Avengers: Doomsday is finally taking shape, and it increasingly seems this is an Avengers vs. X-Men story on a cosmic scale. If Avengers: Endgame was a celebration of the entire MCU, then Doomsday looks set to honor every Marvel movie of the twenty-first century. It features the heroes of Marvel’s Phase 4, a returning Chris Evans as Steve Rogers, and Robert Downey, Jr. as Doctor Doom. Even better, Doomsday‘s cast includes several Fox heroes, such as Patrick Stewart’s Professor X and James Marsden’s Cyclops.
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First footage released at CinemaCon established Doctor Doom as a villain on a cosmic scale. In one shot, Doctor Doom took on Thor with style when he caught Stormbreaker between two fingers, demonstrating he’s infinitely more powerful than even the Asgardian Thunder God. But all the signs suggest Doom isn’t the greatest danger of this film; rather, in a plot lifted straight from the comics, he believes he’s fighting to save what remains of the multiverse.
Avengers: Doomsday’s Trailer Hints the Multiverse is Dying
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness introduced the idea of incursions. According to another universe’s Reed Richards, “An incursion occurs when the boundary between two universes erodes, and they collide. Destroying one, or both, entirely.” At least three universes are in play in Avengers: Doomsday, and they’ve already begun to cross over. They are:
- The main MCU (known as Earth-616)
- An X-Men universe, likely the one Monica Rambeau was blasted into at the end of The Marvels
- The Fantastic Four’s universe, with those heroes clearly arriving on Earth-616 in Thunderbolts*‘ post-credit-scene.
The idea of “incursions” is lifted straight from the build-up to Jonathan Hickman’s 2015 epic “Secret Wars” event in the comic. There, Doctor Doom played a key role; while the heroes scrambled to figure out what was going on, Doom launched his own plan to save what was left. He was successful in the end, binding the fragmented remnants of the multiverse together in a place known as “Battleworld.” There, Doom ruled from a position of near-infinite power, convinced he was the only one who could hold creation together.
CinemaCon’s Doomsday footage seems to confirm the MCU is repeating this kind of story beat. It included dialogue from Doctor Doom that seems so very appropriate: “Something’s coming. Something we may not be able to deter.” The logical conclusion is that Doom is referring to incursions, and that he is working to save the multiverse. Marvel is once again attempting to make the villain the hero of their story, repeating the Thanos trick from Avengers: Infinity War. This time, the stakes are even higher.
But is Doctor Doom a Tony Stark Variant?
Most viewers have assumed there’s a reason Doctor Doom is played by Robert Downey, Jr. The most likely explanation seemed to be that he was in fact a Tony Stark variant – perhaps one who had successfully defeated Thanos and even prevented the snap. Marvel seemed to tease this by hinting at a comic book scene where Doom killed Thanos, and it would have made the casting choice feel incredibly poignant. It’s a little reminiscent of the classic line from The Dark Knight; “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become a villain.”
CinemaCon’s Doomsday footage appears to hint this “variant” theory isn’t true, though. That same dialogue confirms the MCU’s Doctor Doom has an accent, which wouldn’t fit at all with his being a Tony Stark variant whose life took a different route as an Avenger. The accent hints the MCU is faithfully rendering one Doctor Doom concept from the comics, where he’s monarch of the fictional Eastern Europe nation of Latveria. Interestingly, this does raise the possibility Doctor Doom hails from the Fantastic Four’s timeline, given Latveria was subtly nodded to in First Steps.
All this means the CinemaCon footage was a genius move for Marvel. On the one hand, the footage confirms a major theory that incursions are tearing the multiverse apart, giving us a straightforward narrative throughline to next year’s Avengers: Secret Wars. At the same time, though, another major theory – that Doctor Doom is a Stark variant from a very specific timeline – has apparently been debunked. No doubt there’s still a story reason for Doctor Doom’s looking just like Tony Stark, but we don’t yet know what it is – which makes the story all the more exciting.
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