5 Ways Avengers: Doomsday Will Be Different From The Kang Dynasty

Marvel is hoping to recreate the double whammy of Infinity War and Endgame with the double whammy of Doomsday and Secret Wars, but it’s an uphill struggle, because we know this wasn’t the plan. The rollout of Infinity War and Endgame felt totally organic, but we know that Doomsday is Plan B. The fifth Avengers film was initially announced as The Kang Dynasty way back in 2022.

The Multiverse Saga had been building up Kang the Conqueror as the next Thanos-level big bad for a couple of years at that point — ever since Jonathan Majors debuted as “He Who Remains” in Loki’s season 1 finale — but, after some unforeseen behind-the-scenes complications, Majors was fired, the Kang storyline was scrapped, and Marvel was left with a half-developed Avengers movie built around a character they could no longer use.

Now that we’re starting to see posters and trailers and cast interviews, we’re getting some idea of what kind of movie Avengers: Doomsday will be. So, how different is it from what we knew about The Kang Dynasty? Were they able to salvage any of the original Avengers 5, or did they have to start entirely from scratch?

Doctor Doom Replaced Kang As The Main Villain

The biggest difference between Doomsday and The Kang Dynasty, as their titles would suggest, is the villain. Both movies’ plots would’ve vaguely revolved around different teams of Avengers coming together from different universes to fight a massive multiversal threat, but the threat itself is different. The Kang Dynasty was going to pit Earth’s Mightiest Heroes against Kang, but Marvel shot themselves in the foot when they not only cast Majors as Kang, but made him all the different Kang variants.

When Majors landed in legal trouble with allegations of domestic violence, there were all kinds of rumors about what Marvel would do if he was found guilty. After he was convicted of assault and harassment, instead of recasting the role of Kang, Marvel decided to abandon the Kang storyline altogether and pivot to a new big bad mid-saga. So, Avengers: The Kang Dynasty became Avengers: Doomsday, and Doctor Doom was hastily brought in to replace Kang as the main villain.

The Russo Brothers Replaced Destin Daniel Cretton As Director

Destin Daniel Cretton was originally lined up to direct The Kang Dynasty, but he ended up dropping out to focus on other Marvel projects. He created Wonder Man, he directed Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and he’s still developing the long-gestating Shang-Chi sequel. He didn’t have time to give an Avengers movie the attention it needed on top of that, especially an Avengers movie with so much riding on it (and so much chaos behind the scenes).

After Cretton dropped out, Marvel managed to get Anthony and Joe Russo — the dream team behind The Winter Soldier, Civil War, Infinity War, and Endgame — to return to the MCU and take over the next two Avengers films. Their own career outside the MCU wasn’t going so hot, after The Gray Man and The Electric State both turned out to be very expensive nothing burgers, so the Russos arguably needed Marvel as much as Marvel needed them at that point.

The Russos were the perfect directors for the bigger ensemble films, like Civil War and Infinity War, because they cut their teeth directing sitcoms like Arrested Development and Community, where they similarly had to balance a massive cast of characters. Hopefully, they can work that magic on Doomsday, because this might be the MCU’s most overstuffed movie yet (and that’s saying a lot).

Jeff Loveness' Script Was Rewritten By Michael Waldron & Stephen McFeely

Jeff Loveness, the Rick and Morty writer who penned the script for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, was hired to write Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, but he’s not credited on Avengers: Doomsday. Michael Waldron, the creator of Loki and writer of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and Stephen McFeely, the co-writer of all the best Captain America and Avengers movies, are both credited on Doomsday, but they didn’t work together.

Waldron was hired to replace Loveness before Majors was fired, and then McFeely came in to completely overhaul the script after Marvel decided to move away from Kang entirely. McFeely’s involvement is a very promising sign. His usual co-writer, Christopher Markus, isn’t involved, but his and McFeely’s writing was just as integral to the success of Infinity War and Endgame as the Russos’ direction.

When you’re dealing with a big ensemble like that, it can be tough to give each character their own agency and their own distinctive voice (Joss Whedon often flattened them all into one-note archetypes speaking in soundbites), but Markus and McFeely made it look easy. They could have Iron Man, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, and the Guardians of the Galaxy all talking over each other, without a single character feeling like they’re being sidelined or a single line of dialogue feeling out of the character’s voice.

Hopefully, Markus wasn’t the one doing the heavy lifting with all that stuff, and McFeely can recreate it in Doomsday. There will probably be more characters jammed into this movie than any other Marvel movie ever made, and they all need a voice.

When Marvel decided to pivot from Kang to Doom, they didn’t have time to properly build up the threat of Doom. If they’d known they were doing Doom from the beginning of the Multiverse Saga, they could’ve done a Fantastic Four movie with Doom as the villain and included a couple of post-credits scenes to specifically set up the story of Doomsday.

But they didn’t have time for any of that, so they needed a shortcut to build up some hype for Doom, and that’s when they called Robert Downey, Jr. After getting the perfect ending as Tony Stark in Endgame, and going on to win an Oscar for Oppenheimer, Downey was stunt-cast as Doom in a desperate attempt to claw back some cultural relevance. When Marvel retooled Avengers 5, they turned it into RDJ’s MCU comeback.

Chris Evans Is Back As Steve Rogers, Too

Downey isn’t the only O.G. Avenger who got a perfect ending in Endgame and is coming back for some cheap nostalgia points just seven years later in Doomsday. Chris Evans is coming back, too, and he’s actually reprising his role as Steve Rogers. Now that we’ve got a bit more context for what drew Evans back to play Steve again, it sounds like this wasn’t part of the plan for The Kang Dynasty.

Evans said that Marvel had been asking him to come back since he left, and he heard a dozen pitches for his MCU return, but he didn’t commit to it until he heard the Russo brothers’ Avengers: Doomsday pitch. So, presumably, even if Marvel wanted Evans for The Kang Dynasty, they weren’t able to convince him, or never got to the stage of making his deal.