D23 is Disney's biggest fan showcase of the year, and this time around Marvel used it to drop a fresh look at Avengers: Doomsday, the mega team-up movie hitting theaters December 18. Robbie Fox was locked in and posting from the floor before the panel even started.
A promo tease for the Star Wars/Marvel panel dropped 15 minutes before the presentation kicked off.
Once the actual footage hit, the reaction was immediate. The trailer leans hard into Doctor Doom as the villain forcing Earth's mightiest heroes, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four to team up, and Robbie zeroed in on a wardrobe detail most people would've scrolled past.
Doom appears to run two distinct suits across the footage, and Robbie's question is a fair one: does the Thor fight come early, with the climax suit only debuting at the end, or are we watching the same battle from two angles? It's the kind of nerdy sequencing detail that only clicks once you've actually seen the full trailer.
The other big story out of D23 has nothing to do with the movie itself. James Spader is coming back as Ultron for the new Disney+ series VisionQuest, more than a decade after voicing the character in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Kenjac was quick to point out that Spader's original run as the villain never got the credit it deserved.
Very happy James Spader, who had a very slept on performance IMO, is getting another go at Ultron
VisionQuest is shaping up as its own thing entirely, with Robbie picking up on a WandaVision-style visual approach and dropping hints about a possible return to Madripoor along with some out-of-the-box cameos. Between that show and the Doomsday footage, Marvel used its D23 slot to remind everyone the MCU still has gas left in the tank, and Eric Hubbs summed up the room's reaction about as bluntly as possible.
Yup I'm good, don't release anything else about this movie. What a trailer
With Doomsday still 4 months out and VisionQuest details trickling in piece by piece, D23 did exactly what it's supposed to do: leave people with more questions than answers and a countdown clock they can't stop refreshing.