New Avengers: Doomsday Theory Reveals Why Doctor Doom Is More Powerful Than Thor, & It Blows the Plot Wide Open

Avengers: Doomsday has already wowed viewers after just a single trailer, revealing how powerful Doctor Doom really is. Three universes are about to collide in Avengers: Doomsday, and it increasingly looks as though the heroes will be lucky to survive. We’ve seen Sentinels attacking the X-Men, Yelena Belova fighting Mystique, and Thor giving an uncomfortable pep talk to the outmatched Avengers and Fantastic Four.

But Doomsday‘s trailer was as much about the villain as the heroes. Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom took center-stage in this trailer, given an opening monologue and a moment to show how powerful he truly is; he effortlessly holds back Thor’s attack, with Stormbreaker no less, suggesting this version of Doom is a man who really should make the multiverse tremble. But how did Doctor Doom become a man who can beat gods with ease?

Doctor Doom Has Only Once Had This Kind Of Power in the Comics

Doctor Doom has rarely fought Thor in the comics. That’s largely because he’s not foolish enough to take on enemies he doesn’t believe he can defeat; in fact, Doom only meddled with the Asgardians directly at a time when they were stranded on Earth and Thor was exiled. Doom is powerful for a man – indeed, he may be the most powerful mortal in the Marvel Universe – but he is still a man, albeit one who believes he is worthy of being so much more. Doom only meddles with the gods when he has a plan in mind, usually a dream of stealing their power for himself.

Doom is an unusual character, a master at both science and sorcery. In the comics, this is the man who discovered time travel; he’s well known for a phenomenal arsenal of weapons that terrify most heroes, and tends to have an army of Doombot androids at his beck and call. But he’s also one of Marvel’s most powerful mystics, a contender for the role of Sorcerer Supreme who actually claimed that mantle for a time. But Doctor Doom’s “party trick,” so to speak, is combining these two things to figure out how to steal power.

He’s done this with Asgardians, dissecting several when Thor’s people were briefly unwise enough to settle in Doom’s nation of Latveria. He did this in the original Secret Wars comic book event, grasping at the beyond-godhood powers of a being called the Beyonder. And he did it again in the 2015 Secret Wars event that’s inspired the Multiverse Saga. There, he managed to stabilize the multiverse’s last fragments in “Battleworld”, and the so-called “God Doom” had more power than ever before – literally tearing Thanos’ skeleton from his body when he fought the Mad Titan. That’s clearly the Doom we’re seeing in Doomsday – but how?

I Think I’ve Figured Out How Doom Became So Powerful

This is Doomsday, not Secret Wars, so it’s actually surprising to see “God Doom” so soon. That means we logically have a single question: how is Doom powerful enough to take on Thor like this? Surprisingly, I think we’ve already had an answer – courtesy of Shanghai Expo, where Marvel displayed sets such as Doctor Doom’s throne. I was fascinated to notice a repeat pattern of runes, bearing similarities to those Marvel has previously used for Asgardian magic. The Doomsday trailer revealed Doom’s own armor incorporates runes, too, suggesting these may be important. I’d suggest the runes are about channeling power, a fairly common trope.

Most people paid attention to Doom’s throne, but that wasn’t the only Doomsday set unveiled at Shanghai Expo. Marvel also showed off Reed Richard’s lab, with scientific notes scrawled all over a board. According to explanatory text, these discussed the energy release from colliding universes, and contained notes for creating multiversal cannons to blast realities apart and prevent them destroying one another. This is presumably Reed Richards’ plan to save the multiverse, but Doom will have his own masterplan.

If colliding universes release energy across the multiverse, then destruction will logically escalate – the energy waves from one catastrophe triggering another. But as soon as we start talking about energy releases, we’re discussing something Doom loves more than anything else: power. He would see these energy waves as something to contain, something to master and transform into a fuel for his own power. Thus, I have a simple theory: Doom has figured out what’s happening in the universe, and his runes channel multiversal energy into himself. He literally wields the power of dying universes.

If this is the case, it’s possible to figure out Doom’s actual endgame too. We know the multiverse is unstable; that’s why He Who Remains had the TVA prune timelines in Loki Season 1. But we initially thought that was primarily to prevent the multiversal war that inevitably comes from different versions of Kang. What if the multiverse is unstable because it inevitably leads to contact between the universes, which generates incursions… and thus leads to escalating collapse? If this is the case, Doom is simply doing what He Who Remains originally did – trying to ensure we end up with a single stable universe. The difference, though, is that he wants to personally control it – and make himself its god.

Avengers: Doomsday hits theaters on December 18th.

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