It Feels Like One Big Family

The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ Sue Storm actress, Vanessa Kirby, recently opened up about her feelings about joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe. She will make her franchise debut when the film opens on July 25, 2025, alongside Pedro Pascal, Joseph Quinn, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Natasha Lyonne, John Malkovich, Julia Gardner, and Ralph Ineson. The titular team will be facing the cosmic being Galactus in order to save their world from destruction. Both Kirby and the other members of the Fantastic Four are slated to return in Avengers: Doomsday.

Per @AvengersUpdated over on X, Kirby explained: “These people have known each other for 20 years and have worked together, grown these characters, and we’re the newbies. This is our establishing movie. Now we’re joining them as a family. It is literally… It feels like one big family. It feels like a theatre company.” Pascal then quipped: “Their 20 years has nothing on our six months. Nothing.”

Kirby’s statement that the MCU cast have been working together for 20 years isn’t quite accurate, but it’s not far off. The franchise started with Iron Man in 2008, which means the franchise is basically a teenager in 2025. Notably, the star of that film, Robert Downey Jr., is returning to the MCU not as a hero, but as the classic Fantastic Four villain Doctor Doom. Though he is not the primary villain of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, it is widely speculated that he will appear to set up the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday.

The actress mentioning joining a group of actors who have worked together for two decades lends itself to this idea. However, her comments could be in reference to the Fantastic Four featuring opposite the Avengers and the X-Men, whose franchise predates the MCU by almost a decade, in the next two Avengers films.

Given the MCU’s longevity, many actors have rotated in and out–Downey included. As such, Kirby’s comparison of the franchise and a theatre company is fitting. Not every character appears in every project, and its larger crossovers often feature only a subset of the MCU’s major players. That said, a large part of why it is still ongoing is the introduction of new heroes and villains every few productions. Kirby’s note that the Fantastic Four are latecomers to the family, yet they seem to fit right in, sets up a potentially fresh new group to shake up the existing team dynamics.