Note: Be aware there are spoilers for “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” in the article below.
Galactus, a skyscraper-sized, planet-eating cosmic being, may be the primary antagonist of “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” but no villain looms larger in the Marvel blockbuster than Doctor Doom (Robert Downey Jr.). This is despite the fact that there is only one brief passing reference to him early in the film, during a United Nations-style meeting when director Matt Shakman slowly pans his camera across the empty seats reserved for the ambassadors of Latveria, the fictional country that Doom rules in the comics.
Even when Doom does appear in the film’s mid-credits scene, viewers only see his cloaked back for a handful of seconds as he kneels in front of a naive, ultra-powerful 4-year-old Franklin Richards. The villain’s extremely brief, dialogue-free cameo is a clear nod toward next year’s “Avengers: Doomsday,” which will pit the Fantastic Four, Avengers, New Avengers, Wakandans and the X-Men of the 2000s against Downey Jr.’s Doom in a multiversal conflict that will only conclude in 2027’s “Avengers: Secret Wars.”
But rather than increase viewers’ anticipation for “Avengers: Doomsday,” “Fantastic Four” has only further highlighted just how thoroughly Marvel has failed to properly set viewers up for “Doomsday.” Many hoped “Fantastic Four” would help Marvel do that, but the latest MCU release has not solved the studio’s biggest “Avengers: Doomsday” problem.
Marvel’s New Thanos
Doctor Doom is being primed to be the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s new Thanos (Josh Brolin), i.e., a crossover-level bad guy capable of taking on all of the multimedia franchise’s heroes. As any comics reader will tell you, Doom is a perfect character to fill that kind of role. He is formidable, charismatic, compelling, dastardly and conniving with delusions of god-like grandeur that arguably rival Thanos’. The problem is that moviegoers have no idea who the MCU’s version of Doom is, what his place in the world is, what he wants, who he cares about, or even what his powers are.
No one, frankly, knows anything about Robert Downey Jr.’s Victor Von Doom, other than that the “Iron Man” actor is playing him and that he will likely be a multiversal variant of Tony Stark. (That latter assumption is just an educated guess for the time being, nothing more.) Compare that to how much viewers had already learned about Thanos before he took center stage in “Avengers: Infinity War.” Sure, they may not have known that he wanted to erase half of the universe’s populace due to overpopulation concerns, but viewers knew almost everything else that they needed to know about the character.
They knew he coveted the Infinity Stones, that he was a feared, powerful cosmic titan with entire militaries at his disposal and that he had cultivated difficult, abusive relationships with his adopted daughters, Gamora (Zoe Saldaña) and Nebula (Karen Gillan). Marvel’s work setting Thanos up in “The Avengers,” “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Avengers: Age of Ultron” paid off. Viewers’ knowledge of the character, his goals and his personal relationships made it so that Marvel did not have to waste time setting any of that up again in “Avengers: Infinity War.” The studio could, instead, explore the villain’s motivations and give his actions the space they needed to land with maximum impact.
Even more so than Thanos, Doctor Doom is a character defined by his relationships — particularly those with Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal) and the Fantastic Four — and his status. Viewers need to know Doom’s powers, his origins, his goals and his beliefs in order for him to emerge as the compelling live-action character he very much can be. (It wouldn’t hurt to know what kind of a leader he is to the people of Latveria, either.) Right now, all Marvel fans know about the studio’s interpretation of Doom is that he exists in the same alternate universe as the Fantastic Four and that he is interested in Franklin Richards.
Marvel will have to explore all of these facets of Doom’s personality and past in “Avengers: Doomsday,” and that puts the film in a difficult position. Not only will it need to introduce viewers to its larger-than-life villain for the first time, but it will also have to set in motion the complex, multiversal events that lead to “Secret Wars” and reintroduce and bring together an entire trove’s worth of past big-screen Marvel heroes. That latter step is further complicated by the fact that Marvel has done very little work over the past six years to establish any kind of status quo among the MCU’s remaining heroes.
No one really knows which heroes are still active in the MCU or who will actually be present on Earth to combat Doom when he arrives. “Avengers: Doomsday” could spend its opening minutes addressing those questions, but it will also have to answer even more about its eponymous villain.
“The Fantastic Four: First Steps” is now playing in theaters. “Avengers: Doomsday” is slated to make its big-screen debut on Dec. 18, 2026.
