Did The Avengers Kill Doctor Doom’s Family?

Behind every Doomsday theory lies a question most readers gloss over, but it’s the key. Why would the Incursion, caused by Steve Rogers’ time travel, target Doom’s family and not anyone else from the whole 828 universe?

It’s rather simple: it cannot target anything specific, let alone one person’s spouse and child. The Incursion is a merger of two universes. It isn’t a sniper rifle and won’t bother checking the guest list of the party you are attending. If Steve Rogers traveling back in time managed to create a rift in one universe, he would affect everything there, including Doom and Latveria residents enjoying a good breakfast. Targeting Doom’s family specifically is implausible. Thus, when an event described in the comic or movie is implausible and contradicts the logic of the series, it shouldn’t be explained but questioned instead. There could be a chance that we missed something, that the details are in some other parts of the story that we haven’t read.

Therefore, let me provide my version of the narrative.

Thanos’ universe needed him to win

Let me begin with the difficult truth. Maybe it was meant to be so. In that particular timeline, Thanos had to win; his snap had to hit everyone, and half of the life of the said universe would become ash in exchange. Not because he was right about his actions and the universe had to listen. He was a narcissistic genocidal with his precious rocks. Being morally wrong does not change the fact that you can still be right about the outcomes. So the universe did its math; the debt was repaid, the deal was done.

However, the Avengers reopened that particular file.

Refunds are not the option for the multiverse

That idea gives the theory a solid basis for explaining what happened next. When Hulk turned all those billions of people back from the dust, the balance needed to be done once again. There were too many of them, and even though the balance was repaid for their deaths, it wasn’t possible to give them back. So the multiverse selected some people living somewhere else, in timelines it didn’t even argue with. It chose random people who couldn’t appeal to anything and couldn’t do much to change the destiny the multiverse had assigned them.

One or two of those people were probably Victor Van Dorm’s family.

In this case, only one idea is needed to explain the whole story. It helps explain why one family in the universe disappeared at one moment while everything else in the same universe went as planned. It was neither an attack nor revenge by some villains. This was only a matter of numbers that needed to be subtracted from the ledger while the universe had no other options. That is where it explains Doom’s family’s choice.

It’s why Doom’s anger seems to scale up

Now let me show how beautiful and powerful this version is. It changes the whole nature of the conflict between the two superheroes.

If the Avengers target Doom, and he is mad at one particular person, we have a simple revenge story. Conflict between two people is always simple and predictable.

However, when Doom realizes what is happening, the situation changes drastically. He is now fighting not the individual, but every superhero in the 616 timeline who thought their grief overpowered the universe’s mathematical balance. This includes everyone, including Steve, but also everyone who helped, planned the attack, and cheered. Including every member of the audience, who has cheered too. This is why Doom’s line about taking other people’s lives back in the movie has such an effect. He can seem threatening, but he’s actually making an accusation. He says the truth literally. They had taken some lives that weren’t theirs, and now they must repay that debt. And only he knows about this.

The uncomfortable thing

What is the best thing about that version? It makes the superheroes wrong.

They aren’t wrong, as it could have been foreseen. No villain here, no action that could be easily labeled as an evil one. They are simply wrong in the way that when you have done something good, the consequences are paid by people you wouldn’t have even known about. Endgame is presented as the franchise’s greatest victory. Now this theory turns it into the universe’s biggest debt and hands it to the man with the intellect and will to collect it.

Doom is not the villain of revenge here. He is an auditor.

And the horrifying thing about that is that he might really be right on the facts. He demands that the life be returned. Somebody really owes it.