Anthony Mackie’s Captain America Confirmed for Avengers: Doomsday and Secret Wars

Anthony Mackie’s Captain America is set to take wing in the next two Avengers movies. The Captain America: Brave New World star confirmed in a new interview that he will be reprising his role as Sam Wilson, who took up the mantle of the star-spangled hero from Chris Evans’ retired Steve Rogers in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, in Marvel’s Multiverse Saga finale of Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars. (Evans, meanwhile, has refuted reports that he’s unretiring Rogers.)

“You have the two Avengers movies, you have hopefully another Captain America [movie], and then random plug-and-plays,” Mackie, 46, told Esquire, adding he expects to wield the shield for “a solid ten years.”

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Mackie has been part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe since 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, when he flew onto the scene as a former U.S. Air Force para-rescue who donned a winged jet-pack suit as the Falcon.

After reprising the role in 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, and 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War and 2019’s Endgame, Mackie figures his character can pop up in other superhero’s films across the cinematic universe. After all, one of those “plug-and-plays” was in 2015’s Ant-Man, where Mackie made a cameo appearance.

“‘Oh, Spider-Man! Oh, Fantastic Four! What are you doing here?’” Mackie said. “But you never know. I mean, I don’t want to be a sixty-year-old Captain America.”

Mackie’s Cap debuted in the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, his first time headlining a Marvel Studios project. As for the much-anticipated followup to the 2021 series, Brave New World is “literally the best movie it can be,” Mackie told Esquire. “It says in the lines of Marvel. It stays in the lines of Captain America, and it’s fun and it’s big.”

The Hulk-sized Captain America fourquel features a new Falcon (Danny Ramirez’s Joaquin Torres), a new Hulk (Harrison Ford’s U.S. President Thaddeus Ross/Red Hulk), and a new (former) Black Widow (Shira Haas’ Ruth Bat-Seraph), all in the mix with an old villain not seen since his proto-origin story in 2008’s The Incredible Hulk: Samuel Sterns, a.k.a. the Leader (Tim Blake Nelson). In the new movie, “Sam finds himself in the middle of an international incident after meeting with newly elected U.S. President Thaddeus Ross. He must discover the reason behind a nefarious global plot before the true mastermind has the entire world seeing red,” per the synopsis.

As the penultimate chapter of the MCU’s Phase 5, Brave New World will be followed by anti-hero ensemble Thunderbolts* (May 2). The Fantastic Four: First Steps (July 25) kicks off Phase 6, which so far includes Avengers: Doomsday (May 1, 2026), the untitled Spider-Man 4 (July 24, 2026), and Avengers: Secret Wars (May 7, 2027).

Plot details are being kept under wraps, but Mackie is now confirmed to appear in the pair of Avengers sequels alongside Robert Downey Jr.’s villainous Doctor Doom and Benedict Cumerbatch’s Doctor Strange. Anthony and Joe Russo are directing Avengers 5 and 6, reuniting with Mackie with the filmmakers who introduced Falcon more than a decade ago before passing him the shield in Endgame.

“What you don’t want is Infinity War and Endgame 2.0,” Mackie said of the Avengers sequels. But under the Russo brothers, “The Russos, they’re so smart, and they have such a hold on this universe and the history and the comic books that I know they have an idea. I mean, they better have an idea. I don’t know how you put all those people onscreen together and make it work.”

Added Anthony Russo of Mackie’s Captain America, “He represents a unique space in the Avengers spectrum. And that’s the greatest thing, because sooner or later the collective storytelling is going to be in that space he occupies.” In other words: it’s a brave new world.

Captain America: Brave New World is only in theaters on Feb. 14.