7 Years Later, Avengers: Endgame Is Still Hiding Its Biggest Doctor Doom Setup In Plain Sight

Marvel clearly want viewers to see Avengers: Endgame as a prelude to Doomsday and Secret Wars. That’s implied by the film’s re-release in the Avengers: Endgame Encore, with four minutes of additional footage added to make the connections even clearer. The hope is that this will draw back the casual viewers who haven’t kept up-to-speed on the Multiverse Saga; while more recent films and shows will still be relevant, they won’t be anywhere near as essential.

So far, all the signs suggest the Avengers’ time-travel mission in Endgame is somehow responsible for Doctor Doom’s creation. We don’t really know how that could be the case; Doom has Tony Stark’s face, which means he must be from another branch in the multiverse, rather than Earth-616. But, while all focus lies on Doctor Doom’s origin, I think we’re missing the most important setup of all; a thematic link between Endgame, Doomsday, and even next year’s Secret Wars.

Thanos’ Final Mission Changed Endgame’s Stakes

We all knew the stakes going into Avengers: Endgame. Half the living creatures in the universe had been erased with a snap of Thanos’ fingers, and the Avengers sought to put matters right. They did this by retrieving the Infinity Stones from the past, using their power to restore all those Thanos had killed. But, in a shocking twist, a past version of Thanos followed the Avengers to the present day. Furious because his plan had been undone, he decided to go one step further.

“As long as there are those that remember what was,” Thanos said, “there will always be those that are unable to accept what can be. They will resist… I will shred this universe down to its last atoms, and then… create a new one. Teeming with life, that knows not what it has lost, but only what it has been given. A grateful universe.” It’s the ultimate victory: Thanos would create a new universe, one bathed in blood, but nobody would know it. Thus, there would be no resistance.

This Is Exactly What “Secret Wars” Is All About

And that brings us to the Multiverse Saga – specifically, to Secret Wars. In 2015, Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribic penned a spectacular event that brought an end to the entire Marvel multiverse. Every single timeline was destroyed, but Doctor Doom survived. Claiming the last fragments of power, he built a whole new world – Battleworld. A place teeming with life, where nobody knew what they had lost, because he also wiped their memories. A grateful world, one whose inhabitants considered Doom their god because of what he had made.

In other words, in the comics, Secret Wars saw Doom do what Thanos planned in Avengers: Endgame – albeit on an ever vaster scale, because he acted after the entire multiverse had been destroyed. Curiously, the Multiverse Saga is explicitly drawing on this story; Doomsday will lead into next year’s Avengers: Secret Wars, which isn’t exactly subtle. Most viewers are assuming Doomsday will see the multiverse burn down, so Doom can restore it in the MCU’s version of Battleworld.

Does the Thanos / Doom Comparison Mean More Than We Think?

It’s true this could simply be a result of a lack of imagination over at Marvel. But I don’t think that’s the case; Marvel keep stressing how closely connected Endgame and Doomsday really are, which makes me think all this is intentional. If I’m right, then there’s a very simple thematic relationship: Doomsday shows the Avengers trying to stop someone performing Thanos’ plan on a multiversal scale, and Secret Wars shows what it means for the Avengers to fail. In the comics, Secret Wars was undone because a handful of people kept their memories – and they were stubborn, fighting to restore the multiverse.

But why would Doctor Doom actually want to fulfill Thanos’ mad plan, albeit for the multiverse rather than a single timeline? Marketing for Doomsday has suggested Doom has already lost something somehow, and he blames the Avengers for it. In the comics, Doom sought to restore his mother’s life; here, he seems to be fighting to somehow bring back his family. In order to accomplish this, he’s willing to go to the most horrific lengths – and even mimic Thanos himself, creating a new universe to replace the one that currently exists.

The connections have to go deeper than this, of course. A thematic tie is one thing, but there has to be a narrative tie that’s in play. At present, we don’t really have enough information to make an educated guess; that may well change in September, when Avengers: Encore releases with an additional four minutes of footage. If this observation is correct, then that footage may be even more important than we thought.