5 MCU Scenes That Mean Something Completely Different After The 'Avengers: Doomsday' Trailer
When the branching timeline theory (where changing your past doesn't change the present) was introduced in 2019's Avengers: Endgame, it mostly felt like Marvel's way of explaining how the Time Heist worked. It answered a lot of questions about the movie's messy time travel without creating a bunch of new plot holes. And for a while, that seemed like its only purpose.
However, the MCU kept introducing new ideas that built on that same concept, from alternate universes to incursions and everything in between. Now that the first trailer for 2026's Avengers: Doomsday has arrived, it's much easier to see how some of those pieces fit together. It doesn't reveal everything Marvel has planned, but it does make a few earlier MCU scenes feel completely different.
Whether Marvel planned every detail years ago or found clever ways to connect the dots later is another discussion entirely. Either way, there are a few scenes from previous movies and television series (all streaming on Disney+ ) that are worth looking at again.
The Branching Timelines In 'Avengers: Endgame'
For most people, the biggest moments in 2019's Avengers: Endgame were Iron Man's (Robert Downey Jr.) sacrifice and Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) opting to stay in the past with Peggy (Hayley Atwell). But one of the movie's most important scenes is Bruce Banner's (Mark Ruffalo) Infinity Stones conversation with the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton).
According to her, removing an Infinity Stone from its timeline would create a branching reality with a different future. To prevent that, the stones would have to be returned to the exact moment they were taken. Although Steve Rogers returned each stone, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) escaping with the Tesseract created a branch that led straight into Loki (2021).
The Time Variance Authority In 'Loki'
When the Time Variance Authority (an organization that monitors the timeline and exists on the outside of space and time) first appeared in Loki, it felt like one of the stranger additions to the MCU. Its main purpose was to arrest and eliminate anyone who stepped out of their original timeline and prune branching realities before they could grow.
By the end of Season 2, the TVA moves away from pruning every new branch. Instead of trying to force one Sacred Timeline, it begins watching over a multiverse that keeps growing. And Loki takes on the impossible job of holding all the timelines together. If Doomsday is bringing the multiverse to a breaking point, then Loki's burden of glorious purpose might take on a new meaning.
Incursions In 'Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness'
A lot was happening in 2022's Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, so it's easy to forget that one interaction may have been the movie's biggest reveal. During the scene on Earth-838, Reed Richards (John Krasinski) explains incursions and warns Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) that traveling between universes can cause two realities to collide.
If that happens, one or both universes can be destroyed. Since the movie had Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) traveling across different realities, there wasn't much time to process the idea before the story moved on. After the Doomsday trailer, Reed's warning doesn't feel like it belongs to one movie anymore. It seems like a problem that could affect every corner of the MCU.
Monica Rambeau Ending Up In Another Universe In 'The Marvels'
The ending of The Marvels (2023) left Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) in a situation no other MCU hero had really faced before. After helping seal a tear between universes, she finds herself trapped in another reality, where she meets Binary (an alternate version of her mother) and the mutant scientist Dr. Hank McCoy (Kelsey Grammer).
At the time, it seemed more like a fun tease for the X-Men than anything directly connected to the next Avengers movie. That isn't really the case anymore. After the Doomsday trailer, Monica suddenly looks like one of the few heroes who already knows what it's like to be stranded outside the main timeline. Depending on where the story goes, that experience could end up being really important.
The TVA's Role In 'Deadpool & Wolverine'
It would have been easy for 2024's Deadpool & Wolverine to use the TVA as nothing more than an excuse to throw Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) into the MCU. Instead, the organization plays a major role throughout the movie, with Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen) trying to alter events across different timelines for his own reasons.
The TVA also appears to be different from what it was in Loki. The Sacred Timeline is no longer a top priority since the organization has bigger problems to deal with. Those changes are woven into the story without drawing too much attention to themselves. But they essentially show us what the TVA turned into in the years after the Disney+ series ended, which could end up being an important detail.
