Marvel’s cast roster for Avengers: Doomsday keeps expanding in surprising directions. The latest confirmation, revealed at Comic Con 2026, brings two fan-favorite characters back into the mix: Ryan Reynolds returns as the motor-mouthed mercenary Deadpool, while Hayley Atwell reprises her role as Peggy Carter.
It’s a pairing few would have predicted on a single call sheet. Reynolds’ Wade Wilson thrives on breaking the fourth wall and puncturing the solemnity of the superhero genre, whereas Atwell’s Peggy Carter has long served as one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s emotional anchors — the wartime agent whose bond with Steve Rogers threads through the timeline. Seeing them share billing in the same event film hints at the kind of multiversal collision that Doomsday has been building toward.
Atwell first appeared as Peggy in Captain America: The First Avenger and went on to headline her own series, Agent Carter, before resurfacing as Captain Carter in the animated What If…? and in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Her inclusion here strongly suggests the film will keep tugging at those alternate-reality threads.
Reynolds, meanwhile, brought Deadpool fully into the MCU fold with Deadpool & Wolverine, a crossover that proved audiences are hungry for the character’s irreverent energy inside Marvel’s larger machinery. His return for Doomsday raises the obvious question of just how much chaos one anti-hero can inject into an ensemble already stacked with heavy hitters.
The Avengers: Doomsday announcements have been rolling out in stages, with the cast list treated less like a spreadsheet and more like a slow-burn reveal designed to keep speculation running hot. Each new name reshapes theories about how the story will knit together characters from different franchises, eras and universes.
- Deadpool — Ryan Reynolds reprising the wisecracking mercenary
- Peggy Carter — Hayley Atwell returning to one of the MCU’s foundational roles
What we don’t yet know is how these two fit into the broader plot, or how their very different tones will be balanced on screen. That tension — reverent history colliding with gleeful anarchy — may be exactly the point. If Doomsday is meant to be a sprawling reckoning across the multiverse, few duos better embody the range Marvel is trying to wrangle into a single story.
For now, the confirmation adds another jolt of anticipation to one of the most closely watched entries on Marvel’s slate. Expect the fan theories to multiply accordingly.