Doomsday’ Is Missing Out on a Huge Opportunity, and We Need To Talk About It

DGIX

April 1, 2025

The cast announcement for Avengers: Doomsday is all anyone is talking about, and rightly so. The livestream event, which played out just shy of five-and-a-half hours, was masterful and successful in its simplicity, with the cast slowly revealed by their names on the back of cast member chairs—27 in all (including the previously announced Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom).

The cast features returning favorites like Chris Hemsworth‘s Thor and Paul Rudd‘s Ant-Man, and soon-to-be new favorites, with the whole cast of the upcoming Fantastic Four: First Steps confirmed to appear. The biggest surprise of the event was undoubtedly the return of the original X-Men from the 20th Century Fox days, teased by the appearance of Kelsey Grammer‘s Beast in the after-credits scene of The Marvels. Disappointingly, the biggest non-surprise? The cast is overwhelmingly male.

The MCU Hasn’t Always Done Their Female Characters Justice

Unfair statement? Not really. Of the 27 announced cast members, only five women are confirmed to be seen in the film, four if Vanessa Kirby‘s Sue Storm is invisible throughout it. Kidding aside, Kirby is likely to have a larger role in the film, but of the remaining four, it’s arguable that only Florence Pugh‘s Yelena Belova and Letitia Wright‘s Shuri/Black Panther will play significantly into the storyline; Hannah John-Kamen‘s Ghost and Rebecca Romijn‘s Mystique are more likely to be lesser lights.

The Russo brothers have said there are more cast announcements to come, but unless the script is flipped on those, female characters are still going to be a significant minority heading into the film. It’s the latest in a number of questionable creative decisions made by Marvel in regards to the women of the MCU. Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) nobly gave her life in Avengers: Endgame, but her act is all but forgotten in the final minutes, and, most notably, there was no memorial service for her. That is the most egregious, but the list of sins goes on: Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) broke bad and was killed off; Emily VanCamp‘s Sharon Carter was outright betrayed; and the list of female characters introduced and not heard from again is extensive, including G’iah (Emilia Clarke), the Skrull refugee who had become the most powerful character in the MCU in Secret Invasion, and then nothing.

It’s Disappointing That the MCU Isn’t Utilizing Their Strong Female Characters

What’s truly disappointing is that the MCU has actually done a great job of establishing strong female characters over the years—characters that deserve to be in the roll call of the Avengers‘ penultimate epic. It’s presumable that, at the very least, Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) should have been a no-brainer first call, and, if the gang’s getting back together, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), especially if Doom does end up being a Tony Stark variant of some sort.

The MCU Might Be Making a Mistake With ‘Doomsday’ When It Comes to the Young Avengers

When are we going to see the Young Avengers assemble?

But, so far, there’s no sign of Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani), Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), Okoye (Danai Gurira), Ironheart (Dominique Thorne), She-Hulk (Tatiana Maslany), or others that one would safely assume should be taking part. Hayley Atwell’s Captain Carter only got the one live-action appearance in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness before being killed by Scarlet Witch, a bitter end to a really great character that never got a chance, but she could easily be brought back in a multiverse of variants. For that matter, so could Black Widow and Scarlet Witch. We haven’t seen Kathryn Newton‘s Cassandra Lang or Hailee Steinfeld‘s Kate Bishop on their own, and Avengers: Doomsday would be a great time to see them flex their strengths.

It’s a list that could go on and on, so it’s not like there’s a shortage of female characters to balance out the testosterone in Avengers: Doomsday. So, why haven’t there been more women characters announced up front? The fact that there aren’t any good reasons makes it all the more discouraging. It doesn’t help that online vitriol is a horrible trend that follows any female-led MCU project, but that shouldn’t have played a part, and it’s highly unlikely that it did (but pretty damnable if it did to any degree). Ultimately, it just comes down to a missed opportunity, whatever the rationale, for the MCU to make a statement that their female characters are just as important as their male counterparts. And it’s disheartening to see, at least right now, that they clearly do not.