Avengers: Doomsday International Teaser Sold Nostalgia Instead of New Scenes

Marvel Studios' international teaser for Avengers: Doomsday didn't reveal a single new scene. It was a Disney Plus promo aimed at an international audience, ending with the Doomsday title, and to me it confirmed what I suspected would happen once 2026 arrived: Marvel would tag Doomsday promos onto anything and everything it did. I don't see that as a problem. As long as the movie delivers, I think Marvel can get away with a lot in the way it chooses to market this one.

Marvel tagged Avengers: Doomsday onto a Disney Plus promo

We'd already seen this pattern with the four trailers that ran one after another for a month attached to Avatar: Fire and Ash. The international teaser followed the same playbook. What was essentially a promo for all of Disney Plus's projects, pitched to an international audience, was backloaded with a run of projects from the newest sagas so Marvel could promote Avengers: Doomsday right at the end.

That was the shape of things to come, as I saw it. Once we were in 2026, I expected the next 24 months to be all Avengers: Doomsday and then all Avengers: Secret Wars for Marvel. Every promo, whatever it was nominally selling, looked likely to point back to those two films.

New Marvel artwork placed Iron Man beside the newer heroes

Marvel Studios had also released new artwork featuring heroes and villains from the newest phases. It included Loki as the God of Stories, Thor, Deadpool and Wolverine, Yelena Belova, the Fantastic Four and Sam Wilson's Captain America. Shuri's Black Panther stood up front, with Hulk, War Machine, Iron Man, Vision, Doctor Strange, Scarlet Witch and Bucky also in the painting.

What interested me was the right side of the painting. It felt a bit like new phase meets old phase. Alongside Shuri's Black Panther, you could clearly see characters we hadn't seen in a while and who might be dead and gone in the MCU, like Scarlet Witch, and of course Iron Man.

Robert Downey Jr. gives Marvel an Iron Man link to sell Doctor Doom

It's interesting to me that Marvel Studios doesn't have much in the way of Doctor Doom canon to draw on, but it does have Robert Downey Jr. canon. It has the character of Iron Man. The Disney Plus promo featured a lot of Iron Man, especially at the beginning. It's almost as if Marvel wants to keep using Iron Man iconography in the present day.

That's striking, because technically Tony's sacrifice and the absence of an Iron Man in the MCU is what led the way to Doctor Doom looking like him. I've argued before that Tony is absolved of all responsibility, whether for getting reincarnated or for snapping Doom into existence, if we find out that Doctor Doom stole his identity. In a meta sense, though, it's simply more Robert Downey Jr. He's playing a character who may look like his Tony Stark, but who in his essence is Victor Von Doom. The Russos were careful to call him by name when they first introduced him at San Diego Comic-Con.

Convention season looked like the place for a first real Doomsday look

Convention season starts early internationally, in the first quarter of the year, with events like CinemaCon. Whenever there's a new Avengers or Marvel film, there are rumors it will get a first look at CinemaCon, and at the time I thought that might be the first place Marvel would show a scene or two behind closed doors.

If that happened, I expected everyone in attendance to come out talking about it and reacting to it, and we might see some leaks hit Twitter, the way material had leaked in the month before. CinemaCon, San Diego Comic-Con and Hall H may have warranted genuine first looks. Outside of those, I suspected Marvel Studios would run out anything it could and put the Doomsday logo on it, just like this international trailer.

Recycled clips are a nostalgia play for the Infinity Saga

Marvel's approach at the Comic-Cons the year before was the same as this promo. It recycled as many old clips of the characters as it could, featuring the ones coming up in the film, to remind you why you loved Marvel in the first place and cash in on the nostalgia of the Infinity Saga.

Isn't that exactly what Marvel is doing by recasting Robert Downey Jr. as Victor Von Doom and bringing Chris Evans back right from where we left off in Avengers: Endgame? That's the exact cash in it's going for. So when it comes to promos, Marvel doesn't have to release new material. It can put something together the way it did for this Disney Plus promo and attach Avengers: Doomsday at the end, the same way it did at the Comic-Cons with voiceovers over old clips.

Call it a sizzle reel or whatever you want, but it wasn't new Doomsday material. The international teaser revealed nothing new at all. It was there to get you hyped: remember Iron Man, remember the Infinity Saga, look at all the new characters introduced during the Multiverse Saga. Go back and rewatch Loki seasons one and two, Thunderbolts and Fantastic Four on Disney Plus, and prepare for Avengers: Doomsday.

I don't think Marvel can get Avengers: Doomsday marketing wrong

My final thought is this: "I don't think they can do this wrong." I don't think Marvel can make a mistake in anything it chooses to do with marketing. I wasn't alone among content creators in the Marvel space in saying I didn't like the idea of exclusive preview trailers going to theaters rather than online first. But Marvel turned that to its advantage.

It was able to triple dip. First, when the trailers were leaked online. Second, when they officially hit theaters. Third, when Marvel released them on YouTube the week after. That kept the conversation going three times instead of once. I think Marvel Studios knows the Avengers franchise holds a very special place among the Marvel fandom, and I don't think it can mess this up. As long as the movie delivers, it can get away with a lot of avant garde choices in how it markets it.

Marvel was already running a Doomsday clock for an entire year, with its average audience dropping to between 500 and 700. I didn't even think you could do that on YouTube; I thought broadcasts were limited to 12 or 24 hours. When you're Disney and Marvel Studios, you have a relationship with YouTube, so maybe it made an exception. But how in the world do you keep a server up, let alone a computer running, for that long? Some of what Marvel is doing is very curious to me. Marvel knows it has invested in the Avengers franchise and can now cash in on that. That's why it runs out promos like this with the Avengers: Doomsday title on the end, and I'd bet there were many more of them to come in 2026.