Avengers: Doomsday – Who Is NOT in the Cast and Leaked Concept Art Paints Secret Wars Picture

Marvel made waves yesterday with their five-and-a-half-hour-long announcement video where they very, very slowly revealed the actors involved in 2026’s Avengers: Doomsday. They listed 27 performers, which crazily enough doesn’t compare to the near-40 actors who were announced ahead of Avengers: Infinity War. Still, there are some interesting surprises there with the names. We see […] The post Avengers: Doomsday – Who Is NOT in the Cast and Leaked Concept Art Paints Secret Wars Picture appeared first on Den of Geek.

Mar 27, 2025 - 17:51

Avengers: Doomsday – Who Is NOT in the Cast and Leaked Concept Art Paints Secret Wars Picture

Marvel made waves yesterday with their five-and-a-half-hour-long announcement video where they very, very slowly revealed the actors involved in 2026’s Avengers: Doomsday. They listed 27 performers, which crazily enough doesn’t compare to the near-40 actors who were announced ahead of Avengers: Infinity War. Still, there are some interesting surprises there with the names. We see for example which characters survive Thunderbolts*, including Lewis Pullman, who many believe is playing Sentry. Tom Hiddleston’s Loki, aka the current load-bearing god of the multiverse, will also be there. Even Channing Tatum’s Gambit is going to return and finally make a name for himself.

Something truly interesting, though, is how it ties into a set of alleged concept art leaks that appeared on the internet earlier this month. While these images from trusted illustrator and frequent Marvel Studios collaborator, Mushk Rizvi, were not confirmed by the casting announcement, the disparities between her images and the cast who has (so far) been announced in Doomsday paints a striking picture. If Rizvi’s work is as credible as it appears, we are starting to have a pretty good idea of how both Avengers: Doomsday and its 2027 follow-up Avengers: Secret Wars are going to play out…

A Secret Wars History Lesson

Before we go further, for the sake of context, it’s worth doing a quick review of Secret Wars in the comics. The first Secret Wars was a 12-issue miniseries released from 1984 to 1985 by Jim Shooter, Mike Zeck, and Bob Layton. One of the earlier massive crossovers in Marvel Comics, it had an unseen entity known as the Beyonder throw a bunch of heroes and villains onto a makeshift planet called Battleworld for the sake of fighting it out. As Team Hero and Team Villain traded blows, Doctor Doom schemed his way into stealing the powers of both Galactus and the Beyonder, becoming nigh omnipotent. As these things tend to go, he was defeated, lost his powers, and everyone went back home.

There were a couple sequels with nothing of note, other than Spider-Man teaching the Beyonder how to use the toilet. Decades later, Jonathan Hickman started a run on Fantastic Four that led into a run on Avengers, which culminated in a new miniseries even called Secret Wars in 2015, with art by Esad Ribic.

In the lead-up, it was revealed that the multiverse was experiencing entropy in the form of alternate Earths crashing into each other. These “incursions” would lead to both universes being eradicated unless one Earth destroyed the other before the collision. Even then, it was only a short matter of time before the next incursion. Doom, aided by Doctor Strange and Molecule Man, found the source of the problem and came out of the adventure more powerful than ever. As God Doom, he rebuilt what remained of the multiverse into a makeshift planet called Battleworld where various realities were reduced to chaotic countries under Doom’s rule. Eventually, the heroes of Earth-616 helped pull off an uprising and Reed Richards was able to defeat Doom while finding a way to rebuild the multiverse.

Miles Morales Spider-Man also fed Molecule Man the grossest cheeseburger ever, but a lot of stuff happened in that series. It was a good time.

Mushk Rizvi’s Leaked Concept Art

Mushk Rizvi is an illustrator who has been doing concept art for various companies, but most notably Marvel Studios. From her Instagram, you can see her work on She-Hulk: Attorney at Law and Ms. Marvel. In early March, she released a big pile of concept art on her ArtStation page, which has since been wiped. The art included various designs for the Serpent Society that didn’t get used for Captain America: Brave New World, lots of art from Fantastic Four: First Steps, an Ultron-esque Jocasta design presumably for Vision Quest, and a lot of fascinating art dealing with at least one Avengers movie.

Admittedly, not all concept art is used in a finished film, as indicated by Rizvi’s work on the Serpent Society not making it to the final version of Brave New World. And sure enough, the Russo Brothers, who are directing the two upcoming Avengers movies, acknowledged the concept art and downplayed its existence, but Joe claimed, “that artwork was not from Avengers: Doomsday or Secret Wars,” while Anthony said there were no spoilers.

“That’s not our concept art.”

Are they being truthful? Are they lying for the sake of saving face and trying to keep some surprise to the project? Or is this another situation, much like the Serpent Society pics or Daniel Craig as Balder the Brave where so much has changed that the original images are no longer accurate?

The Leaked Contents Explained

The images were taken down, but we can at least go over some of the juicier aspects of the artwork. First off, one drawing reveals what is essentially a Hulk village. Banner Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and She-Hulk (Tatiana Maslany), both dressed in medieval garb, are met with another wounded Hulk who has a beard and long hair. This is most likely Hulk’s son Skaar, introduced in the finale of She-Hulk’s show. There are various green and bulky villagers going about their business behind them.

The medieval theme is later eschewed, however, for something a little more early modern inside what appears to be Doom’s royal court. There Robert Downey Jr.’s ruler passes judgment on someone bound in chains (possibly Reed?). Doom is on his throne, surrounded by Sue Storm (as his queen), her son Franklin, and Doctor Strange. A woman watching over the prisoner resembles Yelena Belova. All of it has more than a whiff of the aesthetic of Marvel 1602, an interesting (if now problematic) text that created an alternate Marvel universe where all these characters existed during the end of Elizabeth I’s reign in Tutor England.

There are also various sketches of Chris Pratt’s Peter Quill and Paul Bettany’s White Vision sitting together on a couch, enjoying TV together as Vision holds the remote. Quill appears far more expressive and friendly than his companion, but Vision seems to be enthralled by watching television. Dollars to donuts says it’s a sitcom.

Quill also pops up in a tavern of some kind, sitting with Wong (Benedict Wong) and the Young Avengers. This clearly includes Kate Bishop’s Hawkeye (Hailee Seinfeld), Wiccan (Billy Maximoff), Speed (Tommy Maximoff), Stature (Kathryn Newton as Cassie Lang), and Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani’s delightful Kamala Khan). Ms. Marvel looks especially enthralled in whatever Wong’s saying. In an even bigger curveball, Doop of all characters is floating next to them.

For those of you who don’t know Doop, imagine if Slimer joined the X-Men and smoked a lot of crack. No, for real, Disney’s going to make so much merch money off this guy.

Finally, we see various designs for T’Chanda, the Black Panther of World War II. Curious.

What Does This Mean for Avengers: Doomsday?

While the Russos can claim the images to be no longer valid for the movies they’re making, comparing these characters to who was announced for Avengers: Doomsday speaks volumes. While most of the heroes in Rizvi’s work are not A-listers, they aren’t ones to simply be forgotten about either. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 told us that we had not seen the last of Star-Lord. The Marvels, which is super important to Doomsday considering its post-credits scene (though it’s odd how Teyonah Parris was not announced in the Doomsday cast list), made it apparent that Ms. Marvel is building a new Avengers team for the future. Hell, the two big themes in the MCU post-Endgame have been the multiverse and the building of legacy. The Young Avengers have to become players sooner rather than later.

The release date for Vision Quest has not been revealed outside of it being in 2026. One could speculate that Vision Quest will be the Ant-Man and the Wasp to this pair of Avengers movies: that unrelated side-story that’s released in-between but will be treated as important to the latter Avengers movie. As the third show in its trilogy after WandaVision and Agatha All Along, one thing that seems to be certain is that Billy will indeed be reunited with his long-lost brother Tommy.

When the heroes lost in Infinity War, the follow-up was about the half who survived recovering and fighting back. This time it will be different. Three worlds of heroes are going to literally be colliding. Maybe they want to work together instead of going to war, but either way, when it’s over it appears that Doom is going to be supreme, having forced his own solution on the multiverse. Doom is going to stand tall over these heroes, like Thanos did years before, ruling over a Battleworld resembling the one from the 2015 comic. He might even take Vanessa Kirby’s Sue Storm as a queen and force everyone to wear silly Elizabethan costuming!

This time, the solution will not be a celebration of the past, but a celebration of the future. A story where the youth stands up and picks up the slack to avenge those who came before them. Yes, Reed Richards will likely be the face of Doom’s final downfall, but Kamala and her team are going to get the ball rolling and bring closure to this entire Multiverse Saga.

Though hopefully they can fit in a moment for Thor to hold Deadpool and cry. It would be a crime not to pay off that plot thread.

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