Marvel stunned the world last July at Comic-Con when the studio revealed how it would deal with its Kang (Jonathan Majors) problem. Rather than recasting the role after parting ways with the actor, Marvel altered the path to the end of the Multiverse Saga.
Instead of Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars, Marvel shifted to Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars. They still focus on a multiversal war leading to a confrontation between the Avengers and a big villain, but Marvel delivered an incredible twist.
Robert Downey Jr. would return to the MCU, but not as Tony Stark. Instead, he’ll play Doctor Doom. Well, that’s the best possible way to conceal that our beloved Iron Man will be resurrected for Secret Wars.
Before Kevin Feige revealed that huge surprise, he offered fans another stunning reveal: Anthony and Joe Russo would return to the MCU to direct the final Avengers movies. Some Marvel fans have been dying to see the Russos return to the franchise, and Marvel granted their wish.
After years of denials that they’d eventually make Secret Wars, the Russos are finally ready to discuss their return. Apparently, it all happened after the right, albeit very mysterious, idea came up. Mind you, some spoilers might folow.
It was clear we were heading towards a massive Avengers: Secret Wars event well before Marvel announced the movie title. That was the only possibility for the Multiverse Saga. Secret Wars was also the kind of movie the Russos said they’d want to make long before their official return.
However, the two directors kept denying they’d return to the MCU once the storyline got close to the finale. Here’s what the brothers said about Secret Wars while taking hypotheticals a couple of years before their confirmed return:
It’s incredibly ambitious, it’s bigger than Infinity War and Endgame, but it’s a massive undertaking. Those two movies were very hard to make, so trying to imagine making two movies even bigger than those two? We’re gonna have to sleep on that.
Sleep they did. The Russos and Stephen McFeely talked to Empire about the process that got them into considering getting back at the helm of ambitious Avengers projects.
It’s not just the Russos that are returning to the franchise. Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who wrote the previous Avengers movies, will also be back.
“Endgame was the end, and it took a little time for us to begin to think about it as something other than an end,” Anthony Russo told the magazine. However, the brothers continued to keep in touch with Marvel over the years.
“We’re very close with Kevin and Lou [D’Esposito, Marvel Studios’ Co-President] and the entire Marvel team and we’ve had conversations through the years. We’ve talked about a lot of ideas,” Anthony continued. It eventually led to the right idea.
“Really what happened was, we ended up stumbling upon an idea that activated all of us. You couldn’t see it coming until it came, and once it came it was like, ‘Well, that’s a story we need to tell.’”
I’ll speculate that it wasn’t just the right idea that convinced the Russos to return. Remember that Marvel had Destin Daniel Cretton set to direct Kang Dynasty before he was moved to the Spider-Man 4 job. That coincided with the real-life legal problems that destroyed Jonathan Majors’ prospects of ever playing Kang again.
Also, it’s unclear when that idea arrived or whether Marvel had already proposed the Doomsday and Secret Wars job to the writers and directors of the previous movies. And it’s unclear whether the idea had anything to do with RDJ’s return.
What we know is that Joe Russo credited McFeely with coming up with the story they wanted to tell. “There were ideas that we were trying to wrap our heads around that preceded this one, and we just never found the story,” he told Empire.
“I remember calling Steve and said, ‘Hey, crazy idea. What do you think if we all go back and do Secret Wars?’ You were like, ‘Fuck no. Absolutely not.’ And then you hung up. And the next morning at 7.30 you called and were like, ‘Alright, I have an idea.’”
What the idea is, we don’t know. We’ll have to wait until Doomsday premieres in May 2026 to see the first part of this Avengers idea. Secret Wars will follow a year later.
We don’t have plot leaks for either movie. Secret Wars is still being written and Doomsday won’t start production until later this year.
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