Marvel has found a way to turn one of its messiest legacy questions into a punchline. A new Avengers: Doomsday trailer arrived on Saturday 24 October, roughly a day after a baseball-themed crossover promo aired during the World Series, and its standout moment is a joke about just how many men have called themselves Captain America.
The gag belongs to Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man, who finds himself in a room with three former and current shield-bearers: Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers, Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson and Wyatt Russell’s John Walker, better known as USAgent. Walker chimes in that he “was also Cap for a minute,” a nod to his brief and disastrous stint with the shield in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. A slightly longer seven-second cut of the scene has since appeared online, showing Ant-Man calling Rogers “Cap” before glancing at Wilson, the current holder of the title since Captain America: Brave New World, and awkwardly correcting himself.
It’s a smart bit of self-awareness from a studio that has spent years passing the mantle around, and it signals that Doomsday isn’t going to pretend Steve’s return is uncomplicated.
The rest of the footage leans heavily on Thor, with Chris Hemsworth’s god of thunder apparently taking charge and urging the assembled heroes to unite against Doctor Doom, the villain Robert Downey Jr. is set to play. Thor and Rogers share the spotlight as the two characters proven worthy of Mjolnir, a thread that picks up directly from July’s first full trailer, where Thor tested Steve’s identity by making him lift the hammer. For long-time fans, it’s a callback to Steve’s Mjolnir moment in Avengers: Endgame, still one of the franchise’s most crowd-pleasing scenes.
Evans’ return is clearly the centrepiece of Marvel’s marketing push, and this trailer suggests the studio wants to use him as both a nostalgic anchor and a source of humour rather than simply restoring him as leader.
The campaign is also generating plenty of noise around the cast. Sandra Hüller has reportedly joined in an undisclosed role, David Harbour has insisted he didn’t spoil anything in a recent interview, and fans believe they’ve identified a character trimmed from the first trailer, though Marvel hasn’t commented.
Avengers: Doomsday is scheduled to open in cinemas on 18 December, with a UAE release date yet to be confirmed. The bigger question is whether a film juggling this many returning faces can give each of them, and especially all those Captains America, room to matter.
