An analysis of MCU character appearances since Endgame
After watching the Doomsday trailer yesterday, you might have found yourself in the same boat as me. I used to be an MCU superfan and the lead up to Infinity War was one of the most exciting times of my life. Post-Endgame, I've found myself not as obsessed, but still keeping up with most movies and shows that Marvel releases. Still, watching the Doomsday trailer, it felt anticlimactic and like I had missed something, even though I had watched 90% of what Marvel had put out in recent years. I hypothesized that maybe Doomsday was coming out too soon since the last big team up, and then realized I'm old and it's been 7 years since Endgame. There was only 6 years between Avengers and Infinity War. Then I thought about the confirmed cast list, how many times had we seen those characters since Endgame? The answer is, not a lot. But were there new big players that had been taking over all the screen time? Again, not really. I wanted a visual aide for this conundrum so I made some tables.
First up we have a table comparing all the characters that appeared in Infinity War and what films they appeared in post-Avengers. 2012 Not counting any post-credit scene appearances here.
Looking at the table, we can see that 82% of the characters had appeared once on the big screen between Avengers and Infinity War, and 61% had showed up twice or more. Tony Stark and Sam Wilson are tied for most appearances, but Sam's roles in Age of Ultron and Ant-Man are very small. But this shows us that we'd seen most of these characters before and a decent amount. The only characters we hadn't seen is the villain, his cronies, and a random Peter Dinklage character. We had even seen Red Skull before, but not post-Avengers so he's getting zero credits in this analysis. You'll notice a couple big names missing, like Hawkeye, Ant-Man, and Captain Marvel, but they didn't show up in Infinity War and I was trying to help out Doomsday, since doing this exercise up to Endgame would skew the data.
But speaking of Doomsday, let's hop over there. I based this off the official confirmed cast list from Marvel, and there are some notable absences that will probably show up anyways, but since we don't know for sure, they aren't on this list. I looked at all the movies that have come out since Endgame and here's what I got.
From first glance, there's obviously a lot more yellow here. Also notably no characters with 3 or more appearances, and only 4 with 2 appearances. And one of those characters with 2 is Johnny Storm, because I'm counting the Chris Evans in Deadpool & Wolverine because why the hell not. We have a similar number of characters that haven't been seen since Endgame or at all to our first analysis but I would consider these more major characters than villain's cronies whose names you won't ever remember. Even if I was counting all the X-Men movies as MCU, only Dark Phoenix came out after Endgame and that's prequel verse anyways.
At this point you might be saying, "But OP, since Endgame, Marvel has been more focused on Disney+ series than movies!" and to that I say "you're right!" let's see how that affects these numbers.
The answer is: barely. To keep the screenshot somewhat still readable, I only included series that I knew would affect these numbers and there are three; The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, and Hawkeye. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (or as my family calls it, the Sam and Bucky Show) bumps Bucky Barnes up to 3 appearances, and Sam Wilson, Joaquin Torres, and John Walker all up to 2. Hawkeye puts Yelena Belova at 3 and Loki puts Loki at 1. You could maybe count Loki seasons 1 and 2 as separate appearances but it doesn't save the count.
Fact of the matter is, Marvel stopped showing it's characters. We went from 12 films over 6 years that had over half of the characters appearing twice or more, to 16 films over 7 years plus a dozen TV shows and only 24% of characters show up twice or more. Of the 16 films that have been released since Endgame, 6 of them don't share any characters with the current Doomsday roster. There are 10 series with the same issue. To quote Keke Palmer, "I hate to say it and I hope I don't sound ridiculous, but I don't know who this man is." None of us do, Keke, none of us do.
A final fun fact to leave you with that I discovered when researching. The character that has had the most appearances since Endgame is Wong. He's not confirmed to be in Doomsday so he's not on the list, but Wong has had 3 film and 1 series appearance. They are Shang-Chi, No Way Home, Multiverse of Madness, and She-Hulk. So get that bag Benedict Wong, we love to see it.
