The machine that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe always has to keep the fires burning for the next project—or often three projects down the line—and has done since the beginning. Teases for future movies have become requirements. This has, as a result, led to journalists finding things out about these movies way ahead of time, likely long before Kevin Feige and company were ready to tell us. Even weirder, now we seem to know more about the moving coming out in 2026 than we do the one coming next summer. But there we have it as, according to The Wrap, Chris Evans will return to the MCU for Avengers: Doomsday.
Now, it’s not the most out-there of ideas that Evans would return to Marvel movies even after sunsetting his founding Avenger, Steve “Captain America” Rogers. The actor, after all, had a lot of fun with expectation in Deadpool & Wolverine as a foul-mouthed (and ill-fated) version of his Johnny Storm character. Avengers: Doomsday already has a whopper of a returning cast member, with Robert Downey Jr. coming back as Doctor Doom. Even still, it might have been fun not to know that for sure 18 months early.
At any rate, the report says Evans will be back in an undisclosed and unknown capacity for what will be the fifth Avengers movie, due out May 1, 2026. Will he be old Steve Rogers, as we saw at the end of Avengers: Endgame? Will he be a different Steve Rogers from a different universe? Or will he play some other character entirely, like friggin’ Doctor Bong or some shit? Who even knows.
We’ve spent a lot of time already discussing what may or may not happen in Joe and Anthony Russo’s Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars. But that’s because actually have a lot of info to glean. It’s very surprising we don’t have much in the way of info, really, of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, especially considering that comes out in July. Presumably without Chris Evans, but who even knows anymore?
Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.