What do the Avengers: Doomsday teasers really mean? Doctor Doom expert decodes every clue

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Marvel has released four short previews for the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday movie, bringing back popular heroes like Steve Rogers, Thor, and the X-Men. However, many fans are upset that Robert Downey Jr., who plays Doctor Doom, hasn’t appeared in any of the trailers so far.

Or has he?

By paying close attention to details within the Doom games, interpreting subtle clues, and accepting some questionable calculations, we can get a clear picture of what’s coming next. It’s like finding a hidden figure in a complex image – the hints are there, revealing both Doom’s plans and when we’ll learn more about them.

I specialize in the study of Doctor Doom – I’m actually the world’s only academic expert, with a PhD and a published book on the subject. I’ve used my extensive knowledge of Doctor Doom comics to analyze all the clues released so far for the Avengers: Doomsday event.

The Child-catcher

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The first trailer confirms Chris Evans will reprise his role as Captain America, Steve Rogers. It shows him arriving at a house where he’s caring for a baby – possibly his and Peggy Carter’s child, or perhaps his first client in a new job as a babysitter.

The latest trailer for the new Thor movie really got me! Seeing Chris Hemsworth as Thor marching towards what looks like a huge battle was intense. But then it cut to this really sweet flashback – him and his adopted daughter, Love, just hanging out at home in adorable matching pajamas. It was such a lovely contrast and a surprisingly touching moment.

Things seem promising so far, but past experience suggests a movie featuring Doctor Doom and children probably won’t be a heartwarming story about family life or good habits.

Doctor Doom has a history of creating backups of himself. In a 1970 story, he pretended to have a son, but it was actually a clone intended as a new body for his brain. Years later, he attempted a similar scheme with a boy named Kristoff, giving him a normal childhood before erasing his mind and replacing it with a recording of Doom’s brain patterns, effectively turning Kristoff into a living duplicate.

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Doctor Doom has certainly never received a ‘Best Dad Ever’ mug.

Another important character connected to Doctor Doom is Franklin Richards, who appears with him in a scene after the credits of Fantastic Four: First Steps. In the comics, these two have a complicated history, including an instance where Doom kidnapped Franklin and attempted to trade him to Mephisto—Marvel’s equivalent of the devil—to save his mother’s soul. As with many of Doom’s plans, this one failed.

Sacha Baron Cohen recently played Mephisto in the Ironheart series, marking the character’s first appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This makes it likely he’ll show up in the upcoming Doomsday movie too. Given the current storylines focusing on superhero children, it’s possible Doom is collecting them for a sinister purpose – perhaps another deal with Mephisto?

Across The Multiverse

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The third trailer doesn’t feature any children, and it’s set in the former X-Men headquarters. However, it does offer another hint about Doctor Doom and his connection to the multiverse.

The X-Men’s story is famously confusing, both in the comics and on film. All the time travel and alternate realities make it really difficult to follow without taking a break to sort things out.

There have been many different actors play Professor X, like James McAvoy in First Class and Patrick Stewart in films like Logan and Doctor Strange And The Multiverse of Madness. This preview shows him wearing the outfit from Days of Future Past. We also see James Marsden as Cyclops, sporting the same costume as seen in the X-Men ’97 animated series, which is set in a separate universe.

The idea of multiple universes existing in the same space is explored in Marvel’s Secret Wars comic series. In the story, Doctor Doom saves the multiverse from dangerous alien invaders by combining the best parts of different universes into one planet, called Battleworld.

The comic book event ‘Secret Wars’ is known for bringing together different versions of characters, similar to how we saw multiple Spider-Men in the movie ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’. The upcoming ‘Avengers: Secret Wars’ movie will likely be based on this storyline, and fans can expect a similar kind of team-up. It’s a sequel to ‘Avengers: Endgame’, so hopefully it delivers the same exciting experience.

Okay, so here’s the deal: Doctor Doom is back, and predictably, things go south fast. It’s not enough for him to save the multiverse from alien invaders – he lets it all go to his head and decides he deserves to be worshipped as a god! Seriously. That means a team of heroes, traveling in the Fantastic Four’s spaceship and jumping between dimensions, have to take him down. It’s a classic Doom story – power corrupts, and someone needs to stop him before his ego destroys everything.

The War Between The Land And The Sea

You might recognize this idea – we previously saw a spaceship journeying between dimensions, flown by The Fantastic Four, in the closing scenes of Thunderbolts (or The New Avengers, depending on how Marvel presents it).

Okay, so the latest trailer kicks off with a quick glimpse of the Fantastic Four’s ship, the Excelsior, entering the main Marvel universe. Then, things really get interesting – we see Ben Grimm, the Thing, meeting Shuri and M’Baku, clearly gearing up for a huge battle. And when I say huge, I mean huge – they’re facing off against a massive army of Atlanteans. It’s a setup that promises an epic showdown.

This army is led by Prince Namor, who is our next Doom clue.

Doctor Doom and Namor have a complicated relationship as rivals and reluctant allies, dating back to 1962 in Fantastic Four #6 – only the second time Doom appeared in comics. They nearly defeated the Fantastic Four by launching the entire Baxter Building into space. However, as usual, Doom betrayed Namor, leaving both of them stranded in orbit.

Their relationship was a repeating pattern of friendship and betrayal, so beloved by comic book fans that it even spawned its own series, Super-Villain Team-Up, in the 1970s. Ever since, Namor and Doctor Doom rarely appear without one inevitably disappointing the other. While they haven’t crossed paths yet in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s likely we’ll see them team up and then fall out again in future stories.

The Numbers Game

Even with all the hints that Doom is coming, we can’t really know his plans until we see Robert Downey Jr. as the character. We need a full trailer showing him in costume – and it looks like we might get one soon.

Hints about the game’s secrets are hidden at the very end of each of the four trailers. Each trailer concludes with a countdown clock leading up to the December 18th release of Avengers: Doomsday. Interestingly, the clock briefly malfunctions in every trailer, displaying a unique series of numbers, which has sparked a lot of online discussion and theories about their meaning.

The initial trailer featured a quick glimpse of the characters ‘1e 24ber 02020’, which fans have speculated about in many ways. Some think it’s a timecode referencing specific lines from the movie Avengers: Endgame, while others believe it hints at an event that happened on Christmas Eve five years prior. Theories also suggest it could be a web page code or even a humorous ‘best before’ date for superhero-themed food.

All the proposed explanations have overlooked the simplest solution: the numbers likely represent their corresponding positions on the countdown clock. For example, ‘1’ indicates the months remaining, ’24’ and ’17’ show the days, and so on.

Let’s simplify things by assuming each month has 28 days. If we calculate the time passed since the release of each trailer – counting days, months, hours, and minutes – it all leads to one date: Sunday, February 8th, 2026 – the date of the Super Bowl.

As a huge Marvel fan, I’m expecting the first real trailer for Avengers: Doomsday to drop during the Super Bowl halftime show. They’ve always used the Super Bowl to premiere big trailers, so it feels like a pretty safe bet!

Okay, so based on everything I’ve seen, the new Doom movie is shaping up to be absolutely wild. We’re talking a massive cast of characters pulled from all corners of the multiverse, and I’m not kidding when I say there’s a rumor of a demonic version of Sacha Baron Cohen’s Ali G making an appearance! Expect plenty of betrayals, it’s going to be a real rollercoaster. But, if my sources are wrong, well… it seems we’re getting a surprisingly domestic side to the superheroes – think Captain America dishing out fatherly advice and Thor rocking some seriously comfy pajamas. It’s a huge tonal shift either way!

Authors

Mark Hibbett

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2026-01-09 16:36