Avengers: Doomsday Seems Ready to Fix an Endgame Mistake in the Worst Possible Way

For as much as the final third of Avengers: Endgame was all crowd-pleasing hit after crowd-pleasing hit, one moment earned more of an ugh than awe. That was the point when Spider-Man handed off the Infinity Gauntlet to Captain Marvel. As Carol Danvers prepared to face the oncoming hordes of Thanos, she was joined by all the superheroines of the MCU thus far: Pepper Potts as Rescue, Wasp, Valkyrie, Shuri, Okoye, Wanda Maximoff, Gamora, Nebula, and Mantis. But instead of feeling like a celebration of great Marvel women, the scene both wreaked of corporate box ticking and highlighted how little attention the franchise paid to female characters.

Looks like Marvel won’t be repeating Endgame‘s mistake in Avengers: Doomsday. Video footage from Giornate di Cinema, an Italian expo for theater owners, reveals the teams coming together to fight Doctor Doom. We see great male heroes like Captain America, Mister Fantastic, Shang-Chi, Gambit, and much more. We also see great female heroes including Invisible Woman, Mystique, Black Panther, Ghost, White Widow, and… Well, it’s just them.

Yes, Marvel seems to be avoiding its cringy feminist hero moment by removing the women altogether. That’s not what we wanted, Kevin Feige.

To be certain, the Lady Avengers Assemble scene from Endgame stinks and everyone on the internet agrees. Of course, a small (but obnoxiously loud) group on the internet hates the scene for the dumbest possible reason, arguing that it shows that Marvel cares more about women than men. They contend that the scene inaugurates what they derisively call the “M-She-U.”

In fact, that’s the exact opposite reason that the scene doesn’t work. By bringing together all of its female heroes, Marvel clearly wanted congratulations for its portrayal of superpowered women. But instead, the scene highlighted just how few women they have on their superhero roster. And even then, some of these are stretches; as much as we all love Pepper Potts, she had only been Rescue for maybe five minutes in Iron Man 3.

Since then, Marvel has been much better with its treatment of female characters. Wanda actually got one of the best character arcs in the franchise with WandaVision, which ended with her finally becoming the Scarlet Witch… at least until she becomes a crazy villain lady in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Captain Marvel was joined by Monica Rambeau and Ms. Marvel, and the franchise added She-Hulk, America Chavez, Ironheart, Stature, the Kate Bishop Hawkeye, and more.

None of whom show up in Avengers: Doomsday.

Now, there are a few caveats to keep in mind. First of all, this clearly isn’t the entire cast, as we don’t see every character revealed to be in Doomsday, such as Tenoch Huerta’s Namor, let alone those rumoured to appear, such as Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man or Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine. Second, Doomsday isn’t trying to encompass all of the MCU in the same way that Infinity War and Endgame did. Just because they’re not showing up in this movie doesn’t mean that She-Hulk or Captain Marvel don’t exist, any more than it means that Hulk or Doctor Strange are gone for good.

More importantly, quantity doesn’t mean quality. Part of the problem with the Endgame scene is that many of those characters hadn’t been given enough development to earn a spotlight. Heck, Hope van Dyne had to spend an entire movie playing second fiddle to Scott Lang before she got to be the Wasp, and even then she was completely absent from Infinity War and Endgame until she showed up with the other women.

For all of its post-Endgame problems, the MCU has actually been pretty good at using its superheroines. Not only did Shuri get an upgrade to become Black Panther, but these later phases have also introduced the White Widow Yelena Balova and the Invisible Woman Sue Storm. Even better, all three of these women were the leads of their respective films, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Thunderbolts*, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps.

If Doomsday is going to give these characters as much to do as their respective individual films did, then the smaller quantity of other women will be less of a problem. But if Doomsday is the super sausage fest it appears to be, then the Lady Avengers Assemble seem will somehow be even more embarrassing.

Avengers: Doomsday premieres on December 18, 2026.