Hall H is engineered for noise, but Saturday afternoon it hit a pitch San Diego has not managed in a couple of years. Marvel Studios had one hour, a room holding roughly 6,500 people, and a slate that badly needed a jolt. Kevin Feige used that hour to hand over two casting reveals fans will argue about straight through to 2028 — and neither of them was the one the rumor mill had been promising all week.
Start with the one that broke the room. Ghost Rider is coming back as a standalone Marvel Studios film, and the Rider is Johnny Blaze (Ryan Gosling). Feige put the logo up on screen, Gosling walked out, and by every account from inside the hall it was the loudest the crowd got all hour. “As you know, this is a character I’ve wanted to play for a very long time,” Gosling said — which lands as a wink at roughly a decade of fan-casting that finally stopped being a joke. Shawn Levy directs, and Feige framed that choice without much diplomacy: “Only one director we had in mind for it, only one director who could do it.” The film is penciled in for 2028, no month attached.
Two things are worth being straight about, because coverage is already blurring them. There was no footage. Marvel showed a logo and a movie star, and that is the entire visual record, so anyone describing Gosling’s Rider on screen is describing something that does not exist yet. Second, while most outlets have run with Johnny Blaze, at least one careful report noted that nobody on that stage actually said the name out loud, which leaves a narrow opening for Danny Ketch or a version we have not met. Warning beyond this point there are spoilers for Marvel’s Phase Six slate and for the Hall H-only “Avengers: Doomsday” footage that has not been released online.
Marvel Studios had one hour, a room holding roughly 6,500 people, and a slate that badly needed a jolt.”
The Gosling and Levy pairing is not a coincidence, and that is the detail we keep chewing on. The two are already deep into “Star Wars: Starfighter,” due May 28, 2027, and Levy has spent that press cycle talking about Gosling the way directors talk about actors they intend to keep working with — he called him “the absolute shit” and signed off on the Ghost Rider news with “let’s ride.” Levy also made “Deadpool and Wolverine” function as a legacy-character juggling act without the whole thing collapsing into fan service, which is close to the exact skill a Ghost Rider film needs. This is a character who arrives pre-loaded with a demon, a motorcycle, a soul debt, and about forty years of continuity nobody agrees on.
It also matters because Ghost Rider has been Marvel’s most reliable near-miss. Nicolas Cage took two swings at Blaze in 2007 and 2011, and the kindest thing to say is that the second one has a cult. Robbie Reyes (Gabriel Luna) showed up in “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” and was, genuinely, the best thing in that stretch of the show — then a Hulu series built around him was announced and scrapped before a frame was shot. The character keeps getting cast well and served badly. Handing him to an A-list actor who asked for the job, with a director coming off the biggest swing of his career, is the first time the setup has looked right.
Then Ryan Coogler walked out, and the panel changed temperature entirely. Coogler confirmed he is writing and directing a third “Black Panther,” closing his trilogy, and introduced David Jonsson as the new Black Panther — T’Challa II (David Jonsson), also called Prince Toussaint, the son introduced as an infant in the closing minutes of “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” and now aged up into a young man. The film opens December 15, 2028, theatrical exclusive. Shuri (Letitia Wright) and M’Baku (Winston Duke) were both on stage. Denzel Washington is joining the cast in his MCU debut, role undisclosed. And Coogler is shooting it on 70mm, which Marvel is calling a first for the studio.
Coogler described the plan simply. “The last time we got to make a movie, we introduced a character who is the son of the character that the great Chadwick Boseman played, our T’Challa. In this next film, he grows up, he comes of age.” Asked before the con whether the project was real, he gave the least evasive non-denial of the weekend: “If it was anybody but you, I would say, I can neither confirm or deny. But we’re working on it hard. Yeah, it’s the next movie.”
Jonsson kept his own introduction short, and you could hear why. “Thank you to this amazing family that I have the honor and the privilege and the blessing to join. I actually don’t want to say too much because I want to let this screen do the talking.” That is a young actor stepping into a role that is not just iconic but grieved over, and the room seemed to understand the difference. Wright, for her part, said the casting news “was really beautiful to hear because I have a personal connection to David.”
Here is the honest read on that. Recasting T’Challa was never going to happen and Marvel knew it, so the studio spent “Wakanda Forever” quietly building an exit ramp — a son, a name, a bloodline that lets the mantle move forward without anyone pretending Boseman is replaceable. Four years later they are walking down it. Whether that reads as respectful or as a long-game corporate hedge probably depends on how the first trailer handles the father. Coogler has earned the benefit of the doubt on tone more than almost anyone at that studio.
The rest of the hour was dense. Marvel screened a Hall H trailer for “Avengers: Doomsday,” out December 18, 2026, and this is the part to be careful with, because it has not gone online — attendees saw Victor Von Doom (Robert Downey Jr.) on a throne, Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) laying out his history, Doom disarming Thor, and an army of Sentinels rising, with Doom delivering the line “All of you have lived stolen lives.” Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal and Downey were all on the stage. Hayley Atwell was confirmed to appear in the film, though nobody would say as what. If you go looking for that trailer today, you will not find it.
Alongside it: “Avengers: Endgame” returns to theaters in an Encore run starting September 25, 2026, with a trailer that ends by pointing straight at ‘Doomsday.’ Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) crashed the panel in a new grey-and-black suit and joked about turning up in that film, which is a joke and nothing more until Marvel says otherwise. A “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” clip played — Spidey against the Hulk — with Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) on stage, and that film is only days out on July 31. “VisionQuest” hits Disney+ on October 14, and Feige framed it as the close of the Wanda trilogy that ran through “WandaVision” and “Agatha All Along.” New Fantastic Four footage dug into the team’s history with Doom, Sue explaining that “everything he loved was taken from him.” H.E.R.B.I.E. came out on stage. Every person in the hall went home with a Doctor Doom mask and cloak.
And still, the loudest thing about the panel might be what was missing. No “Avengers: Secret Wars” update. No X-Men. The entire week leading into the con ran on a rumor storm about the reboot’s cast, with names like Adam Driver and Patrick Wilson and Millie Bobby Brown getting attached to roles — none of it confirmed by anybody, and Feige had already publicly deflated the biggest piece of it days earlier, acknowledging Marvel approached Driver and that he passed. Fans went into Hall H expecting the mutants. They got a flaming skull and a new king’s son instead, which is a hell of a consolation prize, but it does raise the question of what Marvel is waiting for. Our read is that the X-Men reveal is being saved for a room Marvel controls completely, and that the studio learned something from watching a rumor cycle write its announcement for it.
Two 2028 tentpoles, two casting swings that actually generated goodwill, and a Phase Six calendar that suddenly looks intentional instead of improvised. Marvel has not had a Comic-Con like this since Feige stood on that stage and rattled off Phase Four. Now they have to make the movies.
What Do You Think? Is Shawn Levy the right filmmaker to finally crack Ghost Rider, or does a character this bleak need someone with a much darker instinct behind the camera? Does introducing Toussaint as an adult only four years after “Wakanda Forever” feel like the natural close to Coogler’s trilogy, or is it too fast a jump for a character we met as a child? And what do you make of Marvel sitting on the X-Men reveal after a week of leaks — strategic patience, or a studio that got spooked and pulled the announcement?
See you on the next binge!
