Marvel fans are still reeling from the news that Robert Downey Jr. has been cast as Doctor Doom in the MCU. We’re all still trying wrap ourselves in the question of how the man who made Iron Man a household name can now play arguably Marvel’s greatest supervillain. But whatever the final explanation, one thing is abundantly clear: Avengers: Secret Wars now has the villain it needed all along.
To explain why, let’s take a step back to explore Doom’s importance to the Secret Wars saga and why Marvel really needed him front and center if they were to pull off an adaptation of the revered source material.
Doctor Doom’s role in Secret Wars
Right off the bat, it’s important to note that there are actually two major Secret Wars comics in Marvel’s catalog (not counting all the other sequels, spin-offs, and tie-in toys). The first is 1984’s Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars by Jim Shooter, Mike Zeck, and Bob Layton, and the second is 2015’s Secret Wars by Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribic. It’s probably safe to assume that the Avengers: Secret Wars movie will draw inspiration from both of those stories, even if the Multiverse Saga has definitely leaned toward the latter so far.
Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars is a crossover event in which a roster of heroes and villains (including Spider-Man and members of the X-Men, Avengers, and Fantastic Four) are brought to an artificial planet called Battleworld. There, these characters must fight each other for the amusement of an omnipotent being called the Beyonder.
The series culminates with Doctor Doom stealing the Beyonder’s power and becoming omnipotent. Doom slaughters our heroes when they refuse to join him, though they are quickly resurrected by a healer named Zsaji, and is ultimately defeated thanks to the combined efforts of everyone on Battleworld. The series ended up introducing several far-reaching changes to the Marvel Universe, with one of the biggest being that this is where Spider-Man first bonds with the Venom symbiote.
Secret Wars and its toy line proved wildly popular, quickly giving way to the much less well-received Secret Wars II the following year. 2015’s Secret Wars is widely regarded as a far superior sequel.
Secret Wars 2015 serves as the climax of Hickman’s long run on Marvel’s Avengers and New Avengers. Those two books chronicle the worsening state of Marvel’s multiverse, as more and more universes are wiped out through the phenomenon of RaidsThese incursions are eventually revealed to be caused by a conflict between the Beyonders (an entire race of beings with the godlike powers of the original Beyonder) and a fanatical cult leader named Rabum Alal. Rabum Alal is eventually revealed to be Doom, waging a high-stakes war to save the multiverse from the Beyonders’ grand cosmic experiment.
As Secret Wars begins, the multiverse is reduced to just two remaining universes: the classic Earth-616 and the Ultimate Universe (Earth-1610). Heroes from both worlds battle each other as the Final Incursion arrives, but to no avail. The multiverse completes its inevitable collapse, with only Mister Fantastic and a handful of refugee superheroes surviving aboard a universal life raft.
But existence doesn’t quite end. At the last moment, Doom and his ally Molecule Man manage to steal the power of the Beyonders (we notice a pattern here). Doom uses his newfound godhood to create a new Battleworld, this one built from the shattered fragments of dozens of dead universes. On Battleworld, these various universal fragments exist as baronies policed by the Thor Corps and Sheriff Stephen Strange. And they all exist under the benevolent rule of the God-Emperor Doom.
Secret Wars chronicles the rise and fall of Doom’s reign, as the survivors of Earth-616 and Earth-1610 fight to overthrow him and restore the multiverse. In the end, it all comes down to a showdown between Doom and Mister Fantastic. Good triumphs over evil, and the Fantastic Four are able to rebuild the multiverse (with a lot of help from Reed and Sue Richards’ son, young Franklin Richards, who has the mutant power to generate entire universes).
Secret Wars even ends on a happy note for Doom himself. Despite transforming into a god through sheer force of will, Doom was never able to repair his scarred visage. But when he awakens on the rejuvenated Earth-616, Doom finds that his face has been restored. Even the multiverse’s greatest tyrant has been given a second chance.
Why Avengers: Secret Wars Should Be About Doom
The biggest takeaway here is that Doom is a pretty pivotal figure in both versions of Secret Wars. In both stories, Doom is the one who usurps the Beyonder (or Beyonders) and becomes a god. Doom is the final boss of the story. But despite his central role, for a long time there was no indication that Marvel was actually planning to make Doom the central antagonist of Avengers: Secret Wars.
Until now, the Multiverse Saga depended on Kang the Conqueror by Jonathan MajorsWe have learned that Kang and his many variants are a clear and present danger to the entire multiverse. So much so that a variant called He Who Remains orchestrated the creation of The Temporary Variation Authority and reduced the multiverse to a single “Sacred Timeline” to prevent another multiversal war between the Kangs. But after the events of Loki season 1, the multiverse is back, and so is the threat of Kang.
Marvel was clearly positioning Kang, not Doom, as the architect of the Secret Wars conflict. Even the widespread rumor that Doom would be revealed in a post-credits scene in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever didn’t come to pass. The fifth Avengers film was originally billed as Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, suggesting that Kang’s feud with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes is what was supposed to set the stage for Secret Wars. All signs pointed to Kang being Marvel’s new Thanos for the Multiverse Saga.
All that changed with Majors’ legal troubles and subsequent firing and the lukewarm response to Kang’s first big-screen appearance in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. If Kang was going to be the next Thanos-level threat to the MCU, Quantumania didn’t exactly sell the idea. At some point, Marvel decided to move away from Kang and toward Doom, so Avengers: The Kang Dynasty is now being Reworked to become Avengers: DoomsdayNow Doom, not Kang, is the linchpin of the journey toward Secret Wars. And that’s exactly how it should be.
We’re not here to argue that the MCU can’t or shouldn’t make significant changes to the comic book source material. This has certainly happened in the past, with key changes like Tony Stark becoming Ultron’s father or the Mandarin being completely reinterpreted in Iron Man 3 and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
Sometimes, characters who play a key role in a comic book story are cut from the film adaptation. Characters like Silver Surfer and Mephisto are a major part of the Infinity Gauntlet comic, but they don’t appear in Avengers: Infinity War. We don’t feel like the film suffered from their absence. It wouldn’t have made much sense for Marvel to include them in the film, and that’s not counting the fact that they didn’t have the film rights to Silver Surfer at the time.
But when it comes to Secret Wars, it’s a lot harder to separate the conflict from Doom himself. The climax of both versions of Secret Wars is about the Avengers, the X-Men, and the FF facing off against a Doom who’s become an all-powerful god. Doom is a fascinating villain in these stories because of his boundless ego. He sees himself as the rightful master of everything, so he just takes power for himself. You can try to make Kang the God Emperor of Battleworld, but it just doesn’t have the same impact as seeing Victor von Doom transform from an everyman into a master of existence. That’s Doom’s trick.
There’s also the fact that Secret Wars 2015 hinges fundamentally on Doom’s flawed personality. For all his incredible power, Doom is a deeply damaged man. His hatred for Reed Richards is balanced by the fact that Doom covets Reed’s family. One of the first things he does after creating Battleworld is brainwash Susan Storm and her children into becoming his own, loving family.
And as mentioned above, Doom, for all his amazing power, proves completely incapable of healing his shattered face. It’s not so much a lack of skill as it is a reflection of his own self-loathing and inner doubt. Doom may crown himself God Emperor, but that doesn’t mean he can fill the gaping void in his soul. In the end, he fails because he wants to fail.
That’s something that was missing from the MCU’s version of the Infinity Gauntlet story. In terms of motivations, the MCU’s Thanos is quite different from the source material. The MCU’s Thanos is obsessed with creating balance and preventing life from growing out of control. The comic book Thanos is in love with the physical embodiment of Death, and every act of killing is a tribute to his beloved. He also deeply hates himself and self-sabotages, a fact that proves to be his downfall in the Infinity Gauntlet.
In Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, we never got the sense that Thanos is a tyrant who hates himself deep down and wants to fail. He feels the weight of his sacrifices, but he sees it all as necessary steps to do what needs to be done. With Doom, Marvel now has the chance to really dig into the psychology of a villain whose power is matched only by his self-hatred. Again, Kang is not the right character for that. Doom is.
Marvel can only do justice to the source material if Doom becomes the central axis of Avengers: Secret Wars. We can continue to wonder and debate about How exactly will Downey play Doctor Doom?But what matters is that we will finally get Doom. That can only be a good thing for the build-up to Avengers: Secret Wars in 2027.
If you want to know more about the future of the MCU, keep up with all the Marvel movies and series in development, and find out why Marvel Studios’ SDCC was a disappointment, check out our list of the best Marvel movies and series in development.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Let him help you sharpen a machete on your intellectual thicket. Following @jschedeen on Twitter.
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