The MCU Just Revealed a Fate Worse Than Death (& Nobody Noticed)

Marvel’s Wonder Man is now streaming, and although it is billed as a comedic series, there are some darker elements running through it. The show hinges on the mystery of Simon Williams (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and the superpowers he is hiding as he pursues fame in Hollywood. Simon has every reason to be trepidacious: institutions like Damage Control are keeping careful check on enhanced individuals, and with good reason. As Wonder Man reveals in one of its episodes, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has a superpower that is worse than death if it spirals out of control – just like it did with one of Hollywood’s most famous stars!

WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW!

Wonder Man’s Origin of the MCU “Doorman Clause” Explained

Wonder Man Episode 4, “Doorman”, is a flashback episode revealing a key piece of the show’s lore: Hollywood’s “Doorman Clause.” As it turns out, “Doorman” is actually DeMarr Davis (Byron Bowers), a doorman at a trendy Hollywood Club. One night, while emptying the club’s trash, Davis finds a dumpster from the Roxxon Corporation leaking a strange black goo.

He makes the mistake of touching the substance and gets sucked into a portal that transports him to an ink-black realm filled with doorways. When he gets back to his home dimension, he finds he use his own body as a portal to phase objects or beings through solid objects like walls. The power turns Davis into a hero after he saves patrons from a fire at the club, by using his body as a portal through a blocked doorway. Hero status turns to fame after the club’s celebrity patron, Frozen star Josh Gad, takes an interest in DeMarr and tries to pay him back for saving his life with a bodyguard gig.

Thanks to Gad and a few other Hollywood opportunists, DeMarr eventually goes from bodyguarding to full-on stardom and is branded “Doorman,” with his superpower as his primary gimmick. He has a meteoric run as a catchphrase-spewing comedian and endorsement guy, before hitting the wall and becoming a has-been punchline. Depression and substance abuse quickly follow, and DeMarr looks like he’s headed for rock bottom until Josh Gad shows up to save him yet again, offering to do the sequel to their breakout hit heist film, Cash Grab.

Tragedy occurs during the shoot: DeMarr is intoxicated when filming a scene with Gad, in which he’s supposed to teleport to the actor through a wall during an armored car heist sequence. Instead, Gad gets lost inside of DeMarr, never to be seen again. After that, the government cracks down on Hollywood and institutes the “Doorman Clause”, preventing any enhanced individual from participating in a Hollywood production without all kinds of special clearances and exponentially higher insurance costs.

Wonder Man Reveals The Danger of the Darkforce Dimension

In Marvel Comics lore, the Darkforce Dimension is the source of Doorman’s teleporting abilities, and the MCU version seems to be in line with that. The Darkforce Dimension is a dark reality that exists outside of multiple other universes and links them together. The realm is used by teleporters like Cloak and Dagger, and even X-Men’s Nightcrawler once thought he used the realm as his transit lane. The Darkforce Dimension is also home to other entities, such as the cosmic entity Oblivion and demonic entities like the Predator and Devourer; it is also the source of the Null Space and the armored “Raptors” like Darkhawk, created from the Tree of Shadows.

In short, the Darkforce Dimensions is not a great place to end up. People who are lost there are forced to live their worst fears and memories in an infinite loop, eventually losing their minds entirely.

There are a lot of fine details about the MCU version of Doornan and is connection to the Darkforce Dimension that still need to be explained. A lot of fans are already theorizing that there could be a connection between Doorman and Thunderbolts* version of The Sentry (whose “Void” dimension seems ot be a lot like the Darkforce Dimension), not to mention any other number of characters (Nightcrawler, Darkhawk) or big storylines (like Avengers: Doomsday). Either way, poor Josh Gad has to go through that hellish fate, and Doorman’s MCU origin raises the larger question of what Roxxon has been up to, and what other kind of Darkforce nightmares they could’ve exposed the world to.

Wonder Man is now streaming on Disney+. Come discuss the show with us on the ComicBook Forum!

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