Chris Evans' Avengers Doomsday Teaser Confirms the Captain America Fate Fans Feared Most

Marvel just cracked open the multiverse door and, surprise, Chris Evans is standing on the other side in a shiny Avengers: Doomsday teaser. That has a lot of people wondering the same thing: what happens to Anthony Mackie’s Captain America now?

The teaser that kicked the hornet’s nest

A leaked first look at Avengers: Doomsday hit the internet, and then Marvel went ahead and put out an official teaser. It’s short and sentimental: Steve Rogers shows up at the same house we last saw with Peggy in Endgame, cradling a sleeping baby. Then it cuts to black with the message 'Steve Rogers will return to Avengers: Doomsday,' followed by a countdown clock to the release date.

• Yes, that’s Chris Evans back on screen as Steve.
• The teaser explicitly says Steve Rogers returns in Doomsday.
• It teases the film’s date with a countdown to release.
• Industry tipster Daniel Richtman has been claiming Evans will have a major part to play, and even floated a wild matchup: Robert Downey Jr. as Doom versus Evans’s Cap.
• Anthony Mackie is in the Doomsday cast and, by all reasonable bets, his Cap is still the one leading the Avengers lineup.

The Sam Wilson conversation never really stopped

Back in Endgame, when Steve handed Sam the shield, a chunk of the fandom immediately wished it had gone to Bucky. The Russos have said they debated that handoff at length and ultimately picked Sam for a bunch of reasons, including the bond he and Steve built as fellow soldiers. Not everyone bought it. Some of the pushback was about story pacing and Sam not getting much solo runway beforehand. A lot of the rest was uglier. The jump from a white World War II hero to a Black modern-day soldier brought out a wave of bad-faith takes that were hard to see as anything but racial hostility.

From The Falcon and the Winter Soldier through Captain America: Brave New World, Mackie’s tenure has been picked apart. The Falcon show leaned so heavily on Sam’s internal struggle that it never fully smoothed the transition into his Cap era. Brave New World didn’t help, between clunky edits and a script that left Mackie carrying more than any one actor reasonably could. The introduction of Isaiah Bradley (played by Carl Lumbly) — an important piece of Marvel lore — also drew ire from a subset of fans who claimed it diluted Steve’s legacy. Again, that says more about the complainers than the characters.

Then there was Mackie’s press-tour stumble in Italy, where he said Captain America shouldn’t stand in for America per se, but for dignity and honor. That got spun into think pieces calling him and the studio anti-American. He later clarified he’s proud to be American; the damage was already done in some corners of the internet.

So, does Evans bulldoze Mackie’s Cap?

Short answer: insiders say no. A Marvel watcher posting as @jamesmackwl argued Steve isn’t the lead of Doomsday, just a crucial story hinge. The claim is that Steve’s time-travel happy ending — going back to Peggy and starting a family — broke the multiverse in ways that put him on Victor von Doom’s bad side. Treat all of that as rumor for now, but the gist is clear: Steve is there to drive the plot, not to take back the mantle.

'Steve Rogers isn’t the protagonist — he’s an important element that moves the plot. Going back with Peggy and having kids messed with the multiverse, and Doom didn’t like that.'

The same account also pushed back on the idea that Evans showing up means Sam stops being Captain America. In their words, meltdown mode over Steve’s return is silly; Sam is still Cap. One extra spicy tidbit: they teased 'a bunch' of Captain America variants showing up in the Void. If you like deep multiverse nerdery, that’s catnip.

Where this leaves Captain America

The optics are tricky. Bringing back Evans is a crowd-pleaser and a marketing dream, but it can absolutely muddy the waters for Sam if Marvel isn’t careful. That said, all signs point to Mackie’s Cap staying the face of the Avengers in Doomsday, with Evans’s Steve acting more like the key that unlocks the Doom problem.

Avengers: Doomsday lands in U.S. theaters on December 18, 2026.