Like many of you, I spent a good hunk of my day yesterday watching the five and a half hour Marvel livestream revealing the Avengers: Doomsday cast. In it, we saw a significant number of casting assumptions confirmed alongside big surprises like a number of Fox-era X-Men joining the fray. But the stream also offered some frustrations for fans, like its confirmation that almost the whole Thunderbolts cast would make it into Doomsday, leaving a bunch of folks asking “well, what the heck is the point of Thunderbolts then?!”
But what if I told you that I don’t think the cast announcement spoiled Thunderbolts at all? And not in a “we see spoilers differently” kind of way. I’ll admit that I don’t think knowing who makes it out alive matters much in a comic book franchise, but the real point goes deeper than that. David Harbour, Wyatt Russell, and Hannah John-Kamen appearing in Avengers: Doomsday doesn’t mean that their characters survive Thunderbolts (Sebastian Stan and Florence Pugh coming out the other side alive was always a given). To explain, we need to hop forward (backward?) in time to The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
Marvel’s First Family
There are two certainties about Fantastic Four at this exact moment in time. The first is that Marvel’s first family is in a different universe than the MCU’s primary timeline, and the second is that they need to eventually move over to said primary timeline. Now, when we saw the trailer for First Steps and how beloved the Fantastic Four were by the people of Earth, I immediately assumed that by the end of their introductory film they would be dragged into the prime timeline in the most tragic way possible: failing their own Earth and being forced to escape to a new corner of the multiverse. But the Doomsday cast announcement changed that theory. Or, rather, it delayed it. I still suspect that outcome is inevitable. We don’t know which Earth First Steps takes place on, but it ain’t going to make it to the other side of the multiverse saga. Now, though, I believe that Earth will come to an end as Avengers: Doomsday’s story comes to a close rather than First Steps’ story.
What better way to set up the stakes in a new and refreshing way than to make fans fall in love with the inhabitants of a planet doomed to die? We see the introduction of whatever-the-hell-we’re-calling the Fantastic Four Earth in First Steps, see its demise delayed by the Fantastic Four and then, come Doomsday, Loki’s gotten involved for [insert reason that would inspire the god of the timeline to intervene] and has to call upon the greatest heroes of the multiverse.
Not all of those heroes are a part of the prime timeline, though.
Crisis on Infinite MCU Earths
Right now, there are two known (or at least utilized) MCU timelines featuring the X-Men crew. The Fox timeline exists on Earth-10005, while the Earth featuring Patrick Stewart’s Illuminati version of Professor X is Earth-838.
That’s at least two whole sets of X-Men already! Which is to say that just because U.S. Agent, Red Guardian, Ghost, and Sentry’s actors appear on a cast list does not mean that those are our U.S. Agent, Red Guardian, Ghost, and Sentry. Even Bucky and Yelena could be different versions of themselves. I love the Prime Timeline’s Bucky Barnes, but if Loki steps in to pull the best versions of each character in on the fight is he really going to pull in a congressman?
We are working with infinite earths with infinite timelines. Just because they show up on a cast list for a later movie does not mean that the prime timeline versions of the character that we know and love are a part of the fray. Is that me trying to convince myself that I’ll still get to see John Walker bite it in Thunderbolts? Sure. But it’s also just comic book logic at this point.
Not only does it seem unlikely that the cast announcement spoiled the Thunderbolts, it may also have hinted at more depth to Avengers: Doomsday.
One of the mechanics that can make a multiversal story so engaging is the opportunity to showcase the pain of a connection that isn’t quite the connection you expected, typically resulting in a significant amount of angst for beloved characters. Imagine what’s going to happen when Peter Parker (Tom Holland) sees Doctor Doom’s (Robert Downey Jr.) face for the first time and has to wrestle with the fact that it’s not his surrogate father figure but, in fact, a villain?
Trailers for Thunderbolts are already signaling heavily that, at the very least, Harbour’s Red Guardian and Russell’s U.S. Agent aren’t making it to the other side of that film. One wants to be there for his daughter while the other craves redemption for his wrongdoings, setting both up as peak comic book story sacrifice fodder and leaving both Bucky and Yelena with emotional moments to play off of. Yelena is certainly going to feel that loss way more than Bucky, but redemption deaths often tug at even the toughest of heart strings.
I’d personally prefer it if they would stop torturing Bucky Barnes and Yelena Belova, but I do see why the opportunity to mess with some of the Avengers’ more hardened characters is appealing when it comes to Doomsday packing an emotional punch. Having to interact with team members that they presumably failed or couldn’t save in Thunderbolts is an easy, passive way to bring some emotions to the table without having to use up too much screentime with exposition. Because with a cast that size and more implied to come down the pipeline, there isn’t going to be a whole lot of time for character moments that require setup or longform explanations.
At the end of the day, we don’t actually know one way or the other. Both my theory and the idea that they did actually spoil Thunderbolts both exist in the same space until we’ve all seen the movie. But I’m choosing not to assume the worst until I’ve actually seen the movie.
