It's Official, We Got Avengers: Doomsday All Wrong

There has been a lot of discussion about the build-up to, or lack thereof, Avengers: Doomsday, but we've got it all wrong. Of all Marvel's upcoming movies, Avengers: Doomsday is the most important. Other installments like Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Daredevil: Born Again season 3 are expected to mostly stand alone within the wider MCU, but Avengers: Doomsday is the beginning of the end of the Multiverse Saga.Especially after Jonathan Majors' assault charges saw the Kang the Conqueror setup abandoned, Avengers: Doomsday not only needs to work on its own but alsoas a compelling narrative redirect.

The trailer for Avengers: Doomsday offered the first look at this attempt by Marvel Studios, and it was mostly successful. That said, it has still raised discussions about whether the MCU has adequately built up to Doctor Doom's arrival and the two Avengers movies to come. These conversations are mainly a result of the success of the Infinity Saga in the MCU, which culminated with Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. If there is one thing most Marvel fans can agree on, it is that Thanos' brief MCU reign was teased effectively with an excellent payoff.

Now, many are worrying that the same will not be the case for Doctor Doom, who has only been hinted at in 2025's Fantastic Four: First Steps, a year before Avengers: Doomsday's release. When looking at the Infinity Saga at a glance, these worries seem justified. However, when digging deeper, it becomes clear that the perception of the Infinity Saga has become skewed regarding Thanos and how much he was teased, thus making Doom's MCU introduction less of an issue. To point out the obvious, the Infinity Saga was called, well, the Infinity Saga, not the Thanos Saga.

Before Avengers: Infinity War's release, Thanos had around two minutes of screen time in the preceding 18 MCU movies. Already, Doom has had around a minute of screen time in the post-credits scene for The Fantastic Four: First Steps, with the Latveria nods in the movie adding to that. When boiled down to these numbers, the discussion about whether Doom has been teased as much as Thanos seems less pressing. Instead, what made Avengers: Infinity War work so well was the setup of the Infinity Stones.

The Infinity Saga Was Never About Thanos

The Infinity Saga, and, indeed, Avengers: Infinity War, were both named after the Infinity Stones, which were teased much more heavily throughout the MCU's first three phases than Thanos himself. Several of the films from even Marvel's earliest MCU phase established the Infinity Stones as massive parts of the wider universe. The only aspect of Thanos' character that the two minutes of screen time he received before Avengers: Infinity War set-up was his desire to obtain them. In The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Doom's interest in Franklin Richards and knowledge of the multiverse is very similar.

With this in mind, the argument that Thanos was endlessly included in various projects with a lot of screen time to set up his eventual role in Avengers: Infinity War is misguided. Thanos was simply the vehicle that ushered the important parts of the Infinity Saga, the eponymous Infinity Stones themselves, to the fore. In Avengers: Doomsday, this is all Doctor Doom is, but for the Multiverse Saga's main focus: the multiverse itself. Since Avengers: Endgame, the multiverse has been a focus of eleven projects, with Doom's role in Avengers: Doomsday simply paying that off, not his specific character.

Doom Doesn’t Need To Be Teased & Thanos Proves It

Building on this, Thanos himself further solidifies that Doom isn't what needs to be set up before Avengers: Doomsday, while the multiverse is. Before Avengers: Infinity War, no one was labeling Thanos as the best MCU villain. It was primarily the knowledge of those who have read the comics and how that knowledge was passed on to wider MCU audiences that built most of the hype around Thanos. Yes, the brief teases of his eventual role added to that, but not in any meaningful ways; most of Thanos' pre-Infinity War scenes were used to build hype, not character, and some now don't even make sense.

The clip of Thanos from The Avengers that shows him grabbing an Infinity Gauntlet from Odin's secret vault on Asgard was quickly ignored by subsequent movies. Beyond that, Thanos was just a big bully with no true depth, and only his aura from the comic books to build hype. Only during Avengers: Infinity War was Thanos given any kind of depth; the movie delved into his backstory, his home life, his family issues, and his motivations for using the Infinity Stones, which, on top of his badass moments, made him an all-time great MCU villain.

This proves that it is not up to previous movies to tease the eventual villain of another, as it was Avengers: Infinity War that made Thanos and his prior appearances truly great, not the other way around. With Doom, Avengers: Doomsday can do exactly the same. Doom is an even deeper character with more complexity than Thanos in Marvel Comics, giving the MCU much more room to delve into him as a person.

What adds to this, and supports the idea that Doom could become greater than Thanos without the teases the latter had, is Avengers: Secret Wars. Both comic book runs of that name centered on Doom massively, whereas Thanos, despite having such a big role in Avengers: Infinity War, was only in the opening moments and final fight sequence of Avengers: Endgame. By the end of both Doomsday and Secret Wars, it is highly likely that Doom has more screen time than Thanos in the MCU, which, as the latter proved, can lead to a truly excellent villain.

The Multiverse Has Been Teased Even More Than The Infinity Stones

Finally, what makes all of this discussion about Thanos vs. Doom and Infinity War vs. Doomsday all the more unnecessary is that the multiverse has been teased even more than the Infinity Stones. In the 18 movies before Avengers: Infinity War, the Infinity Stones only played a big, integral part in eight of them. The same cannot be said for the Multiverse Saga, which, project-by-project, has included more multiverse set-up than the Infinity Saga had for the Infinity Stones.

Combining the MCU's movies and TV shows of Phase 4 onwards, 11 projects have included the multiverse as a major plot point. Several of these, like Loki, What If...?, and Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, have then had multiple seasons, bumping that number up even higher. This is also not counting something like Thunderbolts*, which included a post-credit scene that will tie directly into Avengers: Doomsday.

Evidently, the Multiverse Saga's main focus has been included in many Marvel projects over the last several years. Given that the multiverse and incursions will be the primary driving plot point of Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars, not Doom himself, this renders the argument at the heart of this piece inert. As already mentioned, Doom is just the vehicle to explore the climax of the Multiverse Saga in Avengers: Doomsday, just as Thanos was for the Infinity Saga's main focus. With that view in mind, the upcoming villain did not need to be teased more at all.