There's no Thunderbolts 2 on Marvel's release schedule — but the New Avengers introduced at the end of Thunderbolts* are about to anchor the biggest team-up movie in MCU history. Kevin Feige's structural choice is finally clear.
When Thunderbolts* ended in 2025 with Sam Wilson's Avengers absorbing Yelena Belova, Bucky Barnes, John Walker, Ghost, Red Guardian, and Bob into a new collective branded the New Avengers, fans assumed a direct sequel would follow within Phase 6. It hasn't materialized on Marvel's announced slate, and recent comments from Sebastian Stan and Kevin Feige have confirmed why: the Thunderbolts sequel is functionally Avengers: Doomsday.
The structural logic is sharper than it first appears. Marvel Studios spent Phase 4 and Phase 5 setting up multiple disconnected team configurations — Sam Wilson's Avengers, the Young Avengers cohort, the X-Men variants, the Fantastic Four — without a clear unifying mechanism. Doomsday resolves this by force: Robert Downey Jr.'s Doctor Doom is the existential threat that requires every team to combine, and the New Avengers from Thunderbolts* are the dramatic continuity bridge connecting Sam Wilson's Avengers (their parent organization) to the multiverse-displaced groups arriving for the final confrontation.
This narrative pivot lets Marvel skip the traditional sequel-then-team-up structure. Rather than spending an entire Thunderbolts 2 on internal team dynamics before joining the broader story, the New Avengers' arc continues directly inside Doomsday's ensemble — getting more screen-time as a unit than a 130-minute standalone could provide, while also benefiting from being adjacent to every other major MCU character.
Sebastian Stan and Florence Pugh have both publicly described their Doomsday participation as a direct emotional continuation of their Thunderbolts* arc rather than a fresh ensemble role. Stan told The Direct earlier this year that the Bucky Barnes material in Doomsday is "essentially what Thunderbolts 2 would have been, except now we're in the same room as everyone else."
The broader Phase 6 consequence is significant. With the New Avengers stitched into Doomsday, the post-Secret Wars MCU can reset team compositions cleanly. The pattern mirrors the late Infinity Saga, when individual hero arcs paused for ensemble events. Whether a true Thunderbolts 2 ever materializes depends on which characters survive Avengers: Secret Wars (December 2027) and how Marvel positions the post-multiverse landscape.
For complete franchise positioning, see our MCU Phase 6 Roadmap and Marvel Villains On Screen pillars. Thunderbolts* remains the most direct narrative on-ramp to Doomsday — fans skipping it ahead of December will miss roughly half the emotional foundation for the New Avengers' role in the team-up.