Avengers Endgame: Encore is now in theaters and continuing to show the strength of the Avengers at the box office. Fans are streaming into theaters to see this updated version of 2019’s Avengers: Endgame. Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, Avengers Endgame: Encore gives a look at what is coming later this year when Avengers: Doomsday arrives in theaters. Everything appears to change with a simple knock on the door at the start of a happily ever after scene.
SPOILERS AHEAD
At the end of Avengers: Endgame, Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) and Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) get the happy ending fans had been hoping for. They are dancing into their new life together. In Avengers Endgame: Encore, this isn’t the way the story ends. It is where a new one begins when Loki (Tom Hiddleston) comes knocking.
“We love that movie for what it is, and we know many other people do as well. Looking at it again through a new lens was something we approached very carefully,” Anthony explained. “But here’s the thing: When we made that film, we were so specifically committed to that movie as an ending of stories, not a beginning of new stories. Many years later, as we started to conceive a road forward that would evolve into Doomsday, it just begged of us: ‘You really need to pick the story up from where you left it in Endgame.’”
In another scene, Dr. Doom (Disney Legend Robert Downey Jr.) can be seen collecting Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) for unknown reasons. Another scene set in the Time Variance Authority (TVA) showed Mobius (Owen Wilson), Case (Eugene Cordero), and OB (Ke Huy Quan) watching as the Multiverse collapses through a chance of concurrent incursions.
Of the latter scene, Joe said, “I think it’s one of the more significant events that’s ever happened in the MCU. This is sort of the end of times. The TVA’s sole job is to protect the timelines from collapsing, and now they’re all collapsing at once. In that footage alone, you see the end of thousands of universes in seconds. So, something catastrophic is happening.”
Disney teases that who or what is the cause of this catastrophe remains a mystery… for now.
Back to the scene with Ruffalo. Ruffalo was not named in the viral casting announcement and was a fun surprise. Anthony confirmed that there will be more actors from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) appearing in Avengers: Doomsday. “The pattern that you’re sensing is real,” he said with a laugh. “We have absolutely not announced the entire cast. There is more to come.”
This is a massive cast that appears to be continuing to expand. The Russos teased what fans can expect from three distinct universes converging. This will result in the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, the Talokan, the Thunderbolts, the Wakandans, and the X-Men interacting together on screen for the first time. Anthony said that the ensemble cast, which includes Chris Hemsworth, Pedro Pascal, Paul Rudd, Anthony Mackie, Florence Pugh, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Wyatt Russell, Channing Tatum, Simu Liu, Ian McKellen, James Marsden, Patrick Stewart, Joseph Quinn, Sebastian Stan, David Harbour, Letitia Wright, Lewis Pullman, Kelsey Grammer, Kathryn Newton, Danny Ramirez, Winston Duke, Alan Cumming, Hannah John-Kamen, Rebecca Romijn, and Mabel Cadena, with Tenoch Huerta Mejia, will have a “strange alchemy” that will entertain both new and longtime fans.
The Russos take a very simple approach to picking who is a part of the film. “If we feel like we love them,” Joe said, “then we think the fans will love them, too.”
“Sometimes the smaller characters — the characters you think are less central to the plot — we find the most delight in, in terms of what those characters are doing or experiencing,” Anthony added. “Part of the thrill is it allows us to keep things surprising and unpredictable in terms of who could pick up and carry the ball at any given moment.”
“Narrative universes are colliding and mixing and combining in ways that we, as fans, could never imagined,” he continued. “I mean, going back to the original X-Men movie — did you ever imagine that we would arrive at this moment? That’s a really special thrill. If you’re a fan of that dynamic in our storytelling, then we’ve got a lot in Doomsday waiting for you.”
Tickets for both Avengers Endgame: Encore and Avengers: Doomsday are currently available. Avengers Endgame: Encore is currently in theaters, and Avengers: Doomsday arrives in theaters on December 18, 2026.
