announced I thought the next chair would be either one of them. Also, no Rogue played by Anna Paquin, another one that I’ve seen a lot of people surprised by. The final one here, no First Class people. James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Nicolas Hoult, nowhere to be seen. They probably wanted to have some X-Men in there but not have it as a dominant X-Men. They were probably thinking that there would be more nostalgia for the original actors than the prequel actors. 

• Few Original Six Avengers: This is one that was surprising that also wasn’t super surprising. We got two of the original six Avengers coming back, Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Hemsworth. We already knew that Downey was coming back. I figured Hemsworth would be back. What’s surprising, no Mark Ruffalo and no Jeremy Renner. These two surprised some people and honestly I’m a bit surprised. Renner is a bit tricky for two reasons. First up, his tv show Hawkeye ended with him retiring. They’ve done the thing of him retiring and coming back multiple times. I get that they probably don’t want to repeat that same plot beat over and over again. Second, I’m curious that after Renner’s snowplow accident how much he’s able to come back. I don’t know what his body condition is and if he’s even able to return. I just have some of those questions that I think factor into some of this. With Ruffalo I don’t know what’s up with that. That doesn’t require much, Ruffalo just needs to wear a green suit and that’s about it. I think they’ve made some weird choices with Hulk. I love Avengers Endgame but Professor Hulk was a weird idea and I want to rage Hulk. Seeing Red Hulk in Captain America: Brave New World made me miss that even more. We’ll see Ruffalo again, they haven’t really set up what his end point would be for his story and they haven’t already done what could be a proper ending. The other one that hasn’t been rumored, reported, or announced was Scarlett Johansson. Obviously she’s dead so they’ll have to bring her back. If we’re bringing back Downey and Evans who were dead then I don’t get why Scarlett won’t be back. I would imagine that in Doomsday or Secret Wars we’ll get a scene with the original six Avengers reuniting in some sense. I’m not sure what that’ll look like but I think it’s likely to happen. Again, maybe they want to save some of the original six Avengers announcements for CinemaCon or ComicCon not sure. 

• No Guardians of the Galaxy: There’s really only one that I’m surprised by and that’s no Chris Pratt. If one Guardians of the Galaxy was to be announced I assumed it would be Pratt. Where they left everybody in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 I didn’t expect to see Bradley Cooper or Dave Bautista or Zoe Saldaña. They left Pratt on Earth so clearly they have plans for him in the future. Pratt went on Jimmy Kimmel Live about a month ago and he was asked about being in Avengers: Doomsday and said this. “We did Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was the last time you saw Star-Lord. There was a promise that Star-Lord would return. All I can say is, we will make good on that promise.” I saw him say that and figured he would appear in Doomsday but his name wasn’t there. Similar to some of these other people like Holland and Cox, Pratt has scheduling conflicts with season two of The Terminal List. That’s a show that he does on Prime Video and he can’t be filming both of them. 

• No Wizards or Witches: We got Avengers, X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Thunderbolts members in there but we didn’t get any sort of magical users, mainly Doctor Strange and Scarlet Witch. Benedict Cumberbatch not being there might be the most surprising one of them all. If we’re doing multiverse, Doctor Strange seems like a key player in this. Cumberbatch has made so many conflicting reports about whether or not he’s in Doomsday. He said he wasn’t then clarified to say that he was. I don’t know what’s true and what’s not. But it’s very weird to me that Cumberbatch isn’t in this movie since he was the star of a multiverse movie. The other one in there is no Elizabeth Olsen, Scarlet Witch. She did die in Multiverse of Madness but they didn’t show the body so they can easily come up with some excuse that she didn’t die. Especially since there’s been a hunger and desire for more Scarlet Witch post-WandaVision that was this big hit show for Marvel. Once again her abilities can fit very well into a movie about the multiverse. Especially since we’re getting Magneto returning, having Wanda in there could be very cool. Since Multiverse of Madness came out she’s been doing a lot of dramas and small indie projects so maybe she’s wanting to move away for big studio Marvel and do indie projects so she turned down Doomsday I don’t know.