Captain America: The First Avenger is the earliest MCU movie on Disney+’s official Avengers: Doomsday watch list and Marvel skipped Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, and Thor to get there. Vactor von Doom and MCU expert Tim Costello rewatch the 2011 film in 2026 and break down why Steve Rogers’ origin matters heading into Doomsday.

In this episode:
• Why Peggy Carter may be the reason this film made the list
• Alan Silvestri’s score and the Steve-and-Peggy musical cue that comes back in Endgame
• Chris Evans’ performance, the grenade scene, and Tommy Lee Jones as Colonel Phillips
• Hugo Weaving’s Red Skull and how the Super Soldier Serum amplifies who you already are
• The Howling Commandos, Howard Stark, and the first appearance of the Tesseract
• Three Captain Americas in Doomsday: Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson, and John Walker
• The silent teaser confirming Steve Rogers will return in Avengers: Doomsday

Before Doomsday is a This Comic Cooks podcast series reviewing every title on Marvel’s Countdown to Avengers: Doomsday list before the film opens December 18, 2026.

X2 might be more important to Avengers: Doomsday than you think.

For our second episode of Before Doomsday, Vactor and Tim Costello revisit X2: X-Men United — one of the most beloved superhero sequels ever made — and look at why this movie still matters more than 20 years later.

X2 took everything the first X-Men established and made it bigger. The world expanded, the action became more ambitious, and characters like Nightcrawler, Magneto, Wolverine, Cyclops, Jean Grey and Mystique all got major moments.

We also talk about:

• Why Nightcrawler's opening sequence still holds up
• Ian McKellen's incredible performance as Magneto
• The legendary Magneto prison-break scene
• Why X2 and X-Men (2000) feel like one big story
• The Weapon X storyline and Wolverine's growing popularity
• How X2 helped prove superhero team movies could become massive events
• The way superhero movies were becoming mainstream in the early 2000s
• Why X2 feels like a natural predecessor to the massive team-ups we're getting today
• Alan Cumming returning as Nightcrawler for Avengers: Doomsday after 23 years
• The return of the original Fox X-Men cast
• Why Avengers: Doomsday could be a love letter to the original X-Men universe
• And the surprising connection between X2's team-up and the massive crossover coming in Doomsday

In X2, the X-Men join forces with former enemies Magneto and Mystique to stop a threat bigger than all of them.

In Avengers: Doomsday, it looks like the Avengers, Fantastic Four, Thunderbolts and X-Men will have to do the same thing against Doctor Doom.

That's one hell of an escalation.

Next up: Captain America: The First Avenger.

Welcome to Before Doomsday, a This Comic Cooks series where we watch Marvel's essential movies (and a TV show) leading into Avengers: Doomsday, one film at a time.

#X2 #XMen #AvengersDoomsday #Marvel #BeforeDoomsday

Before the MCU, there was X-Men.

Released in 2000, X-Men helped prove that comic book movies could be taken seriously—and its impact can still be felt 26 years later. In this episode of Before Doomsday, Vactor and DoomsTim revisit the movie that introduced audiences to Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, Patrick Stewart's Professor X, Ian McKellen's Magneto, and an entire generation of X-Men characters.

We talk about why Marvel chose X-Men as the starting point for its Essential Viewing list before Avengers: Doomsday, how the movie helped launch the modern superhero movie era, why Wolverine became the center of the franchise, and why Cyclops deserved more to do.

We also look at what makes the movie's grounded approach work, its practical effects, the importance of the X-Men's mutant allegory, the first modern Stan Lee cameo tradition, and how much comic book filmmaking has changed since 2000.

And there's one huge reason to revisit X-Men now:

Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, James Marsden, and Rebecca Romijn are all returning for Avengers: Doomsday.

So 26 years after X-Men changed superhero movies, its stars are heading back to the big screen.

This is Before Doomsday, where we're watching Marvel's Essential Viewing movies one film at a time as we count down to Avengers: Doomsday.

Next up: X2: X-Men United.

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