Sitting in the theatre this week for Avengers Endgame: Encore, I experienced a highly unusual sensation. For what might be the very first time in my Marvel-loving phase of life (exceeding 13 years at this point), I was genuinely embarrassed to be a fan. Let me be clear — this feeling was decidedly not because of the Avengers: Endgame portion of the evening. Seven years on, Endgame remains a revelation. That’s not what I’m talking about here.
No, the source of my shame was entirely the “Encore” part of the equation. I don’t think I can properly express just how humiliating this creatively bankrupt decision from Marvel truly is, but this article will be my best attempt to do so.
I should mention that I’ve been skeptical of Avengers: Doomsday — the upcoming movie this whole “Encore” business is meant to be promoting — pretty much since it was announced, but that apprehension has since crystallized into legitimate concern, which no doubt affected my expectations heading into this combined Endgame rerelease and Doomsday preview.
My qualms with Doomsday stem from a fateful Wednesday in late March of 2025, when Marvel Studios held its fans captive for over five hours with a livestream of chairs (yep, just chairs). Those chairs, of course, were used to announce which characters would be returning for the aforementioned Doomsday, set to be released on December 18th, 2026.
While I was delightfully surprised by the inclusion of the likes of Simu Liu’s long-ignored Shang-Chi, Lewis Pullman’s soon-to-be-breakout Bob Reynolds/Sentry, and Letitia Wright’s always-excellent Shuri/Black Panther, I couldn’t help but notice something troubling about this cast announcement.
Out of the 27 characters announced that day, only five were women (that’s 18.5%, if you’re wondering). This percentage was especially disappointing in light of Marvel having spent the years since Endgame expanding their universe with plenty more female characters, POC, and even some queer characters.
Since 2021, female heroes like Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch, Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel, Jennifer Walters/She-Hulk, Maya Lopez/Echo, and Riri Williams/Ironheart, plus beloved antagonist Agatha Harkness, have all headlined Marvel Disney+ shows. The 10-person team from 2021’s Eternals movie was 80% women and/or POC, and 2023’s The Marvels featured a trio of female heroes — including two WOC — with stories that began in separate projects before coming together in this team-up film.
There’s clearly a much more robust roster to choose from these days than back in 2019 when Endgame came out, and yet none of this long-overdue diversity is reflected in Doomsday. Sure, in the year-and-a-half since this initial announcement, a few additional characters have been confirmed to also appear, including Hayley Atwell’s Peggy Carter and Mabel Cadena’s Namora, but the disproportionate amount of male (and mostly white male) characters remains extremely noticeable and disheartening.
So, I say all this because that’s why I went into this Endgame rerelease already feeling far from enthusiastic about the upcoming Avengers film it was trying to promote. My anticipation for the new Doomsday footage (I’d heard there were four new scenes tacked on) was basically nonexistent, but I told myself that it was still worth it because at least I’d have a great time rewatching Endgame on the big screen, right? As it turns out, no.
To be fair, the first approximately two hours and 49 minutes of this viewing experience were delightful as always — Endgame really is that good — but all that changed with what I was horrified to discover was the first of the four extra scenes.
There I was, minding my own business as Steve and Peggy shared an emotional reunion to close out this three-hour epic, only for the moment to be jarringly interrupted by an extremely poor-quality — the word that kept coming to mind was janky — bit of new footage showing the reunited lovers getting a knock at the door by what turns out to be a Time Variance Authority (TVA)-era Loki. (Some people in my theatre clapped at his cameo; I visibly winced.)
This is the same Loki who, as we last saw in Loki Season 2’s finale in 2023, had ascended to the status of God of Stories and was pretty busy literally holding the multiverse together with his bare hands. Now, he’s seemingly free from Yggdrasil (the multiversal world tree, an idea borrowed from Norse mythology) with zero explanation or repercussions, which is already frustrating enough, but what makes this particular scene so much worse is how it violently disrupts the original ending of the movie and completely undercuts Steve’s entire conclusion.
I genuinely can’t believe that Marvel dared to alter the ending of one of their existing movies, let alone their highest-grossing movie of all time and the one that’s widely regarded as their crowning cinematic achievement. I’d long since resigned myself to the fact that they were going to continue to pretend that Doomsday was the plan all along — when it really, really wasn’t — but I didn’t think that delusion would extend to and therefore impact Endgame itself. Shouldn’t Endgame, of all things, be untouchable? Apparently not.
Maybe I should have seen it coming, but I just did not expect the studio to so blatantly retcon Steve’s ending by shoving said retcon into what was previously a beautiful, moving scene eight years in the making (Steve’s first movie, Captain America: The First Avenger, came out in 2011). Is nothing sacred anymore?
So I sat in my theatre, utterly baffled, enraged, and, yes, embarrassed by what I was seeing, and then I only had a few minutes of credits to recalibrate before the next scene came on. This time around, the scene was embarrassing for an entirely different reason. In it, we see a video log of Bruce Banner/Hulk taken from the seemingly impenetrable underground bunker he’s been held captive in since the events of this summer’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day. The footage ends with Bruce getting interrupted by an offscreen Doctor Doom and Bruce promptly hulking out.
On its own, this scene is objectively fine, but its main issue lies in the fact that we’re seeing it here, tacked on to a rereleased Endgame, instead of as a post-credits scene from the aforementioned Brand New Day. My friend and I were discussing it, and truly the only explanation we could come up with was that this scene wasn’t included in Bruce’s most recent movie because this scene didn’t exist two months ago when that movie came out. So then it begs the question: why scramble to film this scene at all? And why include it here? What will it actually add to Doomsday, since, as far as we know, Bruce wasn’t even supposed to be in that movie? I don’t have the answers to any of these questions, and I fear Doomsday won’t, either.
Out of all the extra footage, the third scene, coming a little later in the credits and featuring familiar Loki Season 2 faces like Mobius, Casey, and O.B., is probably the least problematic of the bunch, but that bar is low. This scene is straightforward enough — TVA employees witness what ends up being thousands of incursions starting to occur all across the multiverse — but it’s not exactly entertaining. Instead, it’s purely expository, with no meaningful character beat to offer.
And sure, the “multiverse is collapsing,” as someone exclaims (the fact that I honestly can’t remember who tells you how impersonal this scene really is), but from what trailers for Doomsday have already shown us, it’s not like this will be difficult to ascertain when watching the movie in December. If anything, this scene, while perfectly inoffensive, is already feeling redundant — but if they really felt they needed it for clarity’s sake, then they should have saved it for the movie coming out in less than three months. (Plus, if you think about it, a far better place for it to exist would have been after 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine, which prominently featured the TVA — but of course, in order for that to be possible, Marvel would have had to actually be planning multiple years ahead, instead of just pretending they did.)
After enduring a retcon to end the movie, then two less bothersome but still ill-placed intervening scenes, the final new snippet of footage, coming at the very end of Endgame’s credits, once again infuriated me.
If you recall, back in 2019, Endgame was one of the rare Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) properties to not have any mid-credits or post-credits scenes. Instead, dedicated fans who waited through the nearly 10-minute end crawl were rewarded with a simple yet meaningful auditory clip to send them on their way.
As the Marvel Studios logo appeared once last time, a series of six distinct “clangs” rang throughout the theatre, a soundbite pulled from a prominent early scene in the very first MCU film, 2008’s Iron Man. Of course, given that Tony Stark/Iron Man, the lead of the franchise up to this point and one of the heroes who met their untimely demise in Endgame, this extraordinarily simple yet extraordinarily meaningful parting note was perfect. And, while I can’t recall if it was ever confirmed by the filmmakers, I also like to think that these six clangs specifically represent the six original Avengers, as featured in 2012’s The Avengers: Tony, Steve, Bruce, Thor, Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, and Clint Barton/Hawkeye.
Of course, as a different Marvel character once said, “a thing isn’t beautiful because it lasts,” because in the case of Endgame (and Tony’s arc in particular), this perfect sendoff was also altered — dare I say desecrated? — by Avengers: Endgame – Encore. Given that the titular villain of Doomsday, Doctor Doom, and the main hero of Endgame (and the entire 11-year Infinity Saga leading up to it) are inexplicably played by the same actor, Robert Downey Jr. (no, the bizarre casting has still not been explained), Marvel chose to change this subtle nod to Tony’s legacy into a tease of what’s to come for their big villain.
I would be more openly outraged by this decision if I hadn’t inadvertently had it spoiled a few hours before watching the rerelease, but make no mistake — it’s still an absolutely egregious change to make, and a deeply cynical message to send. The thought of the filmmakers — director brothers Joe and Anthony Russo — going so far as to alter and worsen their previous, incredibly successful, film is, to be frank, incredibly bleak.
I truly don’t know how Marvel got to this point, but as someone who has loved the franchise more than any other piece of media in my life, I sincerely hope Doomsday (and perhaps its 2027 follow-up, Avengers: Secret Wars, also directed by the Russos) is the only time Marvel embarrasses itself and compromises its own integrity in this way, because let’s be honest — we can’t be doing this.
We deserve better, and these stories deserve better, too.
First Featured image Credit: ©Disney