Avengers: Doomsday Concept Art Teases Lots of Multiversal Wackiness

Movies

Marvel continues to limp along through Phase… 6? I think we’re on Phase 6, unless we’re still on Phase 5; it barely matters anymore since the post-Endgame Phases of the MCU are arbitrarily drawn rather than naturally forming based on the storytelling (which doesn’t exist anymore). Whatever the case, Marvel kind of sucks now, and the numbers increasingly suggest people are over the MCU, but regardless, there remains speculation about the next Avengers movies, Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars. Like the rest of the MCU in recent years, the Avengers films have been in a state of flux, particularly after the new overarching villain, Kang the Conqueror, was scrapped following actor Jonathan Majors’ legal troubles. At last year’s San Diego Comic-Con, Marvel announced that what was once called Avengers: The Kang Dynasty would now be called Avengers: Doomsday and that Kang would be replaced by Doctor Doom, to be played by Robert Downey Jr. However, much is not known about these movies, like what the stories will be (the comics these movies are named after aren’t always reliable sources) and which characters will make up the Avengers. But now, we have a few big clues, as concept designer Mushk Rizvi has released some concept art for Avengers: Doomsday. (He has since taken them down, possibly at Disney/Marvel’s behest, but they’re everywhere now.) You can see those below, courtesy of X account Marvel Updates (these could be construed as spoilers, so don’t look if you don’t want to know anything):

Concept art of Battleworld for #AvengersDoomsday

(Source:https://t.co/B9fBVzUqnQ) pic.twitter.com/EwWgsez0ux

— Marvel Updates (@Marvel_Updates5) March 1, 2025

Concept art of the Young Avengers in #FantasticFourFirstSteps

(Source:https://t.co/B9fBVzUqnQ) pic.twitter.com/ERcAXAylhD

— Marvel Updates (@Marvel_Updates5) March 1, 2025

Well, that’s interesting. Some of these images have potential, while some spell doom (as opposed to Doom). The worst one is obviously the young upstarts from the Disney+ shows sitting around a bar annoying Wong and Star-Lord. It looks like they’re going to attempt to make these characters a thing on the big screen despite the reception of their TV shows and the abysmal box office of The Marvels. Can you imagine Chris Pratt having to share the screen with these people and not being able to mock them like he should? Star-Lord actually shows up in two images, the other being a hangout session with Vision in his new white guise. That could be fun, like Peter is trying to show Vision how to take it easy and veg out on the couch. This also follows logically from the end of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, where Star-Lord came back to Earth; maybe he’ll run into Vision before Doomsday – like in the Vision TV series. Elsewhere, it looks like there’s a new Black Panther, and since it’s not Shuri, I assume this is a recast T’Challa, whether in our world or from another Earth in the multiverse. Depending on who’s playing him, that’s good; they should have recast the character from the beginning. The only problem with this is the same problem the multiversal replacements always create: this will not be the T’Challa we know but a variant because these idiots killed off our T’Challa. This is why Deadpool made fun of the multiverse.

But the other two pictures are the biggies (unless you really love those Disney+ shows). One shows the Hulk and She-Hulk (okay, she’s not interesting; she’s just depressing) talking to someone I assume is Skaar, the Hulk’s son, as they traverse a Medieval-looking world. The other shows Doctor Doom’s throne room, where Reed Richards is chained up on the floor – being held by Yelena – while Doctor Strange observes and Doom is surrounded by a woman and child that most are assuming are Sue Storm/Richards and Franklin Richards, Sue and Reed’s son. What’s going on? This appears to be Battleworld, the alternate universe created in Secret Wars. However, these movies are not going to be based on the original Secret Wars from the 80s – you know, the one everyone liked – but the one from 2015, because Marvel Studios appears to believe comic books have only existed for fifteen years. The later one deals with the multiverse, so I guess you could argue it fits better at this stage of the MCU, but it’s still a missed opportunity. At any rate, the image with the Hulk and his family is speculated as being a place in the 2015 Battleworld called Greenland, in which gamma irradiation has turned everyone into a Hulk. And the white coloring on Doctor Doom’s armor as he sits on that throne suggests that this is God Emperor Doom, the massively powerful version of Doom in the more recent Secret Wars, while Doctor Strange may be Sheriff Strange, the 2015 Secret Wars variant of the character.

Keep in mind that all of this is speculation and that these concepts could end up being ditched before Avengers: Doomsday films – although we’re getting close to production on the film, so I doubt they’ll be changed completely. I also wonder if someone misspoke, and these are from Secret Wars and not Doomsday, especially since the movies are supposed to be filmed back-to-back. Regardless, this feels like Marvel is moving too far ahead too quickly. They haven’t even introduced Doctor Doom yet, and they’re already jumping into the second Secret Wars and God Emperor Doom? It would have been nice if they’d built up that character – one of the most important in the Marvel Universe – just a tiny bit before reaching this stage of his evolution. On the other hand, I think this explains how they’re going to have Robert Downey Jr. play Doom; these characters, or at least some of them, will be variants on Battleworld, so this version of Tony Stark will be Victor Von Doom, or something to that effect. I still think it’s desperate and stupid and a complete waste of Doctor Doom, but I suppose that’s how they’ll justify it. It makes me wonder which of them are the real characters from the MCU. I’d say Doctor Strange and Yelena are almost certainly variants because they appear to be serving Doom. Sue Storm and Franklin Richards are probably variants, too, although I suspect that may be the real Reed Richards because the temptation to mine the shock of Reed seeing his family with Doom is too dramatically rich to resist. (Again, though, it would have been nice if these characters had more of a history in the MCU.) Actually, I think I have a theory: perhaps everyone from the MCU proper is a Battleworld variant, warped by, presumably, the multiverse incursions that turned the MCU into Battleworld, and the only “real” versions of the characters are the ones from outside the MCU that are rumored to appear, like Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool, Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man, and Pedro Pascal’s Mr. Fantastic. Then, it would be up to those characters to set things right, giving Deadpool a chance to joke about how he really is Marvel Jesus. But that’s just a guess; I have no idea what’s going on. I do, however, subscribe to the notion that ComicBookMovie.com suggested – that Marvel wanted these to leak so they could drum up interest for Doomsday and Secret Wars after Captain America: Brave New World tanked. If so, I think they succeeded; whether the movies will remains to be seen.

Let us know what you think of the Avengers: Doomsday concept art in the comments!

***

Get a META PC today; use code “199” to save on all purchases!

If you want to know what kind of political leanings movies have or just talk about cinema, check out the movie ratings community Criticless.

Get Your Geeks + Gamers merch here!