Did The Russos Spoil The Ending Of 'Avengers: Doomsday' & 'Secret Wars'?
Avengers: Doomsday (2026) and Avengers: Secret Wars (2027) are two of the most highly anticipated films of the 2020s, and with good reason. They are going to change the Marvel Cinematic Universe as we know it and will establish Doctor Doom as the powerhouse threat comic fans already know him as.
The Marvel Premiere Collection version of Jonathan Hickman's Avengers: Time Runs Out features a foreword by the Russo Brothers, where they compare their lives to the story and the motivations for Doctor Doom and their new films. But they also may have teased the endings of two of their biggest movies.
The Russo Brothers Gave Us The Blueprint To Doctor Doom's Story
In the Foreword, Time Runs Out explored the idea of Doctor Doom and his perspective on creating Battleworld. The brothers stated: "He believes he can save everything if he controls enough of it. Hickman reveals the strain behind that effort and the human fragility beneath the armor." With a character in the MCU driven by the loss of his loved ones, that fragility feels greater than ever.
With that in mind, it seems like the Russos teased that Doom's ultimate victory in Avengers: Doomsday will lead the story into a world of his own making that he believes he can maintain forever. Avengers: Secret Wars will explore the other side of that and the harsh reality that humans are still human even with unlimited power.
The Russos explained how Doom's Battleworld ultimately failed by saying, "It is not a dramatic explosion. It is fear. It is compromise. It is the slow erosion of trust among people who care deeply and still cannot prevent the fall. Stories like that linger. They ask us to look at who we become when pressure shapes every choice." Through that idea, we now know that Avengers: Secret Wars is more of a story about the survivors of the last film and how they will rattle Doom's resolve and slowly erode the world he's built.
The 'Secret Wars' Storyline Was A Tragic Doom Tale
The Secret Wars series, written by Hickman and featuring art by Esad Ribić, felt like the ultimate showdown between Reed Richards and Doctor Doom. Doom, now on the other side of an incursion and ruling a new world, has to maintain it. But what he can't account for is that Reed Richards and a select group of other heroes survived.
In nine issues, we see Doom go from someone in complete control to someone questioning what he's doing and what has been done in the time he's led this new Battleworld. As a result, the story serves as a tragedy, as the man who felt he could save and control everything finally has and realizes he's not the one for the job.
It humanizes Doctor Doom, showing a new side to him that feels like a man in pain and juxtaposes a version of Reed who feels he has nothing left to lose. It's the perfect period for both characters and a great blueprint to understand the MCU's iteration of Doctor Doom.
The Russo Brothers Have Told Similar Stories In Past MCU Movies
When discussing the villains they like to explore and write about, the Russo Brothers mentioned how they love telling stories about villains who started with good intentions but fell too far to be saved. Alexander Pierce in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) was the first example of this, but it was Zemo in Captain America: Civil War (2016) and Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War (2018) who showed this best.
These are characters driven to do dark things due to the trauma they experienced. They wanted nothing more than to have no one else experience what they did, and they would kill anyone or anything to make sure that happens.
Along the way, these characters lost their humanity, and it's the same path Doom seems fated for as his story continues. We won't know the full answer for over a year, but no one could've expected the Russos teasing this in the Foreword of a graphic novel. Now, it's only a matter of time before we see how a character like Doom can fall so far and change the Multiverse forever.
