Robert Downey Jr said the return of Rebecca Romijn and Kelsey Grammar to Avengers: Doomsday was a big moment for him at Comic-Con, calling their comeback one of the parts of the film that made the cast “nerd out.” Downey, who is playing Doctor Doom, said their presence “lit up this constellation of excitement” as the movie’s latest trailer played for Hall H attendees.
He was speaking as interest in X-Men was already high around the film, because the new Avengers title is the first part of a two-film finale and is pulling in some of Marvel’s most recognizable legacy names. Romijn is back as Mystique and Grammar returns as Beast, while Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, James Marsden, Alan Cumming and Channing Tatum are also among the returning X-Men stars attached to the project.
The timing matters because Marvel used Comic-Con to show an extended trailer that was not made public online, even as the first trailer released the week before drew complaints from some fans who called it disappointing. This second look landed differently with viewers in Hall H, who said it was much better, and the footage reportedly put the focus not only on Doctor Doom and the Fantastic Four but on the larger scale of the crossover around them.
That shift helps explain why Downey singled out Romijn and Grammar so strongly. A return like theirs is not just another casting note; it signals that Avengers: Doomsday is leaning hard into the old and new Marvel worlds at once, with the original X-Men era now sitting inside the biggest MCU event on the calendar. The film is due on 18 December, the same day as Dune: Part 3, and the real question now is how much of the returning X-Men roster will matter once the movie reaches theaters.
For Downey, though, the answer was already clear in the room at Comic-Con. “It was a big moment, you and Kelsey being back,” he said, and for a cast packed with familiar names, it was the kind of reaction that turned a trailer into a signal of how ambitious the film wants to be.
