Less than 24 hours before this was written, Marvel dropped a giant bombshell at their Hall H panel at the San Diego Comic-Con. Robert Downey Jr. is returning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but not as Iron Man. Instead, he’ll be donning the visage of the fearsome Dr. Doom in both Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars. Watching the video, you can see the room erupt as soon as he revealed himself. The MCU fans have been hoping he would make a return. After the dust settled, some fans seemed confused about why they would cast someone who was already a well-loved character in the cinematic universe. Well, that can easily be explained.
Marvel is in the middle of their Multiverse Saga, so we’ve seen many alternate realities lately. This is no different. While he was announced to be playing Dr. Doom, more than likely, we’re still seeing him play Tony Stark, a version of Tony Stark that comes from another reality. In whatever reality he comes from, Tony took a different path in life. He didn’t go through the same situations we’ve seen him deal with, so in his reality, he became a villain instead of the hero that we saw save the world in Avengers: Endgame.
We have already seen that Tony had moments in his life when he could have strayed from the heroic path. Different choices could have easily pushed him into a role that would be seen as villainous. Doom always considers himself a heroic character, even when he bends other people to his will. He thinks it’s always for the greater good. That’s no different than with Tony Stark. Luckily, he has always had people surrounding him to keep him on the path to righteousness.
This is not a new concept in the comic book source material. In a 2010 issue of the comic series What If . . . ? we saw this story sort of play out, although with some body swap concepts. The minds of Tony Stark and Victor Von Doom switched bodies during an accident at college. Tony was then deported back to Latveria in Doom’s body. It showed how your environment can shape you even if you start with the best intentions.
There was also a storyline in the main line of Marvel comics called The Infamous Iron Man. Tony Stark is thought to be dead, and Doctor Doom decides to take up the mantle of Iron Man to become a hero. While trying to change his ways, he sees that breaking good is much more complicated than it looks. Both stories are a great read and worth checking out.
Even though Marvel was gearing up to have Kang (played by Jonathan Majors) be the big bad of this cycle, incidents outside their control made them have to pivot, drop Majors, and change course. The good thing is that they had already announced that everything was leading up to another two-part Avengers tale. One was supposed to be The Kang Dynasty, and the other was Secret Wars. Luckily, with Secret Wars already their destination, it made it easy to change course and bring in Dr. Doom as the big bad.
So, what exactly is Secret Wars? In the comics, different realities are being destroyed, and the 616 universe (the main Marvel Universe) is about to be destroyed along with the Ultimate universe. Through comic shenanigans, Dr. Doom is able to harness enough power to save parts of different universes and combine them into one. This Earth is labeled Battleworld, and other territories house different realities. We see parts of the 616 universe as well as pieces of the realities that housed storylines like Age Of Apocalypse, Old Man Logan, MC2, and Marvel 1602 that appeared on the Disney + series What If . . . ? this season.
As we can see, Dr. Doom plays a massive role in Secret Wars, so bringing him in as the main antagonist makes a lot of sense. In a fun, thematic way, the character and actor who created the MCU will now be the one saving it. Will he recreate it in his own image? Have you met Tony Stark? Of course he will. If that is good or bad, it remains to be seen. The fun part is that a lot of the alternate characters we have been seeing over the last few years will more than likely be making an appearance. So expect all the Spider-Men to return along with Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine.
Fans have been wanting to see all these characters FINALLY interact with each other in the two upcoming Avengers films since the MCU took its first steps. It looks like it will take Robert Downey Jr. and Dr. Doom to make that happen finally. Even if fans are tired of the Multiverse Saga, it will be exciting to see it all finally come to a head when Avengers: Doomsday hits the screen in 2026.
Are you excited by Robert Downey Jr.’s return to the MCU as Dr. Doom? Let us know what you think of Downey playing Doom in the comments below.