By 
When it comes to year-end celebrations, holidays like Christmas provide a fairly clear script. One is supposed to gather together with family, sip egg nog, and watch Christmas Vacation and/or It’s a Wonderful Life for the 67th time. New Year’s, bless it, is a bit more anarchic.
We’re all welcome to celebrate the twin billing of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day in whichever manner that we see fit. For some of us that means hitting the bars. For others, it’s all about cuddling up on the couch and watching football before the ball drops. Here at Den of Geek, however, we’ve decided to consign 2025 to hell the only know we know how: by tying it all back into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Since we know how we’ll be spending the end of next year thanks to Avengers: Doomsday‘s Dec. 18 release, let’s take a moment at the end of this one to fantasize about which Marvel characters present the best New Year’s hang.
Doctor Strange
I’m not really into New Year’s Eve as a concept, and I’m pretty confident that Stephen Strange feels the same way. The man’s grumpy about a whole lot of things, so I can’t imagine New Year’s Eve is any different. Still, I reckon he’d be a good person to spend it with, despite the sarcastic eye rolls he’d give any celebratory countdowns or “new year, new me!” speeches. He’d at least be honest about the year’s triumphs and mistakes.
Location-wise, the Sanctum Sanctorum also has some nice party vibes, with its open foyer, roaring fireplace, and fascinating ancient trinkets to explore. But even if it sucked, Strange could just open a portal to anywhere, and we could head off there quicker than you can say “the whirling winds of Watoomb.” Plus, time would be on his side. If we got bored with one place, he could just rewind things with the Time Stone so we could experience New Year’s somewhere new. Imagine jumping through endless sparkle circles to different parties in different dimensions where midnight never comes. – Kirsten Howard
Steve Rogers
Let’s face it, if the past year hasn’t been so great for you— and, if we’re honest, that’s most of us lately — New Year’s Eve can be kind of a downer. Yay, let’s celebrate the end of 12 months that have punched us all repeatedly in the face! Cheers! We’re definitely looking forward to a chance to do that all over again with a new date on the calendar. (Narrator voice: We’re so not.) But you know who probably is? Steve Rogers. And, maybe, given… well, everything, it really is time to call in the big guns for some help this year. (He’s back for Avengers: Doomsday after all.)
Need a reminder that you are still a good person, no matter how many times you failed last year? Steve’s got you. A heartfelt ode to believing in yourself? He’s on it. A motivational speech about picking yourself back up after a failure? He can do this all day. Plus, you just know his ideal New Year’s Eve plans are super cozy and traditional — and if you’ve got to watch the zombified corpse of Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with anybody, it might as well be someone who looks like Chris Evans. — Lacy Baugher
Darcy Lewis
Don’t let her astrophysics expertise fool you, Dr. Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings) knows how to party. While the MCU movies establish Darcy as a valued friend to Jane Foster and a steadfast ally to Thor Odinson, Marvel TV offering What If…? reveals her rager bona fides. Thanks to the aptly named Party Thor, Darcy Lewis parties so hard, in fact, that she gets hitched to Howard the Duck, eventually giving birth to (or hatching??) their son Byrdie.
But where does New Year’s Eve factor into all of this? Look, Kat Dennings is very attractive and I want what she and that duck have. Is that what you wanted to hear? Are you satisfied that you made me admit it? I, Alec George Bojalad, am jealous of a fictional water fowl and I want to elbow in on his New Year’s Eve plans with his beautiful human bride. Happy now??? – Alec Bojalad
Luis
New Year’s is a time to look forward to the future, but it’s also a time to look back and celebrate the past year. And when it comes to recapping past events, no one in the MCU does it better than Scott Lang’s best pal, Luis. Played with delightful energy by Michael Peña in Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp, Luis has an eye for detail and a gift for storytelling, which managed to turn conversations between random people into the stuff of legend.
Just imagine what Luis could do recapping even the mundane parts of my life? He would make my frustration while watching Star Trek: Section 31 sound like an epic struggle. According to Luis’ narration, reading issues of Absolute Wonder Woman would be akin to pouring through some ancient tome. Even my New Year’s Eve celebrations—which usually consists of watching a hockey game and going to bed at 10 p.m. —would sound like the stuff of legend when Luis describes it. – Joe George
Rocket Raccoon
New Year’s Eve and Day are about many things: the past, the future, and if we’re being completely honest… the party. And we cannot imagine a better critter in the multiverse to throw down with than Bradley Cooper’s wisecracking Rocket. Tony Stark has got the money and toys for a swanky shindig, and Peter Parker the coolest off-the-wall parlor tricks this side of Fred Astaire, but Rocket is rocking the heart. Well that, plus a spaceship to go across the cosmos to the funner hives of scum and villainy this side of Tatooine.
Admittedly a bit moody at times, in a post-Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 context where Rocket is contented with leading the titular ragtag gang of multiple Han Solos (that now includes a cute talking Golden Retriever), we’re willing to bet the racoon is a lot mellower while still liking a good den of inequity to play cards, drink bubbly, and play an entirely safe and non-lethal prank at. He promises. Plus, he’s got all the best jams now courtesy of that Microsoft Zoom in his pocket. So make room, Nebula and Adam Warlock, we’re coming aboard! – David Crow
M’Baku
Do you know how hard it is to stand out as a performer in any given movie? Now think of how hard it is to pop off the screen in a film that also contains Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, and Angela-Freaking-Bassett. And yet, Winston Duke as M’Baku somehow doesn’t get swallowed up in all the star power in 2018’s Black Panther. In fact, he enhances it.
New Year’s Eve is a celebrity’s holiday. It’s the time of year to be seen out on the town, handing your expensive winter coat to a valet as you enter into an exclusive party. And when it’s time to shrug the $75 blue Eddie Bauer Men’s XXL off my shoulders, I want the Jabari tribe leader by my side. M’Baku is quite simply an elite hang. The man has humor, the man has swag, and most importantly: the man has stories. There’s a whole unheard history of Wakanda waiting to be told. Who better to tell it as we sip champagne and wait for the ball to drop than the current king of Wakanda? – AB
The post The Marvel Characters We Most Want to Spend New Year’s With appeared first on Den of Geek.
