There is something almost desperately ambitious about the first full trailer for Avengers: Doomsday. After years of trying to convince audiences that dozens of new characters, streaming series, parallel universes, and sequels were still part of one grand story, Marvel appears to have decided to simplify the strategy: it called everyone back.

And when I say everyone, I mean almost literally everyone.

Thor is there. Steve Rogers is back. There is Shang-Chi, Yelena Belova, and the new Avengers from Thunderbolts, Wakanda, Namor, the Fantastic Four, and, because apparently that still was not enough, the X-Men we knew from the Fox films, with Patrick Stewart once again playing Charles Xavier and Ian McKellen returning as Magneto. All of them stand under the threat of Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom, played by the very man whose Tony Stark emotionally sustained the MCU during its most successful era.

It is difficult to imagine a clearer statement of intent. Marvel wants Doomsday to feel essential again.

During the so-called Infinity Saga, that happened almost organically. The Avengers stopped being simply a series of movies and became a meeting point. You could prefer Captain America, Thor, or Iron Man, but whenever the Avengers assembled, there was a sense that something important was about to happen. After Endgame, that urgency disappeared.

Not necessarily because Marvel stopped making good films. The problem was something else: the universe became so large that it began to fragment. New heroes appeared, new teams, streaming series, dimensions, timelines, and alternate versions of characters, but it became increasingly difficult to answer the most basic question any shared narrative has to answer: where are we going? Doomsday seems determined to answer that question very simply: we are all going to the same place.

The trailer opens with Charles Xavier warning that something is coming and that, before the day is over, the characters will have to face an “unthinkable decision.” The villain is Victor von Doom, whose threat appears large enough to place entire universes on a collision course. The story seems built around exactly that convergence, allowing characters from different franchises and realities to finally coexist. Naturally, they first appear ready to fight one another.

There is something very Marvel about that as well. The trailer suggests conflicts between the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, and the different Avengers formations before everyone realizes that a much greater enemy exists. Thor seems to be among the first to understand the scale of the problem. And when he admits they are going to need a miracle, who appears?

Steve Rogers.

Chris Evans returns to a universe he had apparently left behind in Endgame, and his presence carries a weight that goes far beyond the character himself. Steve is emotional memory. So is Patrick Stewart. So is Ian McKellen. And, obviously, so is Robert Downey Jr., even if this time he is standing on the other side of the battle. That is exactly where Doomsday reveals its most powerful weapon, and also its greatest risk: nostalgia.

Marvel is not merely bringing characters together. It is bringing memories together. Fans who arrived with the first X-Men in 2000 get their actors back. Those who followed the MCU since Iron Man in 2008 are reunited with Downey and Evans. Those who came later have Shang-Chi, Yelena, Sam Wilson, and the new Fantastic Four. It is a strategy that is almost impossible to ignore, but bringing everyone together is not the same thing as telling a good story.

Infinity War and Endgame worked not simply because they had dozens of characters. They worked because years of relationships, losses, and conflicts existed behind every reunion. When Steve Rogers and Tony Stark looked at one another, we understood the weight of that silence.

Doomsday now has to do something even harder: turn characters from entirely different universes into a story that feels emotionally inevitable rather than simply like one enormous Marvel class photo.

The Russo brothers know how to manage crowds better than almost any directors who have worked within the MCU. Even so, the first trailer leaves one unavoidable question.

When you need to summon the Avengers, X-Men, Fantastic Four, Wakandans, Thunderbolts, and Robert Downey Jr. just to recapture the audience’s attention, perhaps Marvel’s greatest enemy is not exactly Doctor Doom.

It is the expectation that Marvel can become what it once was, and that may be an even harder battle to win.