Believe it or not, the 26 actors who were announced as being cast in Avengers: Doomsday this week do not account for the entire ensemble that will be joining Robert Downey Jr. in the anticipated Marvel Cinematic Universe crossover film, with Downey Jr. and Marvel’s own social media pages cheekily hinting at further announcements to come. Still, it’s safe to assume the confirmed group of 27 includes many of the actor/character pairs who will be featured in significant roles in the film. If that is the case, and most or all of the other cast members are playing their most famous roles, unlike Downey Jr., who is portraying Victor von Doom/Doctor Doom rather than reprising his previous Marvel character of Tony Stark/Iron Man, many of the inclusions and notable exclusions imply important details about the film’s structure and story.

Doomsday has always been described as half of a two-part story that will be completed by the subsequent Avengers film, Secret Wars, which is based on two famous story arcs of the same name from Marvel Comics, released in 1984 and 2015, respectively. Like the 2015 version, the Secret Wars film will serve as the culmination of an overarching story arc focused on the alternate realities of Marvel’s multiverse (fittingly known as The Multiverse Saga), so most fans expect Doomsday to adapt portions of various comics series that proceeded the crossover storyline, such as Jonathan Hickman’s New Avengers series. Despite the title, Hickman’s New Avengers actually focused primarily on a reunited Illuminati, a group including some of the most intelligent and influential superheroes from the comics’ main universe, working to resolve the threat of incursions, which are collisions between two universes focused on their respective versions of Earth that destroy one or both worlds entirely. As more and more theoretical solutions fail, the Illuminati are faced with various ethical dilemmas, eventually including the question of whether they should use a device that will destroy other worlds involved in incursions to safeguard their own.

Versions of Illuminati members Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejía), Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic (Pedro Pascal), and Henry “Hank” McCoy/Beast (Kelsey Grammer) are among the confirmed cast of Doomsday, as is Charles Xavier/Professor X (Sir Patrick Stewart), who was part of an earlier iteration of the team in the comics. And many more of the confirmed characters, such as X-Men franchise stars Scott Summers/Cyclops (James Marsden) and Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto (Sir Ian McKellen) as well as all members of the antihero team the Thunderbolts other than James “Bucky” Barnes/the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) have been shown, either in the comics and/or their previous live action appearances, to be willing to cross moral lines for the sake of what they see as the greater good, so many of them would presumably at least consider sacrificing other worlds to save their own, if in fact incursions (which were already introduced to the MCU in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness) or a similar universe-ending threat are part of the plot of Doomsday, which seems likely.

In the comics, Namor is eventually the only member of the Illuminati who is willing to go through with the lethal plan, and, after destroying one universe, forms a new team, the Cabal, made up of supervillains, to continue doing so until the threat to universe-616 is eliminated. It’s easy to imagine Downey Jr.’s Doom forming such a team in the film, recruiting sympathetic villains and even possibly misguided heroes, though he would presumably be the central character of such a storyline, rather than Mejía’s Namor, even if the latter is part of the group. And although the appropriately titled comic event Avengers vs. X-Men uses a different threat to pit the teams against one another, the choice of sacrificing another world to save one’s own could easily do so if Doomsday were to present a condensed adaptation of the storyline. Such a conflict would be a naturally enticing hook for potential viewers of all kinds, given this is the first Avengers film to directly feature X-Men characters. What’s especially unclear is whether the MCU’s new iteration of The Fantastic Four, who are confirmed to appear in Doomsday after being introduced in the reboot film The Fantastic Four: First Steps, would take sides in such a conflict or be more focused on confronting Doom, who is their personal archenemy in the comics, directly.

A Grounded Multiverse Film?

The main implication is that the film could have a similarly grave, morally complex story, as the comics did, but the cast reveal also suggests some more specific details about the plot. Of the confirmed heroes from the MCU’s main universe-616, only Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) have significant ties to the more mystical and cosmic parts of the franchise’s world, and Thor’s role will likely revolve mostly around him encountering the alternate timeline variant of his brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) featured in the Disney+ series of the same name. The potential absences of characters like Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and the Guardians of the Galaxy and inclusions of Namor, several characters from the Black Panther films, and the Thunderbolts, all of whom except Robert Reynolds (Lewis Pullman), are former or current mercenaries or covert agents suggest that the film may focus more on the geopolitical tensions over superpowered resources like vibranium and adamantium featured in projects like Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Captain America: Brave New World, than on more outlandish space-based and magical parts of the mythology.

Although directors Joe and Anthony Russo have already emphasized the differences between the new films and their previous Avengers duology, Infinity War and Endgame, the potential absences of major franchise stars like Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Bruce Banner/The Incredible Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) from Doomsday make it seem likely that Secret Wars will attempt to achieve a similar effect of escalation as Endgame had, when characters like Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) and Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) returned after not appearing in Infinity War to make the ensemble and scale of the later film even larger than that of the earlier one. That being said, even without Downey Jr. and Marvel’s reassurances, most fans would likely remain convinced that some significant cast members from Doomsday are yet to be revealed, particularly as it’s hard to imagine either film in the new pair being completely devoid of appearances from either Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Tom Holland), Wade Wilson/Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds), or Logan/Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), given that their most recent films are the most financially successful of the Multiverse Saga so far.