If it was a secret that Nick Fury is returning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Samuel L. Jackson has let the Flerken out of the bag.

Speaking briefly to Jeff Ewing of The Direct at a premiere for The Beast, Jackson confided that Nick Fury will be back…soonish. Jackson told Ewing that he wouldn’t be in Avengers: Doomsday, the next Marvel movie, due out this December.

He will, he said, be in “Next movie… [The] movie after this one.” The one after Doomsday is Avengers: Secret Wars, which will be out December 17th, 2027. It will continue the story that will surely be hung up on a cliff at the end of Doomsday.  Anthony and Joe Russo, who directed Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, and Avengers movies Infinity War and Endgame, will direct both of the new films.

As to what Nick Fury will be doing in “the next one,” Jackson told The Direct, “I have no idea. [Marvel] hasn’t told me anything, other than, ‘You’re not gonna be in this movie. You’ll be in the next.'”

Secret Wars was a Marvel story first published in several issues running from 1984-1985. Marvel also published a Secret Wars story in 2004-2005 and 2015-2016.

A cosmic entity, the Beyonder, becomes fascinated with Earth’s superheroes in the mainstream Marvel universe. He creates “Battleworld,” a planet in a distant galaxy, and stocks it with weapons and technology. He teleports groups of heroes and supervillains against their will to Battleworld, to combat each other.

2015’s Secret Wars story is similar, but in this one, an inter-dimensional “incursion”, of the Marvel 616 Universe with the Ultimate Marvel 1610 Universe; which destroys both. Pieces of the two universes are mysteriously saved and combined with other post-collision universes, creating the “Battleworld,” and Doctor Doom is a key figure in this universe. Nick Fury, who organized a resistance force in the 2023 Marvel series Secret Invasion, could serve the same function in Secret Wars, though his character was not a part of the comic series. Nick Fury was last seen in 2023’s The Marvels.

It’s important to remember that Marvel has not yet officially announced that Fury is returning from his MCU hiatus in Secret Wars or any other project, and we can only speculate on what his story might entail.

But we can say with certainty that Avengers: Doomsday, featuring Robert Downey Jr. as the title villain, is due in theaters on December 18th, 2026.