Avengers Doomsday: Whose death will crush us most? 11 Marvel heroes on the chopping block, ranked by likelihood

Marvel has been billing Avengers: Doomsday as the biggest crossover event since Endgame, and if there's one thing a decade and a half of superhero cinema has taught us, it's that 'biggest crossover' is corporate-speak for 'somebody's not walking out of this one.' The only real mystery is who gets handed the black spot.

Here's the thing, though: The obvious guesses are rarely the correct ones. Marvel has a habit of protecting characters who still have stories left to tell, while marking the ones whose arcs have reached a satisfying, sacrifice-shaped conclusion. So instead of guessing based on who's most famous or who screams "main character," it's worth asking a colder question, whose death would actually mean something? With that in mind, here's a full sweep of the roster, sorted from "surprisingly vulnerable" to "basically wearing a target."

Spider-Man: Is Tom Holland finally ready to swing off into the sunset?

On paper, Peter Parker should be the safest man in the MCU. He's Marvel's flagship hero, and Brand New Day only just finished stitching his life back together after No Way Home wiped him from the memory of everyone he loves. Killing him now would feel less like a gut punch and more like narrative whiplash.

And yet Tom Holland himself keeps leaving the door slightly ajar, having mentioned more than once that he'd like to retire the mask before he's "too old" for it and eventually pass Spider-Man on to someone new. That doesn't automatically mean Peter is doomed in Doomsday specifically, killing him off this abruptly, with another solo film reportedly still in the pipeline, would be a strange way to do it, but the possibility no longer feels like pure clickbait, either. If Marvel wants to deliver a genuine shock ahead of Secret Wars, sacrificing its most beloved hero is about as loud as it gets.

Likelihood: Low, but no longer zero.

Cyclops: A goodbye dressed up as a comeback?

James Marsden finally gets to wear the comic-accurate suit that fans have been begging for since the original X-Men trilogy butchered his colour scheme, and that's precisely what makes him nervous-making to root for. Marvel Studios is already laying groundwork for its own, presumably younger, MCU version of the X-Men, which means the returning Fox-era cast may not be here to stay so much as here to say farewell.

A last, glorious charge into battle, optic blasts and all, followed by a death that clears the runway for a new Scott Summers down the line, would be exactly the kind of bittersweet send-off Marvel loves to engineer.

Likelihood: High.

Magneto: The most complete character arc walks straight into the sacrifice zone

If any legacy character's story feels genuinely, satisfyingly finished, it's Ian McKellen's Magneto. He's played the villain. He's played the revolutionary. He's played the reluctant ally. There isn't much narrative real estate left to explore that hasn't already been mapped, which is exactly the problem, or the opportunity, depending on how you look at it.

A final act of sacrifice, whether to save mutantkind or the multiverse itself, would cap off one of superhero cinema's richest character journeys with the kind of ending writers dream about. Of all the returning Fox heroes, Magneto arguably has the cleanest, most emotionally resonant exit available to him.

Likelihood: Very high.

Sam Wilson's Captain America: New to the job, and that's exactly the danger

Sam Wilson has only recently picked up the shield, which would normally suggest he's too fresh a character to lose. Instead, it makes him one of the more exposed figures on the roster. Unlike Steve Rogers, Sam isn't running around with super-soldier strength backing him up, he's leading the Avengers through sheer nerve and conviction rather than enhanced physiology.

A heroic death in the act of protecting the team wouldn't just be tragic; it would instantly cement his legacy as Captain America rather than leaving him to spend years being compared to his predecessor. It would also send an unmistakable message that Doctor Doom is a threat nobody in this universe gets to shrug off.

Likelihood: Very high.

Bucky Barnes: When redemption comes with an invoice

Bucky has already completed one of the MCU's most fully realized redemption arcs, and that's rarely a safe place for a character to be sitting when the credits are still a long way off. He's escaped Hydra's programming, made a fragile peace with his past, and spent real screen time helping Sam step into the role of Captain America.

Characters who've reached that kind of emotional closure have a funny habit of becoming prime sacrifice material — narratively, their story is "done," which frees Marvel up to spend it. If Bucky dies protecting Sam, or even Steve, should Chris Evans return as some multiversal variant, it would function as the final, poetic beat in his long transformation from Winter Soldier to genuine hero.

Likelihood: High.

Loki: He always comes back... doesn't he?

If Marvel has drilled one lesson into audiences over the years, it's to never fully trust a Loki death. He's died. He's returned. He's died again, for good measure, then spun up an entirely new version of himself to keep the timeline interesting. Now he's literally holding the multiverse together with his bare hands.

That history cuts both ways. On one hand, audiences have been trained to expect Loki to wriggle out of anything, which blunts the emotional impact of yet another apparent death. On the other hand, that exact expectation might be why Marvel finally pulls the trigger for real, because for the first time in his very long, very complicated life, Loki has something genuinely worth dying for.

Likelihood: Medium.

Thor: The last original Avenger left standing

Chris Hemsworth's Thor is one of the final remaining threads tying the current MCU back to Phase One, which makes him both enormously valuable and enormously exposed. Early Doomsday footage reportedly shows him back in leader mode, serious, battle-scarred, and rallying the troops against Doctor Doom in a way that feels distinctly like a character being set up for one last stand.

If Marvel wants to land an emotional gut punch without touching any of its newer, still-being-built-up characters, Thor is one of the strongest, most efficient candidates available.

Likelihood: High.

The heroes who can probably breathe easy

Not everyone on the call sheet should be sweating. A few characters simply have too much unfinished business to be plausible casualties this time around:

• Yelena Belova, freshly promoted to one of Marvel's leading faces after Thunderbolts

• Shang-Chi, whose Ten Rings mystery still hasn't been cracked open

• Reed Richards, who's barely finished unpacking boxes in the MCU with the Fantastic Four

• Scarlet Witch, whose eventual return feels far more inevitable than her death ever did

Marvel doesn't typically spend years building a character up just to torch that investment the moment it starts paying off.

So who's actually on the chopping block?

If Avengers: Doomsday is chasing the kind of gut-wrenching, Infinity War-level gravity Marvel clearly wants critics to compare it to, the strongest candidates for the axe are Magneto, Sam Wilson, Bucky Barnes, Thor, and Cyclops — a mix of complete arcs, structural farewells, and characters whose deaths would actually reshape what comes next.

Spider-Man remains the film's true wildcard. Tom Holland's own comments about eventually retiring the role mean fans can no longer laugh the theory off completely, but with Brand New Day still actively expanding Peter's corner of the universe, the smart money says Marvel is saving his big goodbye for a much later, much bigger occasion.

So, if Doomsday is really about closing one era of the MCU to make room for the next, don't expect the film to say farewell to its newest recruits. Expect it to say goodbye to the legends who've been carrying this franchise for over a decade.