Entertainment
Major Avengers: Endgame spoilers ahead. Somehow, the fourth Avengers movie was an even grander, more sprawling event than we had already expected. As the universe tries (rather unsuccessfully) to move on from Thanos's snap, some of the Avengers aren't quite ready to. So when Scott Lang shows up with a potential fix, it's all hands on deck. Because of their very strategic time-traveling, the final battle, and the funeral we hoped we wouldn't have to see, Endgame is packed with cameos from MCU stars past and present, plus a few adjacent individuals. Keeping up with them was a nearly impossible task, so we recapped them for you.
For the purposes of this list, we're not including any people who we saw turn into dust in Infinity War and come back to the world as we know it in Endgame. We knew they'd make it back somehow, so they don't count. Instead, we're focusing on those surprise (in some cases) appearances by characters who we thought we'd left behind long ago or who weren't directly involved in the main action of Endgame. (Those cross-fandom nods get a shoutout too.) So here are the 29 most noteworthy cameos in the MCU's 3-hour magnum opus — did you catch them all?
2
Ken Jeong
Directors Joe and Anthony Russo directed several episode of the sitcom Community, which has resulted in some crossover with the MCU. Ken Jeong, who plays Chang on the comedy, shows up as the security guard who lets Scott out of the security cage once he finally escapes from the Quantum Realm.
3
Joe Russo
Speaking of the director brothers, that's Joe Russo in the post-Snap support group that Cap runs. (We stan a man who doesn't bottle up his emotions.)
5
Tessa Thompson
Tessa Thompson's reformed Thor: Ragnarok character ends up running New Asgard as "king" after Thor steps down.
6
Taika Waititi
The third Thor movie's director is back as the voice of Korg, who's living (happily) in squalor with Thor and his tiny pal Miek.
7
Tilda Swinton
While the Time Stone was in the Sanctum Sanctorum in 2012, Doctor Strange was not. So Bruce has to convince the Ancient One to hand it over.
8
Tom Hiddleston
Is he ever gone for long? Loki is back in the game at two points: getting his ass handed to him by the Avengers during the Battle of New York and sitting in his cell during the action of Thor: The Dark World.
9
Natalie Portman
Thor's sob story about his lost love turned out to be a precursor to a rare Jane Foster appearance. Blink and you'll miss it, but Portman made her triumphant return to the MCU.
10
Rene Russo
Thor misses out on seeing Jane, but he does get one last chat with his ill-fated mother, who tells him (kindly) to get it together.
11
Robert Redford
The undercover HYDRA agent doesn't appear chronologically until Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but Endgame establishes that he was waiting in the lobby of Stark Tower in The Avengers, waiting to receive the Tesseract.
12
William Hurt
William Hurt's former military man Thaddeus Ross dates all the way back to The Incredible Hulk and came to pay his respects at Tony's funeral.
13
Frank Grillo
Brock Rumlow, a.k.a. Crossbones, is still the worst. The juiced-up HYDRA agent once again gets what's coming to him in an elevator.
14
Maximiliano Hernández
Double agent Jasper Sitwell shows up again and gets got by Captain America from the future with a strategic "Hail, Hydra."
15
Stan Lee
In what's thought to be his last MCU cameo ever, the late Stan Lee plays a long-haired hippy during Tony and Steve's trip back to 1970.
16
Yvette Nicole Brown
Brown plays the suspicious woman in the base elevator, bringing the movie's Community cameo count to two.
17
John Slattery
Tony accidentally runs into his dad at the army base and they have a conversation about legacy and raising children that resolves some of their issues — at least for Tony.
18
Hayley Atwell
We all saw it coming, but it still seems that Steve wasn't prepared. He gets a glimpse of his first love Peggy Carter through a window at the base... and then happily returns to her arms to live out his life after putting the stones back in time, where they came from.
19
James D'Arcy
Fans of the much too short-lived series Agent Carter have to be delighted to see D'Arcy's version of Javis. (In one of those "just go with it" moments, he and Atwell look almost exactly the same as back in those days, while Dominic Cooper has morphed into Slattery.)
20
Michael Douglas
That miraculous Marvel de-aging tech works a treat on Hank Pym, also in the 1970 S.H.I.E.L.D. sequence.
21
Ross Marquand
The Walking Dead actor took over Red Skull duties from Hugo Weaving back in Infinity War. He's guarding the Soul Stone back in 2014, and has to deliver the same ultimatum to Clint and Nat that he did to Thanos and Gamora.
22
Jon Favreau
Tony's right-hand-man is there for him as usual — and in the end, for Tony and Pepper's daughter Morgan as well.
23
Tom Vaughan-Lawlor
Ebony Maw, one of the three most high-ranking members of Thanos's Black Order, was killed off in Infinity War but is alive in the past.
24
Angela Bassett
It wasn't clear at the end of Infinity War whether or not T'Challa's mother fell victim to the snap. I guess it still isn't, technically, but she does accompany her children to the funeral.
26
Benedict Wong
Doctor Strange's colleague Wong leads a platoon of sorcerer's into battle and still has time to toss off a quip.
27
Marisa Tomei
Of course, Peter's Aunt May would be there to stand beside him at his mentor's funeral.
28
Jacob Batalon
And Peter's best friend Ned is there to welcome him back to school with open arms. Though...if five years have passed, why are they both still there? Do people age after they're snapped? Did Ned get snapped too, therefore keeping them at the same year? If so, is half of their class already most of the way through college? So many questions for Spider-Man: Far From Home to answer... or, more likely, ignore.
29
Ty Simpkins
Were you confused by that young man standing alone at Tony's funeral? Shave some years off of him and his presence makes a lot more sense. Simpkins reprises his role from Iron Man 3, where he played Harley Keener, who becomes Tony's unlikely sidekick. (And probably represents, sniff sniff, the first time Tony thought seriously about actually having a kid.)
Though we're losing some of the core team, the MCU is wide and varied, and Endgame doesn't want you to forget just how rich this world is.