Every New Scene In Avengers: Endgame Encore, Explained
We are less than three months away from the return of the MCU and Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, The Avengers, as they face their toughest adversary yet: Victor Von Doom, aka Doctor Doom.
“Mark my words, we’re going to need a miracle,” Thor proclaims in the first Avengers: Doomsday trailer. But what could the God of Thunder be referring to?
Well, it seems there are two big challenges facing our heroes this time: first is the seemingly impending collapse of the multiverse, something they've had experience with, but not like this. Incursions across a raft of parallel Earths are causing extinction-level events.
Then, of course, there is Doom. Judging by the snippet of a fight that sees him stop Thor’s Stormbreaker with two fingers, they are indeed going to need that miracle. The plot is, as ever, kept tightly under wraps.
However, with the release of Avengers: Endgame Encore this weekend, we now know what the new scenes in this slightly expanded edition are, and how they tie directly into the upcoming film.
If you've not seen Endgame Encore yet, you might want to stop reading and come back, as we're going to break down each new scene below.
“I Have Come To Collect You" — Bruce Banner Is Captured
In the first of these additional scenes in Endgame: Encore, we see Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner after the events of Spider-Man: Brand New Day. In that record-breaking Spidey instalment, he was manipulated by Sadie Sink’s Jean Grey to unleash the Hulk. Now seemingly out of action, he is in a bunker underground that no one else can access, recording a video to document his work finding a stabilising serum for himself.
Quickly, the lights and computers go haywire, and then we hear Banner see someone off-camera. “Who are you?” he asks.
“I have come to collect you, Doctor Banner.”
It is Doctor Doom. Before long, we hear Banner struggle and the Hulk unleash once more, with only Doom’s glowing Latverian green magic left on the bunker’s floor.
Could Doom enslave Hulk to help him carry out his plans? Maestro, a version of Hulk that helps Doom in the comics, is not off the table if so, and could be part of the team Doom brings together, including four Latverian Witches to destroy the Avengers and, potentially, the Multiverse.
There’s Someone At The Door — And It’s Loki
In the original cut of Endgame, after returning the Stones to their own timelines before they split, Steve Rogers didn’t return where Bruce Banner, Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes had expected on the time-travel machine. Instead, he appeared as an older version of himself. Cut to a younger Steve dancing with Peggy Carter, his lifelong sweetheart, getting “some of that life that Tony (Stark) was talking about”.
But unlike that ending, this Encore scene has the dance interrupted by a knock on the door. Both seem shocked, as if no one should know where Steve is, but someone does.
The God of Stories, Loki.
“Can I help you?” Peggy asks him, though he is out of shot. Steve hides in shot, but out of view of the front door.
“No, but I can help you… Both of you,” he replies as he locks eyes with Steve, who looks stunned.
Loki is dead in Steve’s eyes, and he has no idea of his escape with the Tesseract back in 2012 that saw him captured by the TVA in his spinoff series, Loki, and burdened with glorious purposes at the centre of everything.
With his knowledge, Loki seemingly knows that Steve is causing a split in the sacred timeline by staying with Peggy back in time, and has to do something.
The rumour mill suggests he may take him to Earth-828, the home of the Fantastic Four, but we also see him in the first Doomsday trailer on Earth-616 (the MCU's core Earth), taking Mjolnir from Thor, himself shocked to see him standing there.
3,000 Universes Down — The Multiverse Is Collapsing
At the end of Loki Season 2, as we mentioned above, the God of Mischief sacrificed himself to hold the multiverse together and breathe life back into the timelines, weaving them into a massive, tree-like structure resembling the Norse World Tree, Yggdrasil.
Fast forward a little while, and we are back at the TVA in Encore, functioning as before, with a huge Loki picture looking over the main control room. Morbius (Owen Wilson) enters and asks for a debrief, and Ouroboros (Ke Huy Quan) and Casey (Eugene Cordero) tell him that a “Number 1” incursion is about to happen between Earth-10005 — the original X-Men Universe — and Earth-1127 (a universe not seen in the MCU but, in the comics, one where the Defenders discovered the Concordance Engines).
Morbius is confused about why he hasn’t been told about it before.
Casey says, “Are those missiles?!”
“Are they firing at each other?” Morbius replies.
“Each Earth is trying to take out the other before they collide,” Ouroboros says, shocked.
“Wait, we have another one!” an employee screams across the room, which Morbius thinks is a glitch — but it isn’t. Earth-400083 (Eric Bana Hulk-verse), Earth-15886 (the 2015 Fantastic Four-verse) and Earth-82111 (the What If...? universe) are destroyed.
Morbius puts up the TVA alert, but it’s too late.
Quickly, two incursions become 3,000, happening all at once. Ouroboros delivers the cliffhanger:
“The Multiverse is collapsing.”
If you assume Earth-10005 survives, given the X-Men are in Doomsday, it will be them, Earth-828 and Earth-616, remaining. Who is left at the end, we have no idea, but they will need that miracle…
I Am Doom — We’re Not With Tony Stark Anymore
The final scene — well, a glimpse — shows Victor Von Doom forging his famous mask, almost identically to how Tony Stark made his in 2008’s Iron Man. Even the rhythm of Doom hammering it is the same.
There are two possible explanations for this: either Doom really is a Tony Stark variant as in the comics, or, more likely, it is a playful scene that toys with fans' emotions as a cheeky callback due to Robert Downey Jr. playing both characters.
How all these new scenes will fit into Doomsday is still up for debate; what they do for certain is crank the excitement for the film up to 11, and we cannot wait.
