Since 2021, Marvel Comics has published Timeless, an annual year-ending one-shot that reveals the future of the Marvel Universe. 2023’s Timeless #1 teased some of the seismic status quo shifts that would come to pass over the next 12 months: Tombstone took over as the new Kingpin of New York City’s criminal underworld (in Amazing Spider-Man). The X-Men’s founder, Professor Charles Xavier, was jailed for crimes against humanity and his mutant school turned into a mutant prison (in X-Men: From the Ashes). Johnny Blaze had his last ride and was replaced by a supervillain as the new Spirit of Vengeance (in Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance). Wall-crawler Miles Morales was turned into a vampire when Brooklyn’s Spider-Man was bitten during a vampiric invasion (in Blood Hunt). And Doctor Doom seized Doctor Strange’s powers as the new Sorcerer Supreme (in Blood Hunt).
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That’s 2024 so far. While we wait for the Bishop and Cable-fronted Timeslide #1 (out Dec. 25) to preview what Marvel Comics has in store for 2025 — like Emperor Doctor Doom’s reign over the Marvel Universe in One World Under Doom — it’s time to rewind and look back at the past year. Below, we’ve rounded up the biggest twists and surprises from the comics to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
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5. Spider-Man Turned Into His Worst Enemy: the Green Goblin
Peter Parker’s archnemesis Norman Osborn was cleansed of his sins and, shockingly, the reformed Norman equipped Spider-Man with a new high-tech Spider-suit to help his foe-turned-friend battle the likes of Kraven the Hunter and Doctor Octopus. When the Queen Goblin conspired to return Norman’s disembodied sins to him in the Zeb Wells-penned run of The Amazing Spider-Man, a sins-stricken Peter became the sinister, black-suited Spider-Man. The Green Goblin returned and, using a brain-washing device, turned Peter into the cackling Spider-Goblin.
In another twist, Norman helped cure the Goblin-possessed Spider-Man before his evil could corrupt Peter, and the Goblin-Sin — which had manifested like a demonic spirit — died in a battle for Spider-Man’s soul.
4. The Death of the Immortal Iron Fist on Danny Rand’s Birthday
Since his kung-fu fighting debut in the pages of 1974’s Marvel Premiere #15, martial artist Danny Rand has wielded the power of the Iron Fist as protector of the mystical city K’un-Lun. But in August’s Iron Fist 50th Anniversary Special #1, the once Immortal Danny Rand — now without the Chi of the mystic serpent Shou-Lao — was struck down in a fight with a Chi’-Lin that possessed the assassin Razor Fist. The Living Weapon was dead.
But in an issue-ending sequence, a glowing, skeletal ghost fist emerged from Rand’s grave. Long live the Immortal Iron Fist.
3. Marvel Studios Brought Back X-Men: The Animated Series (and Killed Gambit)
Marvel Animation’s X-Men ’97 picked up where X-Men: The Animated Series left off in 1997: with Cyclops (Ray Chase) commanding the X-Men in the absence of Professor Charles Xavier (Ross Marquand). After Xavier entrusted the X-Men to his former friend-turned-foe Magneto (Matthew Waterson), the mutants — including Wolverine (Cal Dodd), Storm (Alison Sealy-Smith), Rogue (Lenore Zann), Gambit (A.J. LoCascio), Beast (George Buza), Bishop (Isaac Robinson-Smith), Morph (J.P. Karliak), Jubilee (Holly Chou), and new recruit Sunspot (Gui Agustini) — found themselves under attack by Bastion (Theo James), the half-human, half-Sentinel leader of the anti-mutant Operation: Zero Tolerance.
Episode 5, “Remember It,” saw the ragin’ Cajun unleash his kinetically-charged powers to destroy the Master Mold Sentinel during an attack on the mutant nation Genosha — at the cost of his life. The time-traveler Cable (Chris Potter, voice of Remy LeBeau in the original animated series) told the X-Men that the attack on Genosha and Gambit’s death was an “absolute point” in the timeline, although the first season finale ended with most of the X-Men displaced in either the ancient past or an apocalyptic future.
2. The Many Marvel Cameos in Deadpool & Wolverine
Marvel Studios’ Deadpool & Wolverine not only reunited a comic-accurate Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) and Logan (Hugh Jackman) for the first time since 2009’s Fox-made X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the multiverse made it so that the yellow-suited Wolverine could return despite his variant’s death — and Jackman’s retirement — in 2017’s Logan.
After Wade used Cable’s time-travel device to interview with Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) to join the Avengers on Earth-616 (the Marvel Cinematic Universe), the retired Merc with a Mouth returned to his native Earth-10005, where he was arrested by the TVA, the timeline-monitoring organization from Loki. When Wade and the “worst Wolverine” were pruned by TVA Agent Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen), they ended up in the Void: a “metaphysical junkyard” at the End of Time for branched realities and their inhabitants.
It’s there that Deadpool and Wolverine encountered such “forgotten” heroes as Johnny Storm/the Human Torch of the Fantastic Four (Chris Evans), the assassin Elektra (Jennifer Garner), the mutant Laura Kinney/X-23 (Dafne Keen), the card-carrying Gambit (Channing Tatum) of the X-Men, and the vampire-slaying Daywalker Blade (Wesley Snipes). The latter was particularly shocking because of the bad blood between Reynolds and Snipes on the set of 2004’s Blade: Trinity. Once thought lost to discarded cinematic universes or studio mergers, Deadpool & Wolverine gave those characters the ending they deserved. (Except for the foul-mouthed Johnny. RIP.)
1. Robert Downey Jr.’s Return to the MCU — Not as Iron Man, But as Doctor Doom
Five years after Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark sacrificed himself to save the universe from Thanos in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, Marvel Studios made an announcement no one expected: the Iron Man actor was set to return. Not as the armored Avenger, but as the iron-masked Doctor Doom.
The Oscar-winning Oppenheimer actor will play Victor von Doom in 2026’s Avengers: Doomsday and 2027’s Avengers: Secret Wars, which will be helmed by directing duo Anthony and Joe Russo (Infinity War and Endgame). Downey could potentially debut as Reed Richards’ (Pedro Pascal) archnemesis in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, set in the retro-futuristic 1960s and due out on July 25, 2025, before emerging as the Thanos-level threat in the next two Avengers films that will cap off the Multiverse Saga of the MCU.
