Ever since the end of Avengers: Endgame, Marvel fans have been desperate for Chris Evans’s Steve Rogers to return to the franchise. Any and all hints of a possible return have sent fans into a frenzy. None more so than in the past week.
Chris Evans arrived at the Toronto International Film Festival to promote his new film, Sacrifice. Dressed in a tight dark full-sleeved shirt, he greeted fans and media at the film’s world premiere. Photos and videos of him soon made the rounds of social media, with everyone noticing some interesting changes.
Chris Evans’ new look
I’m the last person to go around looking at people’s figures. Society’s collective obsession with people’s body shapes and sizes has done exactly no one any good. What I did notice was that Evans looked close to clean-shaven at the premiere, which is not how he usually grooms himself outside his roles, like that of Steve Rogers.
I didn’t notice what a lot of other people did, till every other post about his appearance pointed it out – Evans looked buff and chiseled, much like his Captain America physique. He generally looks leaner, and while his role in Sacrifice needed him to be fit, Evans isn’t quite as buff in the film as he looked at the premiere.
This has, therefore, set off a chain of questions with people wondering if Evans is working out for a return as Steve Rogers. He hasn’t said anything about it, but did in an interview in June that he wasn’t part of Avengers: Doomsday.
Fans have been heartbroken by that confirmation, and even more so after it had been confirmed, back in 2024, that Evans would be back as Captain America. Those reports were never corroborated by Marvel.
Marvel needs to make a change
Now, all this hoopla going on about how Chris Evans looked at TIFF has resurfaced hopes of Steve coming back. But we have to ask ourselves why. Why do people want Steve Rogers to return, when the character, and the actor, have said their farewells to the Marvel Cinematic Universe? He had his moments(s), over 15 years and 10+ films worth of them (cameos included). Steve retired, got married, and handed his shield over to his successor, and now we have a new Captain America, Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson.
Nostalgia plays a part in our wanting Steve Rogers and Tony Stark / Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) back. But, with Robert Downey Jr. returning, this time as Doctor Doom, to much fanfare, we need to question the optics of fans wanting the same actors back when more diverse characters aren’t being given the same chances. For the majority of Marvel fans, nostalgia only ever starts and ends with the white, male characters. The loudest voices aren’t clamoring for Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) or the cast of Eternals to get another go.
This is partly on Marvel Studios. By centering mostly white, and mostly male, characters at the start and height of the franchise, and then wrapping up that chapter of its storytelling by literally calling the finale Avengers: Endgame, they created a clear divide between before-Endgame and after. And, somehow, in the collective imaginations of fans, pre-Endgame was a time of perfect films, cohesive worldbuilding, and the only good characters that came out of the MCU.
Why we don’t need Steve Rogers
We haven’t given the post-Endgame properties and characters any opportunity to flourish. If one is poor, they’re all tarred and feathered as the worst. And, a reminder, all Phase 1-3 films were not beloved by viewers and critics, and there were many continuity issues in the storytelling then as well. But who wants to remember that when the new properties can be held to an impossible yardstick? And this, again, also falls on Marvel Studios and its boss, Kevin Feige, who appeared to make it about recent MCU properties in an interview.
Marvel hasn’t seemed to have a plan for a cohesive storyline in its Multiverse Saga, and the creators, and characters, many of whom are women and people of color, as well as the fans who finally feel seen, are paying the price. Anthony Mackie picked up the shield in 2019, but it took till 2025 for Captain America: Brave New World to hit screens. It was the first time he headlined his own film as Captain America. It didn’t do as well in the box office, but it hardly had a month’s spotlight before Daredevil: Born Again came out.
But truth is, I was at a press screening for Captain America: Brave New World, and people were writing it off before having even watched it. We need to give our new Captain America a chance. We don’t even know how much of the spotlight Sam Wilson will get in his next outing, considering in the cast announcement, Mackie’s name was third.
Sam Wilson is Captain America, and neither he, nor fans who like or look like him, need to keep looking over their shoulder wondering if he’ll be shunted aside for his white predecessor. All this conjecture about Evans means that instead of viewers focusing on how Sam Wilson is growing as Captain America in Doomsday, they’ll be looking everywhere for a surprise Rogers reveal.
None of this is to say we’d hate it if Steve showed up in future MCU films. Of course, we’d love to see Chris Evans and Steve Rogers in the MCU again. If one is a fan of the actor, the character, or both, there’s nothing more enjoyable than seeing our favorite hero back. But Marvel doing fanservice does not make for good entertainment. And always wanting the same kinds of people (read: straight, white male characters) over and over again, stagnates our imagination and shuts the door on representing the diversity of people and experiences that makes life, and the MCU, such an enduring franchise. The whole point of Endgame was to pass the baton to the next generation of Avengers. Steve Rogers did his job; now it’s Sam Wilson’s turn to save the universe.