How Steve Rogers Is Back In Avengers: Doomsday

December 27, 2025

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Steve Rogers is officially returning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Avengers: Doomsday, which has raised a host of questions about how this return can happen and what it could mean both for the upcoming movie and the larger MCU timeline. A recently released Doomsday trailer confirmed that MCU OG Chris Evans is back as Steve Rogers.

Picking up where Avengers: Endgame left off, though, Steve is clearly back in time (presumably sometime in the 1950s, based on Captain America’s MCU timeline), not only happily married to Peggy Carter but also cradling a baby. So, how exactly is he in Doomsday, and what does that mean for the story?

Steve Rogers’ Endgame Ending Left The Door Open For His Return

The conclusion of Steve Rogers’ Endgame story was among the movie’s biggest twists. After returning the Infinity Stones to their rightful times and places following the heroes’ victory, Steve stayed in the past and lived out his life with Peggy Carter. He reappeared (in what felt like the blink of an eye for everyone else) as an old man.

This meant the end of his time as Captain America; he passed that torch to Sam Wilson, bestowing his iconic star-spangled shield upon him in Endgame. This is also the last time viewers saw Steve Rogers. Despite some speculation to the contrary, he didn’t appear in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier or Captain America: Brave New World.

These absences, along with the fact that he would have been more than 100 years old at the end of Endgame, led some to wonder whether Steve was already dead. However, the MCU never confirmed his death on-screen; he had only retired. Between that and the fact that time travel is now fair game, Steve’s return was always possible.

Doomsday’s Steve Rogers Could Be A Multiverse Variant

Steve Rogers in Avengers: Doomsday smiling down at a baby

Unsurprisingly, the confirmation that Steve Rogers will be in Doomsday has led to a wave of fan theories, one of which is that the Steve shown in this trailer could be a Multiverse variant—a concept explored throughout the Multiverse Saga, though particularly in depth in seasons 1 and 2 of Loki.

Some theories even suggest that Steve could have broken the Sacred Timeline and created a branch that leads to the events of Doomsday by opting to stay in the past at the end of Endgame.

It would make sense if Steve making this major change had serious effects on the Multiverse—be it a disruption of the Sacred Timeline or something else—and it’s already clear that some strange things are going to be afoot, given that Robert Downey Jr. is playing Doctor Doom in Doomsday.

With so many possibilities in the mix, could it be that the Steve shown in the trailer is a variant? Sure. However, that doesn’t seem like the most likely explanation for this character’s return. The trailer makes it pretty clear that this is indeed Steve Rogers from Endgame, particularly with him packing away his Captain America suit from Endgame.

Does Steve Rogers’ Return In Doomsday Ruin Endgame?

Chris Evans as Steve Rogers in Avengers: Endgame ending

In light of the likelihood that this is Endgame Steve in Doomsday, his return has given way to a deluge of discourse about Endgame potentially being ‘ruined.’ On the one hand, there’s something a little ironic about this criticism. At the time, audiences were pretty split on whether this was a beautiful ending for Steve or a betrayal.

The former is pretty self-explanatory, but in terms of the latter, many fans were angered by the notion that Steve would go back and change the life Peggy had (and had directly told Steve she’d enjoyed) and/or bothered that Steve would leave Bucky after all they had been through.

Perhaps time has healed those wounds, but it is a little surprising to see how protective some in the fanbase have become over this ending for Steve. Regardless, without knowing what exactly this return means—including whether he could be a variant after all—it’s tough to say whether it’s bad for the character.

The larger conversation being had is arguably the more compelling one, and that’s pertaining to the future of the MCU. Namely, there are concerns that Chris Evans’ return as Steve Rogers is symptomatic of the MCU currently floundering and falling back on the franchise’s most beloved actors to recover.

The same sentiment was front and center in response to the news that RDJ was going to be Doctor Doom, and there’s unfortunately a bit of truth in it. It’s no secret that, following Endgame, the MCU has struggled to find its footing. While there have been some major successes, there have also been some grave failures.

In addition to the varied success of the MCU’s Phase 5 movies and shows, there’s also the matter of the MCU’s changed Kang plans, which seem to have shifted the direction of the franchise quite a bit. It’s therefore far from a stretch to assume that actors like Evans and Downey Jr. really are being used to buoy the franchise.

Of course, one character’s return in a trailer isn’t enough to say for certain that anything about Endgame is ruined—but it presumably does mean that quite a lot is riding on how Avengers: Doomsday plays its cards.