Marvel’s Avengers assembling together was a promise that the MCU made to the audience in its first-ever post-credit scene, all the way back in Iron Man in 2008. As fans know, the early Phase 1 movies put the pieces together ahead of the 2012 team-up movie, which changed the course of Hollywood forever, revealing the might of Marvel and the box office returns that could come from a cinematic universe. From that moment through 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, the status of that team in the MCU has carried a lot of weight, even across the movies where they weren’t present. Now, their absence is going to be at the center.
The upcoming Avengers: Doomsday may arrive this December as the fifth “Avengers” movie, but the film will explore the fact that the titular team itself hasn’t really had a steady presence at all since the fallout of Endgame. Hints have been made, of course, about the makeup of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in various post-credit scenes, but no actual organized Avengers will be a key point of the film itself. “We’re coming out of years of seemingly no organised Avengers team, and that’s exactly when they face these incursions,” Marvel boss Kevin Feige revealed to Empire. “That’s always fun, to put your heroes on the back foot.”
Exploring a world where no organized Avengers team is a key piece of the story is especially interesting for the MCU at this point in time. Firmly established now with a slew of characters, it seems almost impossible to imagine a world without the team working in the margins. In truth, the latest phases of the MCU have more in common with Phase 1 than Phases 2 and 3, with the roster needing to be built back up and the world looking for an answer from its superheroes.
It’s worth pointing out that when Avengers: Doomsday debuts, there will technically be an “Avengers” team that will appear, in fact, two. The main “Avengers” roster is set to be led by Captain America, with Shang-Chi, Thor, Falcon, and Ant-Man making up the rest of the roster, but there will also be the “New Avengers” as established in last year’s film, featuring Florence Pugh’s Black Widow, plus Bucky Barnes, U.S. Agent, Ghost, Red Guardian, and Sentry. That’s not even counting that the Fantastic Four, X-Men, and Wakandans all have a place in the film too.
Though an Avengers team led by Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson has been in the cards for years now (a tease at the end of Shang-Chi seemed to imply that Captain Marvel, Wong, and Hulk were all in the loop as well), there’s been no indication in the slightest that the team has actually done anything in the time since Endgame. Mackie notes that it’s been a long time coming, especially after Steve handed over the shield in that film, telling the outlet: “Now you get to see more of him leading the charge with everyone into battle.”
An interesting element of Avengers: Doomsday and the many teams that make up its massive ensemble will be how they all come together, and who will be christened as a member of the Avengers. At the end of the day, though, Marvel fans know that Secret Wars is looming a year later, which will no doubt bring another wrinkle to the idea of an “Avengers team” that the MCU has never seen.
