Avengers: Doomsday Is Smartly Ignoring Marvel’s Biggest Box Office Weapon

Avengers: Doomsday is set to be one of the biggest releases of the year when it drops on December 18, 2026. It will also be taking a huge risk by leaving out one of Marvel’s biggest box office tools.

The film is set to feature a huge cast, which includes Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, Pedro Pascal’s Reed Richards, Vanessa Kirby’s Invisible Woman/Sue Storm, Anthony Mackie’s Captain America, Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier, Letitia Wright’s Shuri/Black Panther, and Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man, among others. Avengers: Doomsday is set to release on December 18, 2026. Avengers: Secret Wars is set to release a year later on December 17, 2027.

By all accounts, the upcoming Doomsday will leave out one crucial character in the MCU: Tom Holland’s Spider-Man. Spidey will be sidelined for the course of Doomsday, for reasons we don’t yet know in the movie. Outside of that, Holland’s commitment to making Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey likely prevented him from appearing in the ensemble MCU movie.

Avengers: Doomsday is making the right move by leaving Spider-Man out

While the decision might end up making sense in the movie, it’s still a risky one for Marvel to make. Spider-Man is the most bankable superhero of them all, with only someone like Batman really coming close to the character’s marketability. The newest Spidey movie, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, has smashed all expectations, and is looking like it could genuinely challenge the likes of Avatar for being the highest-grossing movie ever made if things go right.

However, even though Spider-Man remains a big draw and would undoubtedly help boost Doomsday’s numbers, it actually might be the right move by Marvel to leave him out. The movie is already going to be fairly large in scope, with tons of characters from Marvel’s past and present broader universes colliding. Adding in Spider-Man at this point would just feel like a little too much, especially with another movie left to make.

As Avengers: Secret Wars is set to release just a year after Doomsday, it would make the most sense to save Holland for that. Not only will Secret Wars be more action-oriented, but it would allow Holland’s Spider-Man to arrive in a much more heroic role, potentially appearing to help even the odds against Doctor Doom depending on how Doomsday goes.

While we still largely don’t know how Doomsday will shake out, it seems safe to bet that the movie will get us to Secret Wars’ infamous “Battleworld” one way or another. Saving Spider-Man for an all-out, epic movie full of battles would be a great draw to fans, while also keeping the character from feeling like it appeared in too many projects too quickly.