3 Takeaways from Marvel’s Return to Comic-Con

In 2024, Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige came on the Hall H stage and announced Robert Downey Jr. would be Doctor Doom in the next two Avengers movies — a new big bad taking over Jonathan Majors’s Kang the Conqueror after the studio fired him. The news of Downey’s return to the MCU was seismic on the ground while inspiring a myriad of takes on the state of Marvel since. It didn’t help that amidst that announcement, the MCU had been on a downturn with franchises ending (like Guardians of the Galaxy), new heroes struggling to upstart their own string of films (Eternals, Shang-Chi), and even the better Marvel films of the past decade (Thunderbolts and Fantastic Four: First Steps) have realized they might have to get used to a more comfortable — versus overachieving — box-office return.

But with Avengers: Doomsday heading up against Dune: Part 3 this December, Feige brought every trick (well, actor) he could for the studios’ reemergence in San Diego this evening. Thousands of fans — treated with Doctor Doom masks and capes — waited nearly days to get a glimpse of Feige’s grand plan for the next era of the MCU. There was no Multiverse Saga-level announcement of years to come; Feige chose to eschew from any television updates (sorry, VisionQuest) in favor of some movie casting news. We rounded up the main takeaways from Marvel’s homecoming panel.

Years of rumors have bore fruit. The first announcement made by Feige was to respond to fan pleas, including Gosling’s, of having the Barbie actor play Ghost Rider. After a logo reveal, Gosling came on stage, dumbfounded, saying, “As you know this is a character I’ve wanted to play for a really long time.” Gosling will star in the Ghost Rider movie set to debut in theaters in 2028. “If we’re really going to do this, there’s only one director who could do this,” Gosling teased, only for Feige to reveal that that director is Shawn Levy. The pair worked on the upcoming Star Wars: Starfighter together, which Feige said he has seen. Levy is quickly becoming a Marvel mainstay after directing the Deadpool & Wolverine film for the studio, and because of that, Ghost Rider will have better luck than Blade, which is sadly looking like it’ll never happen.

When you have a cast as large as Doomsday, it’s nearly impossible to fit them all even on the largest stage at Comic-Con. Marvel had the cast split up across all four corners of Hall H, turning the very back rows of Hall H into the first few with members of the X-Men (James Marsden, Rebecca Romijn, Kelsey Grammer) and the Thunderbolts/New Avengers (David Harbour, Lewis Pullman, and Hannah John-Kamen) walking from the back to the stage. Also in attendance was Pedro Pascal (representing the Fantastic Four), Anthony Mackie, Simu Liu, Paul Rudd, Letitia Wright and Winston Duke. The cast was so large that Chris Evans was there yet didn’t speak a word about Steve Rogers’s return as he stood next to Robert Downey Jr. and Pedro Pascal at the front of the stage. Bizarre.

Feige, directors Joe and Anthony Russo, and Downey Jr. lead this portion of the panel as they teased — for yet another time — the formidability of Doctor Doom against this mélange of superheroes. “Besties!,” Pascal joked as he explained his Reed Richards’s relationship with Downey’s Victor von Doom, as the two have a deep comics history. Exclusive footage of Doomsday showed Reed yelling at Victor while Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) explains Victor to a room full of our past Avengers. The footage ended with Doom reviving a group of the X-Men mutant-hunting sentinels. So, what’s going on? Just a whole lot of focusing on Doom and yet no real details on what the hell else is going on with these assemblage of heroes, which to Deadpool’s dismay does not include him. (Ryan Reynolds, dressed in a denim Deadpool suit, crashed the panel to ask when they start filming. “It’s in the can,” Downey replied.)

Ending Marvel Studios’ Hall H panel was another Marvel mainstay Ryan Coogler, met with uproarious applause, after choosing to return to direct Black Panther 3 after his incredible awards and box office run with Sinners. “It’s always an honor to come here,” Coogler said of Comic-Con. “But today is extra special.” That’s because Marvel has found its next Black Panther: David Jonsson.

Coogler explained that Jonsson will be taking over as the more grown up version of the young boy T’Challa introduced in Wakanda Forever. Jonsson graced the stage alongside Wright and Duke as the crowd’s cheers swelled across the hall. Jonsson only managed to say “Thank you so much … I actually don’t want to say too much because I want to let the screen do the talking, but believe me the honor is entirely mine.” The Black Panther sequel is set to release December 15, 2028 in theaters. It’s “a large format movie captured on celluloid,” Coogled teased.