15 Marvel Stars Not in Avengers ‘Doomsday’

Marvel’s slow burn reveal of the Avengers: Doomsday cast was a very clever feat of marketing. 100,000 fans were glued to a live feed of some director’s chairs on YouTube for an entire afternoon. The names on those director’s chairs ranged from the obvious to the genuinely surprising.

Some of the biggest surprises of the day, though, were the names that didn’t show up on those chairs before Robert Downey Jr. walked into the shot to bring the live feed to a close. While more Marvel heroes and villains will surely appear in Doomsday than were confirmed today, the first 27 (!) names in the Doomsday cast focused primarily on a few former Avengers, plus the casts of Thunderbolts, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, and the old Fox X-Men movies. That meant it did not mention some of Marvel’s biggest stars, including some men and women who have appeared in a dozen or more MCU films and series, and talents who have headlined the studio’s biggest box-office hits.

Now, this is Marvel we’re talking about; the only thing they like more than surprising people is by engineering an elaborate deception to surprise people. Remember: This is the company that denied the rumors that Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield were in Spider-Man: No Way Home until the day the film opened in theaters! I wouldn’t put it past them to do it again. So just because an actor wasn’t listed in Avengers; Doomsday’s official cast doesn’t mean he won’t be in the movie. But for now, here are 15 names we’re genuinely surprised were left out of the initial announcement.