Ryan Gosling Is Ghost Rider, David Jonsson Is the New Black Panther, and Doom Told Hall H to Choose Sides. Everything Marvel Announced at San Diego Comic-Con.
By Jimigrimm
Marvel Studios walked back into Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con for the first time since 2024, and they did not come to play it safe.
If you weren’t one of the 6,500 people in that room, here’s everything that happened, and it started before the panel did. Attendees found Doctor Doom masks and cloaks waiting at every seat, all 6,500 of them. HERBIE, the robot from The Fantastic Four: First Steps, rolled out on stage to greet the crowd. And people near the doors swore they could hear a motorcycle engine revving somewhere inside the hall. Nobody knew it yet, but that engine was the first announcement.
Kevin Feige opened with a mission statement: “Today, we’re mainly going to talk about movies. We’re mainly going to talk about movies because that is what brings us together in the world.” Then he spent an hour proving it.
Endgame Is Coming Back to Theaters
First reveal: Avengers: Endgame returns to theaters September 25, under the banner Endgame Encore, and the screening comes with an exclusive look at Avengers: Doomsday attached.
Feige’s framing was the interesting part. “2019 was a very long time ago,” he told the crowd. “The world’s a different place. But reminding all of us what it was like to be in that theater, cheering along and enjoying that crazy enthusiasm, is why we’re rereleasing Avengers: Endgame on September 25.”
Read between the lines and it’s a setup move: Marvel wants the biggest movie night in its history fresh in everyone’s memory going into December. Given what Doomsday appears to be about, and we’ll get to that, sending audiences back to relive the snap right before this movie is not an accident.
The Motorcycle Engine: Ryan Gosling Is Ghost Rider
The revving paid off. Marvel confirmed a Ghost Rider movie starring Ryan Gosling, directed by Shawn Levy of Deadpool and Wolverine, hitting theaters in 2028, with the first official logo revealed on the spot.
Gosling walked out to the kind of noise Hall H saves for maybe twice a decade. “Many of you know this is a character I’ve wanted to play for a very long time,” he said. “So Kevin, Josh Horowitz, Hall H, thank you.” That’s a nod to years of Gosling openly campaigning for the role in interviews, this wasn’t a studio talking an actor into a franchise, this was an actor who chased the Spirit of Vengeance until Marvel said yes.
Levy and Gosling just finished Star Wars: Starfighter together, and Feige teased he’s already seen a cut of it and called it “awesome.” So the Ghost Rider pairing is two guys coming straight off a collaboration, choosing to run it back with the flaming skull.
Deadpool Crashed the Panel in a New Suit
Ryan Reynolds showed up in the audience, fully suited as Deadpool, in a brand-new grey and black costume nobody had seen before. He heckled the Doomsday cast from the floor, including asking Paul Rudd why Thor was crying in Deadpool and Wolverine.
Here’s the honest read on what it means: some outlets walked away reporting Deadpool is confirmed for Avengers: Doomsday, others pointed out Marvel never actually said the words. What’s undeniable is that Marvel put Reynolds in a never-before-seen suit at its biggest panel in two years and let the cameras eat. Studios don’t debut new costumes for cameos that aren’t coming.
Jon Bernthal also crashed the stage at one point to remind Feige, and everyone else, that Spider-Man: Brand New Day hits theaters July 31, and attendees got footage. The Punisher doing promo work for Spider-Man is exactly the energy this panel ran on.
The Doomsday Segment: Doom Took the Stage and the Footage Told Us His Story
Robert Downey Jr. came out in full Doom mode, green, theatrical, working the room, and the entire Doomsday cast poured in from the back of Hall H: Chris Evans, Anthony Mackie, Paul Rudd, Pedro Pascal, Simu Liu, James Marsden, Kelsey Grammer, Rebecca Romijn, David Harbour, Winston Duke, Tenoch Huerta, and more, walking through the crowd to the stage.
Downey’s words are worth quoting, because he was half in character and half not, and both halves were saying something. “It’s not easy being green,” he said. “I need a lot of help. I need this whole family around me to finally assist me in being an arch-enemy, which is daunting.” Then, looking back at his Doom reveal two years ago: “When y’all had faith in me two years ago, you lifted me up, and I think we made something real special. But decisions will have to be made.” He told the crowd they would have to choose sides. Six thousand five hundred people in Doom masks. That’s the marketing: Doom isn’t asking you to root against him.
Then came the exclusive footage, and if you read our breakdown of the trailer and the poster, this is where things get satisfying, because the footage confirmed the theory’s direction out loud. Sue Storm narrates. Per the reports out of the hall, she describes Victor as someone who used to be kind, used to be caring, until everything he loved was taken from him, and says: “I knew he was lost. I didn’t realize he was broken.” Reed confronts him, “Answer me, Victor, did you do this?”, and Doom’s response is the line of the whole panel: “All of you have lived stolen lives, and now you must give them back.”
Sit with that line. Stolen lives. Give them back. That’s not a conqueror talking. That’s a man presenting an invoice. The poster showed a tapestry of a woman and child with what looks like Tony Stark’s snap woven into the corner. The footage now has Sue explicitly saying everything Doom loved was taken from him. The story Marvel is telling isn’t hidden anymore: Doom lost everything, he holds this universe responsible, and he’s coming to collect.
The footage ended with Thor attacking, “You’ll pray for hell long before I grant it”, Doom shutting him down with magic, and then raising an army of comic-accurate Sentinels from the ground. Pedro Pascal added one more log to the fire before the clip rolled, saying his Reed and Doom have a history the movie will reveal, and calling them, with a straight face, “besties.”
The Closer: Black Panther 3 and the New King
Marvel saved the emotional heavyweight for last. Ryan Coogler took the stage to officially announce Black Panther 3, dated December 15, 2028, with Coogler returning to direct and, per reports from the hall, shooting on 70mm, a first for an MCU film.
Letitia Wright and Winston Duke joined him. And then the announcement: the film follows T’Challa’s son, the boy introduced at the end of Wakanda Forever, now coming of age and taking up the mantle. The new Black Panther is David Jonsson, the Alien: Romulus and The Long Walk star.
Jonsson stepped out to a standing ovation. “I want to say thank you so much,” he told the room. “Thank you Ryan, thank you Kevin, thank you to this amazing family that I have the honor and the privilege and the blessing to join.” By every account from inside the hall, the roar when his name landed was the loudest of the night. Chadwick Boseman’s character gets a son, the son gets the suit, and the story becomes about growing into something your father left you. There are not many dry eyes in that premise.
What Marvel Didn't Show
Worth knowing what wasn’t there, because the gaps are their own story. No Avengers: Secret Wars content. Nothing on the X-Men movie. VisionQuest, which lands on Disney+ in October as the third chapter of the WandaVision story, got only a passing mention, Feige said up front this panel was about movies. Marvel is holding its cards on everything past December, which tells you Doomsday is the whole hand right now.
So here’s where you come in, because this panel handed out homework. Gosling as Ghost Rider: perfect casting or are you still picturing someone else under the skull? David Jonsson inheriting the Black Panther mantle: how are you feeling about T’Challa’s son carrying it forward? And the big one, the one Marvel literally dressed 6,500 people for: after that footage, after “stolen lives,” after Sue saying everything he loved was taken, when Doom tells you to choose a side, which side are you standing on? Drop your answers in the comments. December is coming, and apparently we all have a decision to make.
