With Avengers, X-Men, Fantastic Four members and Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom all sharing one movie, Avengers: Doomsday has an obvious problem: who does the audience actually follow through all that chaos?
Marvel may have found its answer in Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova.
A new Vanity Fair profile of Pugh says Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige has indicated that Yelena will help anchor the sprawling story of Doomsday. The wording stops short of declaring her the movie’s single lead, but it is the strongest indication yet that Yelena will be much more than another hero in an enormous ensemble.
And considering where Marvel has taken the character since Black Widow, the choice makes considerably more sense than it might have a few years ago.
Thunderbolts turned Yelena into more than Natasha’s sister
Yelena entered the MCU in 2021’s Black Widow as Natasha Romanoff’s younger sister, immediately giving her a connection to one of the original Avengers.
But Marvel has gradually moved her beyond that relationship.
Hawkeye let Yelena confront Clint Barton over Natasha’s death while developing her dry, unpredictable chemistry with Kate Bishop. Then Thunderbolts placed her near the emotional center of a story about damaged people searching for purpose.
Marvel’s official synopsis describes Yelena among the group of disillusioned antiheroes forced to confront their pasts and eventually become something more. The movie ultimately repositioned the team as the New Avengers, giving Yelena a direct path into the next major crossover.
Pugh also had a considerable hand in defining the character herself. Looking back at Black Widow for Vanity Fair, she explained that Yelena initially felt flat until she experimented with the Russian accent, which opened up the character’s strange humor and sarcasm. Pugh said Marvel then gave her room to build Yelena’s oddities and timing.
That personality may become especially valuable in Doomsday, where the sheer number of characters could otherwise overwhelm the human story.
“Anchor” does not mean Yelena is an Anchor Being
There is an important distinction here.
Marvel fans now hear the word “anchor” and immediately think of the Anchor Being concept introduced in Deadpool & Wolverine—a person whose death causes their reality to deteriorate.
Nothing currently suggests Yelena is an Anchor Being.
The Vanity Fair description appears to use “anchor” in the storytelling sense: Yelena may provide a character perspective audiences can emotionally follow while the movie jumps among multiple teams and realities.
That could solve one of Doomsday’s biggest structural challenges.
Disney officially says the film will place heroes from three distinct universes on a deadly collision course. Its confirmed cast includes Pugh alongside Chris Hemsworth, Anthony Mackie, Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Tom Hiddleston, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, James Marsden, Sebastian Stan, Lewis Pullman and many more. Robert Downey Jr. plays Victor von Doom.
That is an enormous amount of mythology to manage.
Yelena gives the Russo brothers something much simpler: a relatively grounded character who has already experienced loss, found a new family and reluctantly become part of an Avengers team.
Marvel may finally have its post-Endgame emotional lead
The original Avengers movies always had multiple stars, but Tony Stark and Steve Rogers provided strong emotional through-lines through the Infinity Saga.
Marvel has struggled to establish an equally consistent center since Endgame. Several major characters have appeared only sporadically, while others operate in largely separate corners of the MCU.
Yelena is unusually well positioned between the old and new generations.
She is directly connected to Natasha and therefore to the original Avengers, but she was not actually part of the Infinity Saga’s climactic battles. She now leads into the New Avengers while entering a movie filled with characters from Marvel worlds she has never encountered.
That gives Doomsday a potentially useful perspective: the multiverse may be enormous, but Yelena can react to it like someone who did not spend the last decade dealing with alternate realities.
There is also evidence Marvel sees Pugh as part of its longer-term plans. Vanity Fair confirms that she is expected to return again in Avengers: Secret Wars after Doomsday.
So calling Yelena the definitive “main character” of Doomsday would go further than Marvel has officially announced.
But calling her important no longer goes far enough.
With Thunderbolts transforming Yelena from grieving assassin into New Avenger, Doomsday may now ask her to do something even bigger: give Marvel’s most crowded movie a human center.
Avengers: Doomsday opens exclusively in theaters on December 18, 2026.
