Last week, Marvel Studios asked us to "pull up a chair" for a lengthy (it ran for over five hours in the end) Avengers: Doomsday cast reveal, and the list of 27 names left fans with quite a few questions.
If you've been keeping up with rumors relating to the 2026 MCU event film, you may have been expecting the cast of Thunderbolts* and The Fantastic Four: First Steps as well as a couple of X-Men characters (we had heard that both Kelsey Grammer and Sir Patrick Stewart were set to return after their respective appearances in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and The Marvels), but by far the biggest surprise was the amount of mutants that will feature in the movie.
Joining Stewart and Grammer will be Sir Ian McKellen as Magneto, Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler, Rebecca Romijn as Mystique, James Marsden as Cyclops, and Channing Tatum as Gambit.
Tatum made his MCU debut in Deadpool and Wolverine, but Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman were not announced as part of the Doomsday cast. However, scooper MTTSH is now reporting that Jackman, at least, will be joining his OG X-Men teammates in the movie.
This isn't the first time we've heard that Jackman is not quite done with Logan, but it was generally assumed that he'd be back for Secret Wars, not Doomsday. If Wolvie and Storm (Halle Berry) are indeed set to appear in the film, we assume Famke Janssen will also return as Jean Grey.
The presence of so many characters from 20th Century Fox's original X-Men films has led to speculation that this might be the team we will see in the long-awaited MCU reboot. It seems highly unlikely that the roster will only be made up of these characters, but there is a chance at least some of these mutants will stick around to usher in a new era with younger actors being brought in to fill certain other roles.
Another theory is that Doomsday will basically serve as an Avengers vs. X-Men movie, with Robert Downey Jr.'s Doctor Doom leading the Children of the Atom to war against Earth's Mightiest Heroes. A previous rumor suggested that Doom would actually assemble a team of "evil" Avengers variants, and while that may still be the plan for Secret Wars, there was no sign of Chris Evans (Steve Rogers), Scarlett Johansson (Natasha Romanoff) or any of the other OG Avengers that were said to be returning.
Is it possible Doom will first attempt to defeat our New Avengers by convincing the X-Men that they are a threat to the Multiverse? We can't see the movie taking too much inspiration from the AvX comic run, which saw both teams clash over the approaching Phoenix Force, but there are a number of ways a similar plot device can be utilized here.
It's been confirmed that more cast members will be announced (which likely explains the absence of Tom Holland's Spider-Man, etc), which should give us a better idea of what to expect.
For now, you can check out today's full Doomsday cast list along with the announcement video below.
• Paul Rudd as Ant-Man
• Simu Liu as Shang-Chi
• Tom Hiddleston as Loki
• Lewis Pullman as Sentry
• Florence Pugh as Yelena
• Danny Ramirez as Falcon
• Ian McKellen as Magneto
• Sebastian Stan as Bucky
• Winston Duke as M’Baku
• Chris Hemsworth as Thor
• Kelsey Grammer as Beast
• James Marsden as Cyclops
• Channing Tatum as Gambit
• Wyatt Russell as U.S. Agent
• Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm
• Rebecca Romijn as Mystique
• Patrick Stewart as Professor X
• Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler
• Letitia Wright as Black Panther
• Tenoch Huerta Mejia as Namor
• Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards
• Hannah John-Kamen as Ghost
• Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm
• David Harbour as Red Guardian
• Robert Downey Jr as Doctor Doom
• Ebon Moss-Bachrach as The Thing
• Anthony Mackie as Captain America