Avengers: Doomsday Reportedly Bringing Back Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel After The Marvels, Sparking Peak Hypocrisy Claims

So, about that buzz that Brie Larson was done with Captain Marvel? Yeah, not so fast. A very specific Instagram Story just kicked the door back open, and fans are already connecting dots to a certain Avengers movie that may or may not be tinkering with its ending right now.

The wig, the vote, and the new round of speculation

Larson posted an Instagram Story while heading out to vote in a Statewide Special Election. Harmless, civic, good. Except she appeared to be wearing a very Carol Danvers-looking wig and jokingly wrote: 'ignore the wig!!' with a shush emoji. Fans grabbed screenshots and shared them on Reddit, and suddenly the theory mill spun up: is Marvel doing last-minute or additional photography for the rumored Avengers: Doomsday, and is Captain Marvel back in the mix?

Important caveat: neither Larson nor Marvel has announced anything. This is fan sleuthing based on a wig, a caption, and timing. Still, the timing is suspicious in that fun, oh-we-see-you way.

Meanwhile, where are the Eternals?

The chatter comes with a side of: why would Marvel bring back Carol after The Marvels cratered, but keep the Eternals off the board? A few things are feeding that conversation:

- Eternals pulled in around $400 million worldwide on a reported $200 million budget (per The Numbers), before marketing. Between the muted reviews and that margin, the movie never took off the way MCU ensemble launches usually do.

- Director Chloe Zhao has been candid about how wide-open the mandate was back then, right after Endgame, which sounds freeing on paper but can be risky in practice. As she told Vanity Fair while comparing Eternals to her later project Hamnet:

'Eternals had, like, an unlimited amount of money and resources. And here we have one street corner that we can afford, to [stand in for] Stratford ... Eternals didn’t have a lot of limitations, and that is actually quite dangerous. Because we only have that street corner [in Hamnet], suddenly everything has meaning.'

- The release landed in the teeth of the COVID-19 disruption, when the entire business was upside down. Then the MCU itself had to pivot hard after Marvel parted ways with Jonathan Majors, which scrambled long-term plans. Put all of that together, and it is not shocking that creative focus for an Eternals follow-up seems to have evaporated. To be clear: that last part is the read of fans and industry watchers, not an official decree.

Why Captain Marvel would still be essential, flop or not

The tension here is simple: box office vs plot gravity. Carol Danvers is one of the franchise’s heaviest hitters, power-wise and leadership-wise. If the multiverse arc is barreling toward a convergence point and the Big Bad on the board is Doctor Doom (as the current rumor matrix suggests), you want your top-tier artillery in the room. That means Captain Marvel. Whether The Marvels was the MCU’s lowest-grossing film doesn’t change her value inside the story.

And if Doomsday and Secret Wars really are set as the endgame of Phase 6, Marvel also needs characters who can carry forward into whatever the next era looks like. The Eternals broadened the mythos; Carol is the one who actually moves through it.

What people are saying about Avengers: Doomsday right now

• Title: Avengers: Doomsday (not officially announced by Marvel)
• Directors: reportedly the Russo Brothers
• Cast rumored to factor in: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Pedro Pascal, Anthony Mackie
• Release date floating around: December 18, 2026

File all of that under: loud rumors, soft confirmations. If Larson does pop up in whatever Doomsday turns out to be, it tracks with how Marvel tends to shore up its finales with familiar, overpowered faces.

Would you want the Eternals back in the mix for this chapter, or is it smarter to let that team sit until the dust settles?

The Marvels and Eternals are both streaming on Disney+ in the US.