Can Avengers: Doomsday Survive Our Expectations?

Welcome back to Marvel Maniac and MCU After Show. I'm your host, Eric Cicada, aka Mr. Honest, and today I want to talk about Avengers: Doomsday, but not by breaking down another theory, predicting another cameo, or trying to solve the entire movie before any of us have seen it. Because as I record this episode, Avengers: Doomsday is only about 3 months away. That feels almost impossible to say. We've spent years talking about the next Avengers movie like it was some distant point on the horizon. First it was the Kang Dynasty, then everything changed. Doctor Doom entered the picture, Robert Downey Jr. came back, the original X-Men started assembling, Steve Rogers returned, the Fantastic Four arrived, the Thunderbolts/New Avengers entered the fray, and suddenly this movie that has existed mostly as announcements, theories, trailers, and footage is not too far away anymore. It is right in front of us. In the blink of an eye, the lights are going to go down, the Marvel Studios logo is going to appear, and we are finally going to watch this thing. And if I'm being completely honest, I'm nervous. Not because I'm worried that the movie's gonna like disappoint me or anything. I mean, that's always possible. I'm nervous because I'm beginning to wonder whether any version of Avengers: Doomsday could possibly survive the expectations surrounding it. That is the question I want to ask today. Can Avengers: Doomsday survive the movie we have already created in our heads? Because everyone has one now. We have our favorite theories. We have characters we believe have to appear. We have reunions we desperately want to see. We have opinions about Doctor Doom, opinions about Robert Downey Jr. playing him, opinions about Steve Rogers, opinions about which Captain America should lead the Avengers. And opinions about how the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, the New Avengers, Wakanda, Loki, and everybody else should fit into this story. And that is before we even get to the things Marvel has intentionally kept hidden. There are millions of fans waiting for Doomsday, but we are not all waiting for the same movie. That might be the biggest challenge Marvel has ever faced. So I keep comparing this movie to Avengers: Infinity War because it is naturally the standard. Infinity War was the last time Marvel had to bring an almost ridiculous number of major characters together and make it feel like one story instead of a collection of appearances, and somehow it worked. But Doomsday does not enter the arena holding all the same cards that Infinity War held, and I've been back and forth about this idea for the last few weeks. By the time Thanos arrived, the MCU had spent about 10 years building momentum. We knew the Avengers. We understood the relationships between the major players. We knew Tony Stark and Steve Rogers were separated after Civil War. We knew Thor had just lost Asgard. We knew Doctor Strange held the Time Stone. We understood the Infinity Stones because Marvel had kept placing them throughout the universe for years. And even though Thanos had not received hours of character development before Infinity War, his presence had been hanging over the MCU. We knew something was coming personally, even from that first Avengers post-credits scene where we met Thanos. We knew the Infinity Stones were leading somewhere. When the movie began, the pieces did not all know about one another, but the audience understood why they belonged on the same board. Doomsday has a different job. It has been more than 7 years since Avengers: Endgame. The MCU has expanded into movies, streaming series, alternate universes, branching timelines, legacy franchises, and groups of heroes who have never even met. We have Sam Wilson carrying the shield. We have Bucky and the New Avengers. We have the Fantastic Four coming from another universe. We have the original X-Men returning from a completely different franchise. We have Wakanda and Black Panther and M'Baku. We have Namor. We have Thor. We have Loki sitting at the center of the multiverse. We have Steve Rogers even back in the picture. And in the middle of all that, we have Robert Downey Jr., the face of the Infinity Saga, the hero of all heroes, now playing the biggest villain of all time, Doctor Doom, Victor Von Doom. Marvel's own description says that heroes from 3 distinct universes are being placed on a deadly collision course. That sounds enormous, and it sounds exciting, but it also sounds incredibly difficult. Infinity War was the culmination of a road we could see. Doomsday has to convince us that roads which sometimes felt completely separate were always capable of meeting here. And I don't say that to declare the movie doomed before it arrives. I say it because this movie is attempting something harder than nostalgia makes it look. Bringing these actors onto the same screen will create applause. Making all of their characters belong in the same story will require something much more impressive. The movie versus the moment. This is where my nerves go beyond whether the movie is technically good or bad, and I'm worried about the moment surrounding it. We live in a fandom environment where reactions become absolute almost immediately. A movie releases, and within hours it is either a masterpiece that saved the franchise or a disaster that killed it. Individual choices do not remain individual choices for long. They become evidence in a larger argument about the MCU. And Doomsday will not be judged like a normal movie. It will be judged as Marvel's answer to everything. It will be judged as the return of the Avengers, the arrival of Doctor Doom, the return of Robert Downey Jr., the return of Steve Rogers, the crossover with the X-Men, the continuation of the Fantastic Four, the payoff of the Multiverse Saga, which has gone so long. And some fans have stuck with Marvel through the thick and thin of all of this. This movie also has to set up The following movie, Secret Wars, and for some people it will be judged as a referendum on whether the MCU still deserves to exist. No single movie should have to carry all that, but this one does. And the truth is, not one version of this movie can please everyone. If Doomsday gives us an enormous crowd-pleasing moment, some people will call that empty fan service. If it slows down and focuses on character, some people will say Marvel wasted the crossover, Wasting time. If Steve Rogers plays a major role, some people will say Marvel is refusing to move forward. If Sam Wilson leads the Avengers, some people will say that the movie ignored the character they came back to see. If Doctor Doom has any emotional connection to Tony Stark, people will say Marvel could not let go of Iron Man. If that connection is not important, other people will ask why Robert Downey Jr. needed to play Doom at all. If the X-Men fight the Avengers, fans will argue about who was weakened to make the battle possible. If they immediately become allies, fans will say Marvel wasted the conflict it promised. And if somebody's favorite rumored cameo does not appear, there will be people who treat an internet rumor like Marvel broke a contractual promise. That is a trap. The movie is not only competing against other Avengers movies, it is also competing against every theory video, every leak, Every imagined reunion, every comic book storyline, and every fan's private definition of what the MCU needs to become again. Part of the reason this makes me nervous comes from my experience with Star Wars. We don't talk a lot of Star Wars on this show, you know, it's a Marvel show, but you know, I saw The Last Jedi and formed my opinion before looking at everybody else's reaction, and on my own I thought it was a fantastic movie. Even now, I feel like I'm about to be dogpiled for saying that. There were things that broke my heart. I still hate that we never got Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, and Mark Hamill together again. Thought that was a wasted opportunity. With the original three back in the same trilogy, that reunion felt like something we should have seen. We never did, and we can never get that exact moment now. But I still walked away from *The Last Jedi* feeling strongly. about the movie itself. And then I entered the larger conversation and discovered that it had become a battlefield. People were not simply discussing what worked and what did not work. The movie became a dividing line. It became something fans used to measure whether somebody understood Star Wars correctly. And by the time The Rise of Skywalker arrived, that trilogy was carrying not only the pressure of finishing the Skywalker saga But the pressure of responding to the war surrounding the previous movie. I dread having that experience for Doomsday. And when I say that, I'm not asking everybody to like the movie. If it does not work, it does not work. Marvel does not need protection from honest criticism, and being excited does not require pretending that every decision is brilliant. What scares me is something different. I'm afraid I could walk out of Doomsday loving it, and then watch the conversation around it become so hostile and nitpicky, so predetermined that the movie starts feeling like taking a side in its own war. I know I will probably approach this movie more optimistically than some people. I love the MCU. I host a show called Marvel Maniac. I am not arriving as a neutral observer, and I never pretended otherwise. But I also know myself well enough to say this: if I walk out disappointed, that will be interesting too. I will not lie to defend Marvel. I will not manufacture excitement because I want the movie to succeed. My reaction will be my reaction. What I want is the freedom for that reaction to belong to me before the internet tells me what the consensus is supposed to be. My first instinct Was to say that we should go into Doomsday with no expectations, but that's not realistic. Of course we have expectations. Marvel is selling this as an Avengers movie. It brought back the Russo Brothers. It cast Robert Downey Jr.'s Doctor Doom, Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter, the original X-Men, Fantastic Four, and heroes from across the MCU. We have trailers. We have footage. We We have spent 7 years waiting for this. You cannot ask fans to erase all of that when they enter the theater. So maybe the answer is not to have no expectations. Maybe the answer is to hold our expectations loosely. Be excited about the possibilities without treating them as guarantees. Have theories without turning those theories into requirements. Hope for characters without deciding their absence would automatically ruin the movie. Allow the story to choose an emotional center, even if it's not the character you personally would have chosen. And most importantly, give the actual movie a chance to tell us what it is before punishing it for what it is not. Because there is a difference between a movie failing to deliver its own setup and a movie failing to deliver on a promise that fans made to themselves. That distinction is going to matter with Doomsday. With about 3 months remaining, Marvel has proven that this movie will be an event. The cast alone guarantees that. But spectacle is not always the part Marvel still has to prove. Marvel has to prove that Doomsday has a heart. Who is this story truly about? Whose emotional journey carries us through all these universes and all these characters? What does Doom want beyond ending or controlling the Crisis? What does he believe? Why does he believe he is the person who should decide what survives? What forces these heroes into conflict, and will that conflict come from choices we understand rather than one conversation everybody conveniently refuses to have? What do Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson mean to each other now that they're occupying the same story? That wasn't planned way back at the end of Endgame. Maybe that's what some of these revisions in, in Endgame Encore are going to be. What happens when the heroes from entirely different universes realize that saving their own world might require sacrificing somebody else's? Those are the questions that matter more to me than the cameo count. I want the team-ups, of course I do. One of the greatest pleasures of every Avengers movie is watching relationships form in real time. Thor meeting the Guardians, Tony meeting Doctor Strange. Steve Rogers saying, I am Steve Rogers, to Groot in the middle of a war. These moments work because they're funny and exciting, but also because 2 characters with completely different histories that we both know suddenly recognize something in one another. Doomsday can give us combinations we have imagined for years, maybe some that we couldn't even have imagined. But the best team-ups cannot only be action figures placed next to each other. They need friction, they need personality, and they need the feeling that these specific people changed one another by meeting. That is what will separate a great Avengers movie from a very expensive attendance sheet. My promise to the movie and to you. Where's my temperature right now? Well, I'm excited. I'm deeply excited, actually. I have concerns about how we arrived here I have concerns about the amount of story this movie must carry. I have concerns about whether Doctor Doom has had enough runway, whether all these characters can receive meaningful attention, and whether the larger fandom has always made satisfaction mathematically impossible. But nervousness is not the opposite of excitement. In this case, I think I'm nervous because I care. This is the first Avengers movie since Endgame. That sentence alone means something to me. I remember what it felt like to sit in that theater. I remember the portals. I remember the on your left. I remember an audience crying, cheering, and laughing together. That was not just fan service. It was payoff. It was history. It was a room full of people recognizing that something they loved separately had become part of our culture together. I want Doomsday to create its own version of that feeling. Not by copying Endgame or Infinity War, not by recreating every old moment with a slightly different character, and not by checking every box on the internet's list. I want it to earn its own thing, something new. When those lights go down in December, I want to watch Avengers: Doomsday, not my theories, not somebody else's leaks, and not the perfect movie I've spent years assembling in my imagination. I want to give the real movie a fair chance to surprise me. Then I will come back here and tell you honestly whether, in my opinion, that it worked or not. Because that is the deal. You do not owe Marvel automatic praise, but maybe you owe yourself the chance to experience the movie before the discourse experiences it for you. So yes, bring your excitement. Bring your concerns, bring the characters you love and the moments you hope to see. Just try and leave room enough for Doomsday to be something none of us predicted. The movie is about 3 months away. In the blink of an eye, we will be watching it. The question is whether we can stop writing it long enough to actually see it. Thank you so much for listening to Marvel Maniac, an MCU aftershow. If you enjoyed this episode, Make sure you follow the show, leave a rating and review goes an incredibly long way, and join the conversation with me online in either our Discord server, which is in the notes of this show, or [email protected]. Give me your personal thoughts on what your expectations for this movie are, and do you believe that it can succeed? This has been Eric Cicada, aka Mr. Honest, and until next time, Avengers disassemble.