If you’ve been online at all today, you’ve likely noticed a familiar question resurfacing with renewed intensity: Who is coming back in Avengers: Doomsday?
The conversation around the cast of Marvel’s impending superhero epic has been simmering ever since the film was first announced. With each passing day and with the release date inching closer, fan curiosity has only intensified. Three teaser trailers have already dropped, currently playing in theaters alongside Avatar: Fire & Ash, and with every new drop, the process of elimination becomes easier. Faces are revealed. Absences are noted. Speculation sharpens.
But something else is happening online.
A meme has been born.
What started as genuine fan theorizing has quickly evolved into full-blown internet absurdity. The teasers’ recurring narrative hook — who will return — has created just enough ambiguity for fans to crack open their own pop culture vaults and start casting wildly outside the Marvel canon. The result? A cascade of jokes that feel less like predictions and more like collective therapy.
I joined in on the fun posting the cast of the beloved sci-fi series Fringe is destined to appear in Avengers: Doomsday. Others jokingly posted it’ll be the core four from Living Single. More recent pop culture entries aren’t safe either. The blue screen used in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania has been floated as a surprise return. None of it is meant to be taken seriously, and that’s precisely the point. The memes are escalating, absurd, and genuinely hilarious.
So why are these memes popping off now? And why today?
The answer likely has less to do with Marvel itself and more to do with the broader emotional climate online. We’re only days into the new year, and the news cycle packed with alarming headlines, political tension, and a relentless sense of instability has already left many people exhausted. Whether it’s the constant stream of breaking news alerts, or geopolitical anxiety the collective mood feels brittle. In moments like this, humor becomes a pressure valve.
These Avengers: Doomsday memes aren’t really about Marvel continuity or casting announcements. They’re about reclaiming a sense of control, if only briefly. They’re about distraction, yes but also connection. Laughing at the same ridiculous joke, remixing the same premise, and agreeing silently or loudly that sometimes it’s okay to opt out of despair for a moment and just be silly online.
For a little while, the stakes are low. The world isn’t ending. We’re just arguing about whether Doom could be defeated by Black Dynamite.
And as for who is actually coming back in Avengers: Doomsday?
Well, to borrow a line from Gary Oldman in The Professional:
“Everyone.”
At least… that’s what the internet has decided.
