Marvel Studios has found its Doctor Doom—and it's Robert Downey Jr., who got a hero's death as Tony Stark in 2019's Endgame and will return to play the villain in the next two Avengers films.
As in years past, the Marvel Studios panel was the event of San Diego Comic-Con 2024. Hot off a record-breaking weekend for Deadpool & Wolverine, Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige took to the Hall H stage for the first time since 2022 to continue the storied tradition of rolling out the next few years’ worth of plans for the MCU in San Diego. And unlike Marvel's last SDCC appearance in 2022, where the announcements were mostly TV-related, this year was all about the studio's upcoming film slate, including 2025 releases Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts*, and Fantastic Four.
But in the mighty Marvel (and Feige) manner, that wasn’t all. The final moments of the panel featured a series of titanic reveals, including not only confirmation that Joe and Anthony Russo will return to the Avengers franchise but also the debut of the actor who'll play the MCU's Doctor Doom in Avengers 5, now entitled Avengers: Doomsday, and Avengers: Secret Wars: none other than Downey, the actor whose performance as Iron Man put Marvel on the map way back in 2008.
We'll get to the questions that announcement raises in a moment; first, let's run through all of the news Marvel made this weekend.
Captain America: Brave New World Broadens its Scope
Boasting a return to the “grounded" aspects of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the Anthony Mackie-fronted Captain America: Brave New World kicked off the panel. Saturday's big reveal? Giancarlo Esposito is playing the villain Sidewinder, head of the Serpent Society. A former HYDRA officer named Seth Voelker, he’s a highly organized criminal mastermind who will cause some problems for Sam Wilson (Mackie) throughout the film.
The footage played for attendees leaned into that conspiratorial Winter Soldier tone, with Sam telling President Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (Harrison Ford) that he’s in danger and Ross speaking about how Tiamut—the ancient god-being turned to stone and left half-submerged in the Indian Ocean at the end of Eternals, an infamously unresolved MCU plot thread—is responsible for creating a new element called adamantium. Yes, the material used to give Wolverine his claws will make its MCU debut. That’s important because adamantium is the only thing strong enough to take on vibranium—and considering that Wakanda is the sole source of vibranium, whoever controls adamantium will gain a tactical advantage, turning this into a newfound race for natural resources.
The trailer concludes with Ross giving a speech outside the White House when shots are fired. He ducks down, he emerges from behind the podium as the Red Hulk. Those in attendance were then treated to Ford appearing on stage and pretending to Hulk out, a moment that yielded images you'll probably see 80,000 times in meme form before the February 14, 2025 release of Brave New World.
Thunderbolts* Is the MCU’s Take on Suicide Squad
Yes, the correct branding for Marvel’s Thunderbolts* does indeed include that asterisk, a detail that Feige stated he’ll hold on talking about further until “after the movie comes out.” After the cast—Florence Pugh, Lewis Pullman, Hannah John-Kamen, David Harbour, Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell, Olga Kurylenko, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus — took the stage, Feige rolled the first teaser. Scored to “Where is My Mind?” by The Pixies, the trailer featured Pugh’s Yelena speaking with Harbour’s Red Guardian about how unfulfilled she is in her life. As she descends into a secret lair, she encounters a handful of other team members, including Russell’s US Agent, who have all been seemingly hired for the same job. They come under fire from a mysterious foe, and Yelena declares that they’ve been gathered together because someone wants them all dead.
In Marvel Comics, the Thunderbolts are traditionally a group made up of either anti-heroes or outright villains who are looking to find some sort of redemption. So, yeah, it’s basically the MCU’s version of the Suicide Squad. Helmed by Beef director Jake Schreier from a script from Beef creator Lee Sung Jin and Joanna Calo, we’ll see who makes it out alive when Thunderbolts* releases May 5, 2025.
Fantastic Four Gets a New Title and Plenty of Period-Accurate Details
Marvel’s footage-focused reveal centered on the Fantastic Four, with stars Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach in attendance alongside director Matt Shakman. The new title of the FF's MCU debut is The Fantastic Four: First Steps (probably in an SEO-friendly attempt to make it distinct from the other Fantastic Four movies), and the movie will be scored by Michael Giacchino.
Despite the fact the movie hasn’t started filming in earnest, Feige and co had quite a bit of footage on hand to show off. The clip starts off in a 4:3, Super 8 style, with Pascal’s Reed Richards teaching a bunch of young students in a classroom under a banner reading “Fantastic Science with Mr. Fantastic.” He's losing the children with his lecture about the possibilities of the multiverse until he pivots and asks if they'd rather see a “big explosion.”
From there, we’re treated to a glimpse of Sue (Kirby), Ben (Moss-Bachrach), Johnny (Quinn), and Reed suiting up into space suits, intercut with Sue and Reed talking about how they always have family dinner on Sundays at 8 pm. The footage also shows off a Jetsons-like flying car floating through a retro-futuristic NYC skyline; as the group climbs into a spaceship to rocket into the atmosphere, the teaser cuts to the new logo and title for the film, which releases July 25, 2025.
After the title card, the footage cuts back to the interior of a spacious and swanky apartment, as a the giant purple-helmeted figure of Galactus leans down outside the window and peers inside the building.
The Russos and Robert Downey Jr. Return for Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars
For every “We’re so back,” there must be an equal and opposite “It’s so over.” At the very end of the panel, Feige brought up Joe and Anthony Russo, now officially the directors of Avengers 5 and Avengers: Secret Wars. The two directors quickly pivoted to talk about their plans for Avengers 5, and Hall H turned green to announce the film formerly known as The Kang Dynasty would now be Avengers: Doomsday.
As we noted when news broke about Marvel moving off of Jonathan Majors, Doctor Doom was always a better fit for Secret Wars than Kang. In the 2015 Secret Wars comic, written by Jonathan Hickman with art by Esad Ribić, the famed villain is the primary antagonist for the story, culminating a six-year-long story that dates back to Hickman’s run writing Fantastic Four from 2009 to 2012.
Trying to introduce a brand new foe and make them a worthy adversary for the Avengers in the course of two films isn’t impossible—that’s basically what the Russos did for Thanos in Infinity War. Doomsday will likely need to do the same amount of heavy lifting to introduce Doom and prop him up as a satisfying Big Bad, but it will take a Herculean effort to pull it off. When done right, Doom can be the flagship Marvel villain. Hell, in the Secret Wars comic, there’s a moment where Doom removes Thanos’ spinal column like it’s Mortal Kombat.
But you need someone with gravitas, and that may explain the panel's final reveal. Introduced by the Russo as “the one person who can play Victor Von Doom,” Downey stepped out of the chorus line of masked Dooms and revealed his face to cheers from the Hall H faithful. (The wording of the Russos’ introduction is a clue to the direction Marvel is taking Doom, in the sense that it sounds like RDJ will be playing Doom himself, not an evil variant of Tony Stark, a choice that would have comic-book precedent.)
In the wake of jettisoning Kang (who will likely die the way back to his home planet), betting on Doom—and involving the Fantastic Four in both Doomsday and Secret Wars—makes a lot of sense. It's easy to envision Downey as a Doom who's jealous of Reed Richards in the way Downey's Lewis Strauss was jealous of Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer, and it might be cool to see, say, Tom Holland’s Spider-Man react to seeing the face of a new villain that resembles, but isn’t, his old mentor. And there's no discounting Downey's history with the franchise and the emotional leverage it'll give Marvel when it comes to getting audiences to buy in to the character.
But Robert Downey Jr.’s return to the MCU still feels like a Jordan-on-the-Wizards move, a blatant appeal to heyday nostalgia in the wake of the Majors debacle, and comes with more questions than answers. How much of Doom’s direct involvement in the comic book storylines of Secret Wars will the Russos and Stephen McFeely—announced via press release as the writer of both Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars—be adapting? That particular storyline is pretty dense, even for seasoned Marvel readers. Why did it have to be RDJ? How will they tell this story without it feeling like a cheat to bring him back? We’ll find out when Doomsday opens in May 2026, followed by Secret Wars dropping in May 2027.