Four Reasons God Emperor Doom Has to Be the Final Scene of Avengers: Doomsday

If Doomsday ends with Doctor Doom as simply another sharply dressed villain who says a lot of stuff, shoots some energy blasts, and gets beaten in the end fight, then Marvel has pulled off the most expensive comic book movie flop of all time. And this isn’t figurative language. Variety reported that Marvel Studios is paying brothers Anthony and Joe Russo $80 million for both movies, while Downey’s pay alone is over $100 million. Disney/Marvel isn’t commenting on these numbers, so consider it a rumor, but the direction is unmistakable: nobody writes a check like that to a dude they are going to beat up.

So what is the purpose of this money? It certainly isn’t buying a villain; it is buying a god.

Marvel has absolutely no chance of getting away with ignoring this problem. From Joseph Culp to Julian McMahon to Toby Kebbell, none of the previous incarnations have worked, making Doom smaller each time and robbing him of the throne of Latveria, intelligence, magic, and tragic dignity. The 2015 reboot has distanced itself even further from the original concept, which was a huge mistake, given how many flaws Doom’s costume in this reboot has gotten. Also, production problems have made Kebbell practically unable to play Doom.

Three failures, three tries, yet the mistake isn’t in the actors: nobody was willing to write a story that befits a character of such caliber.

During Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribić’s 2015 event known as “Incursion,” the Beyonders try to collapse the entire Multiverse through a failsafe known as Molecule Man, destroying universe after universe. Doom, however, won’t stand for it. He stops them, takes their power, and rebuilds reality as Battleworld from the remains of destroyed universes. He rules it as God Emperor Doom until the few surviving heroes manage to defeat him. Thus, he becomes a literal god and is being worshiped by his people. He keeps ruling over an order based on the lie that very few people notice.

This is the real character, not some rival inventor who hates Reed Richards. This is someone who sees the coming destruction of all existence, understands that he can make the job better than the universe itself can, and proves his righteousness.

Doomsday comes out on December 18, 2026, while Secret Wars happens on December 17, 2027. That’s an entire year of waiting time. That gap cannot be filled with a failed plan cliffhanger. It should be filled with a new reality.

The end of Doomsday with Doom stealing the power, sealing the remains of existence into Battleworld, and ascending to the throne will do three things at once. First, it will legitimize the use of Downey for the part, as only a character like Robert Downey Jr. can convince you that he became a God in the last minutes of the movie. Second, it will give an existential loss the meaning the entire Multiverse Saga struggles to achieve. Finally, it will give Secret Wars something the storyline desperately needs: the heroes will awaken in his reality, under his conditions.

Marvel already seems to be heading there. Incursions, the five-part publishing project starting November 2026, obviously references the chaos preceding the 2015 Hickman and Ribić event that Marvel uses to build the movies’ plot. Furthermore, Downey is helping create the character, offering him a backstory and suggesting costume design. It is hardly the approach one takes to writing an ordinary villain.

Of course, people may say this idea is far-fetched and that Doomsday’s rise should take longer in movies to be believable. I understand the instinct and can offer a simple response: a rushed victory may come too suddenly for Doomsday not to show the intelligence and willpower of its main villain. Moreover, a cliffhanger with nothing to support the audience’s interest for a year may be considered unwise.

However, the MCU doesn’t have time to create anything like this anymore; they have two movies and need to do two things: introduce Doom and end the saga. Only the true Doom deserves those two things and the money invested in him. Only the one who steals all the power and makes the characters fight to take it back from him is worth the wait.

Using Downey as simply a bad guy would be a waste of money. But bringing God in would be one of the MCU’s best decisions since 2019.