Avengers: Doomsday: Chris Evans’s return is an admission of defeat from Marvel

We’ve been here before.

The familiar strains of Alan Silvestri’s thumping Avengers score, this time arranged in a pared-back piano-forward arrangement. A lone figure on a Triumph motorcycle, a backlit silhouette reflected in a glass door, the five-pointed star on the blue uniform and then … a face.

That face. Chris Evans’ face. Steve Rogers’ face. Captain America’s face.

The rumours have been around long enough that it already seemed fact, and now, the confirmation. Evans will be returning as Steve Rogers/Captain America in the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday extravaganza, due for release in 51 weeks.

He has a new sidekick with him – a baby. His child? Maybe.

The 60-second clip ends with the promise that Steve Rogers will return in Avengers: Doomsday.

The teaser trailer has already been playing in American cinemas for some days, but this is its official release online for all to see, although speculation Evans was coming back to the franchise dates back more than a year.

The fact of his return will excite many fans, who remember the halcyon days of the Marvel Cinematic Universe when Steve Rogers and Tony Stark would verbally – and sometimes physically – spar against each other.

Two very different personalities, but with a shared mission of, well, saving and safeguarding the world. Their approaches sometimes differed, as we saw in explosive fashion in Captain America: Civil War, but their values remained steadfast.

When both Evans and Robert Downey Jr bowed out of the franchise in 2019 with the culminating film Avengers: Endgame, it was a big moment. It was in the title, it was the end of that era, and what Marvel called The Infinity Saga, comprising the first 22 movies in its series.

For the actors, they had been hemmed in by those characters for so long (11 years for Downey Jr, eight for Evans), and moving past it gave them the opportunity to carve out the next chapter of their careers.

Now, they’re both back. Not because Downey Jr and Evans needed to be, they were doing fine, but because Marvel needed them, and likely made it very hard for the actors to say no by promising what will surely be a colossal payday.

It reflects the very different position Marvel finds itself in than during the Infinity Saga era, when its movie machinery seemed to be the equivalent of Rumpelstiltskin’s wheel — everything it was spinning was gold.

The COVID pandemic was a distinct marker in time. Endgame was released in May 2019, followed by a Spider-Man movie, which are collaborations with Sony. Like everyone else in the theatrical business, its cinema release slate was halted just as Disney’s corporate mandate for streaming TV shows ramped up.

Rather than capitalise on the Endgame momentum with a steady but not overwhelming stream of new movies, it stalled. The first streaming show, WandaVision, wasn’t released until January 2021, and the first film of the pandemic era was Black Widow, a prequel of sorts that didn’t move the MCU forward.

You can point to quality control issues over the next three or four years, and the MCU had its share of mediocrity, including Thor: Love and Thunder and Ant-Man: Quantumania.

It introduced new superheroes such as Shang-Chi and The Eternals, plus a plethora on Disney+. Too many to keep track of, which led to the words “superhero fatigue” as the new bogeyman to haunt dwindling box office grosses across the industry.

It wasn’t confined to Marvel, every studio had franchises underperform as audience behaviour shifted to digital platforms. It was just pronounced for Marvel because it, at one point, seemed unassailable.

But it wasn’t just corporate strategy or wider industry issues that led Marvel to this position. It was also the fans.

Audiences are prone to nostalgia. As much as they tell you they want things that are fresh and exciting, that they’re sick of the same old thing, they also want what they know. It can be frustrating to hear one thing and then see them flock to something like Deadpool & Wolverine, which was, sure, a barrel of laughs, but is trading on the familiar.

So, it wasn’t surprising that Marvel went back to the Downey Jr and Evans well, even if it signals something of a defeat.

Downey Jr’s character, Tony Stark, was killed off in Endgame, although in a fictional world with parallel universes, never say never. But, as far as we know, he is coming back not as Stark, but as Doctor Doom, one of the uber villains of the comic books.

Evans’ return will also have some narrative obstacles as we last saw Steve Rogers as an old man, having lived the full life he was robbed of when he was frozen underwater for decades. He jumped and time-travelled (?) to the main timeline and passed the mantle of Captain America to his friend, Sam Wilson.

Sam, played by Anthony Mackie, was meant to be a defining moment for the MCU and for the audience at large. A Black man who represents the best ideals of a nation that has enslaved, assaulted and murdered his kin, and continues to discriminate against his community.

Since Steve entrusted Sam with the shield, Sam has been given his own series, The Falcon and Winter Soldier, in 2021, which charted the story of him accepting his role as Captain America.

It was considered storytelling that wrestled with resistance to him assuming the title, both external actors and also Sam’s personal journey of what it means to be Captain America. But the overall series lacked oomph and was bogged down by an A-plot conspiracy that wasn’t that interesting.

He didn’t return until earlier this year, in a Captain America movie. Sam may have been the title character, but it wasn’t even his movie, relegated to someone who was reacting rather than driving.

Sam hasn’t been given a fair shake to really own Captain America, and now they’re parachuting Steve Rogers back in. The optics are awkward, and the producers and writers are going to have to be very careful as to how they’re going to incorporate two Caps and not have it feel as if there was a “real” one and a seat-warmer.

Marvel will also have to be mindful that by harking back to a former time, that it doesn’t coddle its fans by “giving them what they want”. It’s not sustainable to keep resurrecting old characters for a quick injection of money and a “good on you”. It doesn’t serve the overall story long term.

At some point, we really are going to have to move on.

Avengers: Doomsday is in cinemas on December 17, 2026