The MCU has made a lot of mistakes since the end of the Infinity Saga. That includes doing very little to “earn” the arrival of its next franchise big bad. Marvel knows all of this, too. It’s why the studio is bringing back its biggest stars to prop up interest in its next big crossover event. And yet none of those missteps are going to matter. A brief, intense, ominous trailer for Avengers: Doomsday has us excited because Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan somehow aren’t even the most interesting part of this X-Men focused promo.
Right. Into. Our. Veins.
That’s the most reasonable reaction anyone can have to a trailer that features an old, bearded Magneto talking about how death comes for us all with his dearest friend, Charles Xavier. And that happens as we see the sad ruins of the latter’s iconic school. What went wrong? Why are the mutants of this world in such dire shape? The most intriguing part of this Doomsday X-Men trailer might give us an answer. It also shows James Marsden as Cyclops screaming in the middle of a violent battle.
Is his concussive cry a tease for Battleworld? We seem all but certain to visit that infamous Marvel Comics location at some point between Doomsday and its sequel Secret Wars? Maybe not. Behind Cyclops we see a massive pair of legs. That might explain why Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters might be in tatters. That could very well be a Sentinel that Cyclops is fighting (and losing to) in that scene.
Since the film’s two previous trailers clearly feature footage from near the start of the movie, it seems far more likely this trailer is also using scenes we’ll see towards the start of Avengers: Doomsday. And that makes this far more likely to be a self-contained X-Men battle with the Sentinels than a moment on Battleworld.
We can’t wait to find out for sure. Because despite all of the MCU’s issues getting to this point, it’s really hard to mess up the return of Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen as Professor X and Magneto.