Marvel confirmed this summer that Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars will keep their May 2026 and May 2027 release dates despite speculation that the Avengers movies in the Multiverse Saga might see delays following last year’s strikes. The Jonathan Majors accusations were also a potential cause for postponing the conclusion of the saga.
Kevin Feige made the best of the situation and delivered a massive surprise. Not only are the Russo brothers going to direct the movies, but Robert Downey Jr. will return. He won’t come back as Iron Man, at least not officially. He’ll play Doctor Doom, the big villain of both Doomsday and Secret Wars.
I hope this Doctor Doom version is actually a variant of Iron Man from the multiverse, and Marvel is just cleverly disguising the comeback of the MCU’s now-dead Iron Man. But there’s no leak to support this theory, and we’ll have to wait for plot spoilers to see if there’s any hope to see Iron Man return.
That said, there is one Secret Wars spoiler that we can all see coming. We don’t need the movie to end to determine whether RDJ will stay in the MCU as Doctor Doom. An insider has some information on that, and it’s exactly what you think. But I’ll warn you that minor spoilers might follow below.
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Whether you love spoilers or not, if you’re a fan of the MCU, you probably see where Doomsday and Secret Wars are going. The two Avengers movies will probably follow the same overall playbook as Infinity War and Endgame in the previous Saga.
Marvel might as well have called them Infinity War 2 and Endgame 2. The Avengers teams are different, the stakes are different, and probably much larger, but the story will play out similarly.
The Avengers will lose badly in Doomsday but prevail in Secret Wars. Sure, there will be deaths and plot twists to make the two movies different from Infinity War and Endgame, but the path will be similar.
Knowing all that will absolutely not ruin the Doomsday and Secret Wars experience. I expect both movies to be amazing, and I can’t wait to watch them in theaters.
This gets me to the Secret Wars spoiler hiding in plain sight. By the end of Secret Wars, Doctor Doom has to die. There’s no other way around it. RDJ is playing a villain who probably thinks he’s a hero, saving the multiverse. However, we’re following the Earth-616’s superheroes, and that’s the team that needs to prevail.
Also, let’s face it: Marvel can’t really hope to keep RDJ around as Doctor Doom after Avengers 6. It would be too massive a financial burden. And Downey Jr. will probably want to do other things before Marvel inevitably calls upon him again to play some Marvel character.
Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man in the climactic Avengers: Endgame scene. Image source: Marvel Studios
Insider Alex Perez, who is often accurate about MCU secrets, tackled the fate of RDJ’s Doctor Doom in a new Q&A session.
A fan asked the insider whether RDJ’s Doctor Doom will continue to exist in whatever timeline results from the events in Doomsday and Secret Wars. Perez hinted that RDJ won’t stick around. The villain role would go to someone else instead:
I don’t really have an answer on that for you, but I don’t think RDJ’s Doom will stick around for long. Doom might come back with the reset, but I suspect it might be a new actor. And they won’t use Doom for a bit.
That seems more like speculation than fact, but Perez is probably on the right track. It seems unlikely for this Doctor Doom version to survive Secret Wars, let alone appear again.
Separately, Perez also addressed the MCU’s soft reboot that will happen once Secret Wars ends. That’s going to be needed as the Fantastic Four and X-Men will have to be part of the MCU after Secret Wars. That’s another spoiler that’s safe to know even before seeing the final Avengers movies.
Perez said he doesn’t have specifics to share, but he mentioned older tidbits on how Marvel planned to deal with the fallout of Doctor Doom essentially attacking the multiverse:
I don’t really understand how it’s going to work just yet. I think it’s just going to be a new continuity and new iteration of the universe where it all starts from scratch, but not really. Like if I had to explain what I was told previously, it’s like, nothing happened, and they will continue on with their lives, but something did happen. A new iteration of the Multiverse exists, and some changes will be added in, which will have ramifications later on. I wouldn’t be surprised if no one remembered what happened except a few characters like Doctor Strange or Deadpool.
If this is still accurate, the MCU should get a lot richer when it comes to characters. It’ll also be easier for Marvel to recast characters down the line. I wouldn’t be surprised to see new actors for Iron Man and, especially, Doctor Doom.
