For anyone who remembers waiting around on Facebook Live for hours to watch a giant block of ice melt just to reveal the premiere date of a new season of “Game of Thrones,” today Marvel spent an obscenely long amount of time getting people to watch the backs of an increasingly long line of chairs just to see who was in the cast for its upcoming “Avengers: Doomsday” movie.

At least the “Game of Thrones” thing was interactive; it asked people to type in “FIRE” to get the thing to melt.

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Starting at 8 a.m. PT this morning, Marvel rolled out a livestream in which the studio slowly — VERY slowly — counted down every star who would appear in its upcoming team-up film, panning ever so slightly to the right to reveal the back of a new on-set chair, all set up in a row. How big was this sound stage?

Fans — and genuinely a lot of them, more than 100,000 at just about any given time on YouTube and notching over 9 million views on X — waited as much as 15 minutes in between the camera finally moving and revealing a new name. The never-ending flurry of messages in the live chat alongside the YouTube stream was kind of hypnotic.

It was so long, in fact, that Marvel’s cousin Hulu and its “Only Murders in the Building” managed to squeeze in a troll job, with the show tweeting out a nearly identical image of Renée Zellweger’s name joining the cast (Bridget Jones would make a great Avenger).

For anyone waiting to see any actual butts in seats? Too bad. There were no named stars on hand, until the very end when Robert Downey Jr., who was already announced to be returning to the MCU to play the villain Dr. Doom, took his seat. Occasionally, there was music in the background. And even the most casual Marvel fans could have guessed half the names that were ultimately confirmed. (We imagine this list still omits a bunch of cameos.)

The livestream lasted a grand total of five and a half hours, and in the end, revealed 27 names. We just hope “Avengers: Doomsday” itself isn’t as long as the livestream was.

This came after Marvel and directors Joe and Anthony Russo, who are returning to the MCU after their “Avengers: Endgame” in 2019, staged a helluva announcement to reveal the return of Downey to the franchise. His reveal at Comic-Con (seen above), with Downey dressed in green ripping off a mask and brandishing his arms like in the original “Iron Man,” was instantly iconic and sparked a flurry of speculation about the future of the MCU.

To be fair, those cast chairs did include a few genuine surprises. A good chunk of OG “X-Men” cast members (revealed a solid four hours into the livestream) were all announced to return, including Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Alan Cumming, Kelsey Grammer, Rebecca Romjin, and James Marsden. Other curious casting included the return of Tenoch Huerta Mejía, who played the villain Namor in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” Simu Liu is back for the first time since the release of “Shang-Chi,” and Tom Hiddleston is back since his stint in “Loki.”

Perhaps more notable were the names that weren’t revealed on those chairs. No Tom Holland yet ahead of “Spider-Man 4,” no Halle Berry, Famke Janssen, or Anna Paquin among those OG “X-Men,” and no Ryan Reynolds or Hugh Jackman after they first officially joined the MCU with last year’s “Deadpool & Wolverine.” Though Channing Tatum, who finally got to play Gambit in that film but never did in the original films, was among the cast. Again, no official characters were tagged along with any of these, so maybe there’s some other fun multiverse casting to be had.

Here’s the full list of names, in the order in which they were announced, in case you didn’t have five hours to spend on this event today: Chris Hemsworth, Vanessa Kirby, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Letitia Wright, Paul Rudd, Wyatt Russell, Tenoch Huerta Mejía, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Simu Liu, Florence Pugh, Kelsey Grammer, Lewis Pullman, Danny Ramirez, Joseph Quinn, David Harbour, Winston Duke, Hannah John-Kamen, Tom Hiddleston, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Alan Cumming, Rebecca Romjin, James Marsden, Channing Tatum, Pedro Pascal, Robert Downey Jr. It ended with a brief title card saying the film was now in production.

“Avengers: Doomsday” opens in theaters May 1, 2026 and, in the meantime, Marvel has three more movies slated to arrive before then, including “Thunderbolts*,” “Fantastic Four: First Steps,” and a still-untitled Marvel movie that remains on the theatrical slate for February 13, 2026. It will then be followed by “Spider-Man 4” from Sony coming July 31, 2026, another untitled Marvel movie in November ’26, and culminate with “Avengers: Secret Wars” on May 7, 2027.

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