The new Avengers: Doomsday trailer that debuted to private theater owners and press at CinemaCon 2026 has rewritten several of the unwritten rules of the MCU. The first full-length look at Marvel Studios' big Phase 6 crossover dropped during Disney's CinemaCon panel in April, and The Direct was in attendance when it played. Up to that point, fans had only seen four short character teasers for the film, focused on Steve Rogers, Thor, the X-Men, and the Fantastic Four.
Our first-hand account of the footage paints a clear picture that the Avengers: Doomsday trailer breaks a few rules the MCU has stuck to for years. While some of the rules, Doomsday breaks are thrilling, one of them may leave fans with a bittersweet taste as they grapple with the nostalgia of what came before. Regardless, it’s clear the Russo brothers are cooking up something special; by December 18, MCU fans will experience a flavor of storytelling they’ve never tasted before.
Avengers: Doomsday Trailer Rewrites Rules of the MCU
The X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Avengers Finally Share a Screen
For over a decade, a stone-clad rule kept the X-Men and the Fantastic Four from appearing in the MCU. 20th Century Fox held the film rights to both teams, which kept them locked out of every Avengers movie from The Avengers in 2012 through Avengers: Endgame in 2019. This barrier only fell when Disney closed its $71.3 billion acquisition of Fox on March 20, 2019, and even then, Marvel Studios spent years carefully building toward a proper crossover.
The Doomsday trailer ends the long wait with some very exciting scenes. At the X-Mansion, we see a shot of Anthony Mackie's Sam Wilson in the building with Yelena having a gun drawn, while Pedro Pascal's Reed Richards stretches his arm across the room to physically restrain Sam. Then we see Yelena approach someone, which turns out to be Mystique, and they have an intriguing face-off as Mystique shapeshifts into Yelena. This is an exciting detail as it's the first time the Avengers, the X-Men, and the Fantastic Four have all stood in basically the same shot in the MCU. James Marsden's Cyclops also makes an appearance, sending an optic blast into the sky from his visor.
Patrick Stewart's Professor X is also featured in the trailer alongside Ian McKellen's Magneto. These are actors from a different studio's franchise, featuring alongside Sam, Reed, and Yelena. This would have been unthinkable some years ago, but Doomsday just made it possible.
Robert Downey Jr. Plays a Completely Different Character
Marvel Studios has a long history of using legacy heroes' actors as multiverse variants. Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield returned as their own Peter Parkers in Spider-Man: No Way Home, Hayley Atwell played Captain Carter in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and Patrick Stewart reprised his Professor X for that same film. The unwritten rule was that if a face came back, it came back as a version of the character that face was already known for.
Robert Downey Jr. breaks that rule in the Avengers: Doomsday trailer. The first proper look at his Doctor Doom opens the footage, with the actor hooded and speaking in a Latverian accent that sounds nothing like Tony Stark. He's kneeling, as he delivers Doom's warning: "Something's coming, something we may not be able to deter. Before this day is done, we shall be faced with an unthinkable decision."
This is the actor who played Tony Stark for more than a decade, now playing the MCU's new big bad as a fully separate person. Co-director Joe Russo described Doom at CinemaCon as a villain who is always three moves ahead and reportedly stronger than Thanos. The Stormbreaker moment in the trailer is evidence of this. Chris Hemsworth's Thor leaps at Doom with the axe raised over his head, and Doom catches it mid-swing with two fingers.
The Avengers Lineup Has No Hulk or Iron Man
Since 2012, every Avengers movie has heavily featured Iron Man and the Hulk. Tony Stark and Bruce Banner were a major part of The Avengers, Age of Ultron, Infinity War, and Endgame. Both heroes were treated as load-bearing pieces of any major team-up, but the Avengers: Doomsday trailer tears that rule down, too.
The wide shot inside the newly rebranded Avengers Tower shows the team assembled under a fresh red-and-white A logo. Sam Wilson, Bucky Barnes, Yelena Belova, Joaquin Torres, and Scott Lang are lined up alongside the Fantastic Four and Thor. Iron Man is nowhere in the lineup because Downey is now Doom, and Iron Man is, well, long dead. Hulk is missing too, and Mark Ruffalo himself confirmed earlier this year that Bruce Banner does not appear in Doomsday at all. He'll instead show up in Spider-Man: Brand New Day in July.
This absence changes what an Avengers roster looks like on screen. Ebon Moss-Bachrach's Thing is likely going to be the team's heavy hitter instead of Hulk. Ben Grimm appears in the trailer shaking hands with Winston Duke's M'Baku. Sam's Captain America and Yelena's Black Widow continue the long-running tradition of having a Cap and a Widow in every Avengers movie, but the rest of the bench has changed. Doomsday marks the first Avengers film to move forward without Hulk and Iron Man, a transition many fans might find bittersweet given the undeniable excitement those two brought to every crossover.
Geraldo Amartey is a writer at The Direct. He joined the team in 2025, bringing with him four years of experience covering entertainment news, pop culture, and fan-favorite franchises for sites like YEN, Briefly and Tuko.
