Chris Evans swears he's not coming back to the MCU, like we're stupid or something

Back in December of last year, The Wrap reported that Chris Evans had accepted The World's Most Predictable Job Offer, i.e., a return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where everybody likes him, and nobody makes him hack computers to stop snow witches from murdering Santa Claus or whatever. The report stated that Evans, who previously sort of returned to the MCU in last summer's Deadpool & Wolverine—albeit not as Steve "Captain America" Rogers—would be back for Avengers: Doomsday, which is also expected to focus on his old co-worker Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom. Evans didn't say anything at the time in response to the reports, but he's now made a public statement explicitly denying that return engagement. Y'know, like we're all a bunch of assholes, or something.

Sorry, sorry. It's just, we've been burned before—remember when Andrew Garfield lied like a dog for months about rumors that he was going to play Spider-Man again? Fool us once, handsome men who play superheroes, etc. For what it's worth, Evans is at least giving the public the same line he apparently gave long-time co-worker Anthony Mackie when he very understandably asked about this stuff , i.e., that he's "happily retired" from the part. The Mackie thing (which is discussed at some length in the Esquire profile this all stems from) complicates any sort of return, of course: Mackie's set to headline a new Captain America movie in two weeks, and that gets a lot more messy if Marvel fans are expecting the company to complete the reverse course that Downey's re-casting seemed to suggest, backing away from an effort to build a new generation of heroes and just going with The Guys Who Worked Before.

The whole thing does present a fun little Prisoner's Dilemma of sorts, where either Evans is lying to Mackie and the public, or Mackie and Evans are lying to all of us together. Nobody's reportedly seen a script for Doomsday, which is being directed by fellow self-tribute act Joe and Anthony Russo, so presumably any totally certain knowledge of whether Evans is actually coming back is confined to a very small number of brains. It's one of those situations where, whether he was coming back or not, Evans would say the exact same thing, which means he might as well not have opened his mouth, but he totally did, because apparently he thinks we're all a bunch of stupid pieces of shit who just fell off the goddamn turnip truck sorry, no, sorry, we're still just kind of mad.

Anyway: Chris Evans says he's not coming back as Captain America! We believe him! Why would he possibly lie!