Marvel Rivals Season 10.5 Trades a New Hero for Two MCU Game Modes: Infinity War and Endgame

Tuesday, October 6, 2026 — Here is a sentence I never expected to write about a live-service hero shooter: the next season of Marvel Rivals has no new hero, and that might be the most exciting thing NetEase has done all year. In the latest Dev Vision video, creative director GuangGuang pulled back the curtain on Season 10.5, launching October 9, and it is built entirely around the next two chapters of the game's long-running Path to Doomsday event: full game modes based on Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.

This is a real pivot for a game that has treated its every-few-weeks hero drops as sacred ritual. Gorr the God Butcher joined with Season 10 ("Butcher's Blasphemy") on September 11, and the streak of two heroes per season was already broken — Season 10 had just the one. GuangGuang was quick to calm anyone worried this is the new normal — telling FandomWire that "a single-hero season isn't the new normal" and that the team "can't wait to unveil the two heroes coming in Season 11." But for now, the spotlight belongs to the modes, and honestly? Good. The hero treadmill was getting predictable.

Infinity War: twelve players, six stones, one very small arena

The first mode, Phase 3 of Path to Doomsday, goes live the moment Season 10.5 drops on October 9, and it is deliciously chaotic on paper. Twelve players split into six teams of two, picking from a roster of 13 playable heroes, then face off in round-robin 2v2 deathmatches across Wakanda. Losing a round drains your team's shared health, and once that health runs out, you're done — so every round matters from the first one.

Between rounds, players draft cards from a random pool to upgrade abilities and stats, letting you build your hero on the fly and even counter-build against specific opponents. It works a lot like the Age of Ultron mode's build system, and it's the kind of thing that rewards people who actually think between fights instead of just queuing up the next one.

Then there is the Infinity Stone hook, which is the part that could make this mode genuinely special. Every team gets one of the six Infinity Stones at the start of a match, each granting a unique gameplay bonus — and when you beat another team, you claim their Stone. Win enough and you are stacking Stones like a war criminal with a jewelry problem, getting more powerful with every scalp you take. The rich-get-richer snowball is obvious, and the balancing of it will make or break the mode, but as a fantasy? Collecting Infinity Stones by defeating your rivals is about as on-brand as game design gets.

Endgame: fifty players versus Thanos' army

Phase 4 lands October 22, and it is the bigger swing by a mile: a 50-player PvE mode set in the ruins of the Avengers Compound, where players take on Thanos' army directly. NetEase is calling it its most ambitious event yet, and the scale alone earns that — this is the first time Marvel Rivals has attempted anything close to a raid-sized cooperative experience.

GuangGuang said players will relive moments "from I am inevitable to I am Iron Man," which tells you exactly what kind of nostalgia trip this is aiming to be. Whether a hero-shooter combat sandbox can actually carry a scripted, cinematic PvE set piece is the open question. PvE in competitive hero shooters has a checkered history — everyone remembers the ambitious co-op modes that arrived half-baked — but if NetEase nails the spectacle, this could be the mode people talk about for years.

The road to Doomsday

Some context for anyone who hasn't been following the event saga: Path to Doomsday is Marvel Rivals' long-running live-event series building toward the theatrical release of Avengers: Doomsday on December 18. Phase 1 put six players up against a single player-controlled Loki. Phase 2, Age of Ultron, had teams of four fighting Ultron and his forces. Each phase has been a little bigger and a little weirder than the last, and the Infinity War and Endgame modes continue that escalation in a way that feels deliberate — this is NetEase warming up the player base for whatever the actual Doomsday tie-in looks like in December.

Season 10.5 also brings the usual seasonal trimmings: Halloween festivities, new cosmetics, two exclusive events, and interactive activities in Times Square. The Season 10 roadmap also had Luna Snow and Phoenix "Celestial Messenger" costumes dropping October 2, so the cosmetic pipeline is clearly not slowing down even without a hero to dress up.

Why this matters

Here's my honest take: skipping the hero is the smartest thing NetEase could have done. The live-service hero shooter playbook says you keep the content drip-feed going no matter what, and breaking from it to ship two genuinely ambitious experimental modes — a draft-based 2v2 deathmatch and a 50-player PvE raid — signals a studio that would rather swing big than ship safe. If the Infinity War mode's stone-collecting snowball is tuned well, it could become a permanent fixture. If the Endgame PvE lands, it opens the door to a whole cooperative future for the game.

Of course, the risk is real: no new hero means no new-hero hype cycle, and live-service games live and die on player retention between drops. But with Avengers: Doomsday two months out and the MCU nostalgia machine at full power, betting on event modes over roster padding looks less like a gamble and more like reading the room. Season 10.5 hits October 9 on PC and consoles. I'll see you in Wakanda.

For more on what's happening across the industry this week, check out this week's gaming roundup and our Marvel Rivals hub.