The Most Surprising Members of the ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ Cast

By the time Marvel concluded its hours-long YouTube presentation of the full cast of Avengers: Doomsday it had revealed 27 different names. One — Robert Downey Jr. — had already been announced back at Comic-Con in 2024. Some, like Chris Hemsworth and Anthony Mackie, were all but forgone conclusions; you arguably couldn’t make another Avengers sequel without them.

But then there were some other names — maybe a third of the full roster revealed online and on social media today — that were genuine out-of-left-field surprises. A lot of them were members of the Fox X-Men franchise, which is technically defunct following Disney’s acquisition of the 20th Century Fox studio. Maybe it wasn’t that shocking that Patrick Stewart would appear in Doomsday, given that he already made one cameo in the MCU in 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. On the other hand, the names announced today included at least one actor who hadn’t appeared in an X-Men movie in over 20 years! A child who was born the year this person last played a Marvel superhero can legally consume alcohol now. That is wild.

Here are the nine biggest surprises in the cast list for Avengers: Doomsday. Of course, there are some surprising omissions from the cast as well. (Where is Tom Holland? Spider-Man doesn’t get to fight Doctor Doom? Does no one but me recall The Amazing Spider-Man #5???) But that’s a subject for another day.