This Wild Tony Stark Theory Explains Why Robert Downey Jr. Is Back In Avengers: Doomsday

We are probably going to be second-guessing Marvel’s masterplan for Avengers: Doomsday all the way through to December, and it’s more than likely none of us will figure out what’s truly in store.

You can read all the comic books you want, but the MCU constantly subverts storylines and tweaks characters to keep us on our toes. That doesn’t stop us theorising, though, and the mystery behind Robert Downey Jr.’s return as Doctor Doom has really got the cogs turning in the fanbase lately.

The fact that Downey Jr. is in the Avengers: Doomsday cast at all is crazy, considering his previous character, Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, is canonically dead. Even crazier is the fact that he’s gone from playing Earth-616’s greatest hero to becoming the new Big Bad. Still, if this theory about why the actor is back in the MCU is correct, his villainous turn actually makes perfect sense.

Was Tony Stark Secretly Victor Von Doom All Along?

This interesting train of thought comes from Marvel Mania on Twitter/X, who laid out a theory this week that drastically alters everything we thought to be true in the MCU so far. The question they pose is simple: What if Tony Stark has always been Doom?

It all stems back to Avengers: Endgame. Specifically, when Tony travels back in time to 1970 and crosses paths with his father, Howard Stark. While there, Howard explains that he and his wife, Maria, are expecting a child. That’s no big surprise, as we obviously know Tony arrives in the world months later… right?

Well, here’s the catch that most of us missed in 2019. Tony speaks to his dad on April 7. Tony was born on May 29, 1970. But when Howard discusses Maria’s pregnancy, it sounds like she has just found out she’s expecting. Even Tony’s face looks confused by the timing of it all.

The new explanation – dubbed the ‘Adoption Theory’ – suggests that the child Maria was carrying died shortly after Tony’s visit. In order to maintain the Stark legacy, Howard and Maria adopted an orphan baby. From where, you ask? How about from Latveria? And the most famous Latverian orphan of them all is, of course, Victor Von Doom.

Marvel Mania then asks us to recall a line from Howard Stark in Iron Man 2. While watching a video from his father, Tony hears him say, “My greatest creation is you.” At the time, we all assumed Howard meant that in the literal sense – that he helped conceive the child and is proud of what his son became. But what if he is instead referring to the lies he told and the persona he helped create by changing Victor’s identity to that of Tony’s?

As the original poster states, this line becomes “not a father’s love, but a scientist admiring his masterpiece. Howard didn’t raise Tony Stark; he built him.”

Robert Downey Jr.’s Return Makes More Sense Thanks to the ‘Adoption Theory’

If this theory is correct – and that’s a big ‘if,’ we know – then it makes Downey Jr.’s return to the MCU as Victor Von Doom not only plausible but actually incredibly simple. While we’ve been analysing how Tony Stark could become Doom because of his turbulent past, the real solution could have been staring us in the face all along.

More specifically, Downey Jr.’s face was staring back at us. No one else could play Doctor Doom, because he and Tony Stark are the same person.

The only difference is that, while on Earth-616, that Latverian orphan was brought into a wealthy, healthy, relatively happy family environment; other variants of the character throughout the multiverse may not have been so lucky. At least, the Doom we meet in Avengers: Doomsday wasn’t. He was never adopted. He stayed in Latveria, where his brilliant mind led him down a much darker path.

“Robert Downey Jr. returning makes sense now,” Marvel Mania wrote. “Everything we loved about Iron Man was just a mask for the monster inside.”

Kang’s Connection to Tony Stark Would Have Made the MCU Even More Interesting

Now you might be thinking that there’s a huge problem with this theory: Doom wasn’t even supposed to show up at this juncture. Before actor Jonathan Majors was fired by Disney, his supervillain character, Kang the Conqueror, was intended to be the new nemesis for the Avengers.

In the wake of his sudden exit, the MCU had to pivot dramatically in the direction of Doom, but perhaps the seeds of this Tony Stark theory were there all along. You see, in the comics, Kang’s origins usually have him being a descendant of Reed Richards (his real name is Nathaniel Richards, most of the time). However, there’s a good chance that lineage would have been given a trademark twist for the MCU to have him be a part of the Stark family tree instead.

A theory posted to Reddit suggests Kang’s mastery of time travel aligns with Tony’s own skillset, while the fact that Tony is the “heart” of the MCU makes it far more logical to have Kang be related to him than a character we have barely met.

They may well be on to something. However, if the Adoption Theory is correct, maybe Kang was not a descendant of Tony’s, but rather a multiversal sibling. It’s not unfathomable that Marvel was lining up Kang to be the brother Tony never had – hence why Howard and Maria’s birth timeline didn’t line up with Tony’s – before having to quickly recycle elements of this idea and change course to a Doom storyline instead.

We won’t know whether this theory is on the money or not for a few months yet. Maybe it’s way off, but it’s an intriguing hypothesis nonetheless, and one I’ll be thinking about as I take my seat in the cinema for Avengers: Doomsday on opening night.