Chris Evans ‘sad’ he's not invited to ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ party

Article content

Chris Evans is feeling blue he won’t be appearing in next year’s mammoth superhero team-up Avengers: Doomsday.

Evans, who played Captain America/Steve Rogers in eight Marvel films, handed the shield to Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson at the conclusion of 2019’s Avengers: Endgame.

With filming now underway on Doomsday in London, Evans, who is doing the press rounds for his upcoming rom-com The Materialists, was asked if he was keeping in touch with some of his former castmates and how it felt to not be asked to come back for the sequel.

“Yeah, I talk to them all the time,” Evans told ScreenRant this week. “It’s where Pedro (Pascal) is right now. I mean, it’s sad to be away. It’s sad to not be back with the band, but I’m sure they’re doing something incredible, and I’m sure it’s going to be that much harder when it comes out, and you feel like you weren’t invited to the party.”

Several of Evans’ Avengers co-stars are set to appear in Doomsday, including Chris Hemsworth as Thor; Sebastian Stan as the Winter Soldier; Paul Rudd as Ant-Man; Tom Hiddleston as Loki; and Mackie as Captain America.

Iron Man star Robert Downey Jr. will also be returning to the Marvel fold, but this time he’ll be playing the villainous Victor von Doom/Doctor Doom.

After directing Captain America: Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War and the last two Avengers flicks, Anthony and Joe Russo are making their MCU return to helm Doomsday and its 2027 follow-up Secret Wars.

During an appearance on an episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast last summer, Downey said he was convinced to return to Marvel after getting a pitch from studio boss Kevin Feige.

“He said, ‘It just keeps occurring to me, if you were to come back …’” Downey said. “He brought up Victor von Doom. I looked into this character. Later on, he goes, ‘Let’s get Victor von Doom right.”

In 2021, rumours swirled that Evans had closed a deal to return to the MCU in an untitled Marvel film, with an option for a sequel.

The Boston-born actor promptly shut down that speculation when he tweeted, “News to me,” adding a shrugging emoji.

Talk that he was coming back bubbled up again last December with The Wrap, Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter, and Variety all reporting the news that he was returning for a role in the event film.

But Evans shot down those reports in a cover story for Esquire’s January issue saying he was “happily retired.”

“That’s not true,” Evans said. “This always happens. I mean, it happens every couple of years — ever since Endgame. I’ve just stopped responding to it.” 

After his character time travelled into the past and opted to live his life with Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) following the events of 2019’s Endgame, Evans has continually said he would be reluctant to rejoin the MCU. 

“I would never say never, but I’m very protective of it. It’s a very precious role to me, so it would have to be just right,” he said during a 2023 stop on The View.

But screenwriting duo Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who penned the two-part Avengers finale as well as three Captain America films and Thor: The Dark World, told Postmedia in a 2019 interview that there were still more stories Marvel could tell involving Evans’ iconic hero.

“Chris and I are partial to the idea that Steve is part of a strange, unique time-loop where he has always been there. The husband that you very purposefully did not see at Peggy’s bedside in Winter Soldier is Chris’ Steve. We have always thought that he was her husband. The movies you have been watching follow a line where he always goes back (in time). To be fair, not everyone agrees with us. I don’t even know if Marvel agrees with us. But that’s what we think,” McFeely said.

And there was a note of finality to his time in the MCU coming to an end when Postmedia caught up with Evans on the set of Avengers: Infinity War just before Christmas in 2017.

“It’s a cocktail of emotions … It went by in the blink of an eye, but it was also a lifetime. It’s nice because it has evolved the way you hope. It’s not like we peaked with our friendship back on (2014’s Avengers: Age of) Ultron. The camaraderie we have is at an all time high… It feels like family, it really does,” he said.

“It’s nerve-wracking,” Evans said as he contemplated the possibility that he was finished for good. “But Marvel really knows what they are doing … It’s all one big arc. Everything’s moving towards the same endgame.”

mdaniell@postmedia.com