Fantastic Four post-credits scene: is Franklin Doom's weapon?

I didn't love The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025), starring Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby, the way many people did. But based on its post credits scene, which teases Doctor Doom, I think Franklin Richards is definitely going to be Doom's primary reality warper in Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars. And it's great to have Marvel heavily borrowing from the comics again, because it gives us so much more to talk about.

People can say Disney+ was the MCU's issue, and to some degree it was. But I think the conversation where we look to the comics for clues, and debate what Kevin Feige keeps and what he changes, has been a big part of the MCU's secret sauce. It was missing for a few years, and it came back with a vengeance with Doomsday and Secret Wars. I hope Jonathan Hickman gets his flowers, because he's largely responsible. His Secret Wars comic is crucial for following these films and forming your own theories.

The Avengers: Doomsday script was still being written as it filmed

At the time, Robert Downey Jr. was teasing the comics from a film set where the script was still being written. Rebecca Romijn confirmed at Comic-Con that they were still tinkering with the Doomsday script, so she didn't even know if she was done filming. I hoped she wasn't. I wanted as much of her Mystique as possible.

Who cares if it's last minute? James Gunn talked a lot about not rolling camera until the script was just right, yet people were rallying behind Fantastic Four. It has worked out very well for Feige before when it was all done at the last minute. So I think it's safe to say it will probably, hopefully, work out again. Feige also has two strong safety nets: amazing source material and a heavy dose of nostalgia. The original MCU characters will be caught between past and future, with Fox's X-Men returning alongside the new Fantastic Four and Doom.

Robert Downey Jr.'s Doctor Doom depends on the mask and the Tony Stark face

Doom is himself a throwback, because he's got the face of Tony Stark. Will this controversial Hail Mary casting pay off? I think it depends on two things. The first is how much of the time he keeps his mask on. We have reason to worry, because in our first look at the MCU's Doom, the mask is already off from second one, even though we don't see his face.

There's also a debate over whether he'll even be scarred underneath. In the comics, he's often horribly scarred, which is the whole reason he wears the mask. I suspect that if he does have a scar, it'll be a movie star scar: damaged enough to elicit pity and make you wonder what happened, but not so much that he doesn't still look like Robert Downey Jr.

Does he just happen to look like Tony Stark? Is he a multiverse version of Stark? Did he make himself look that way on purpose? Some people wonder whether he goes to Franklin to fix his face and asks for Stark's. But there's plastic surgery; he doesn't need to waste a reality warper on that. All I've heard is that this Doom will use his similarities to Tony Stark to manipulate the MCU Avengers. The Fantastic Four have no idea who Stark is, though Doom is certainly on Sue's radar.

The MCU's villain problem and why Doom wanted Downey

The second thing is how much of a villain Doom is allowed to be. The MCU, even with this new film, continues to have a villain problem. Villains are either disposed of almost immediately in their first appearance or quickly reformed. First Steps did both: Galactus was stuck in deep space and the Silver Surfer was reformed. That's the MCU playbook. Doom is supposed to be the new Thanos, and I think Thanos was okay, but I still think MCU villains are weak. There's potential for Doom to be their first true multi film villain, and that would be nice.

Aside from buckets of cash, I'm sure it wasn't hard to convince Downey. Doom wears a suit of armor like Iron Man, and he's a master of science and magic. I've pointed out before that whenever Downey saw anyone else succeed in the MCU, he wanted into that space: Captain America's, then Spider-Man's, and now Wanda's and Doctor Strange's. That puts him where he loves to be, at the center of the MCU.

One could describe Secret Wars as a really big version of WandaVision, which was hugely successful. Doom, though, remakes reality not into TV sitcoms but into something like a Game of Thrones novel. That fits, since Latveria is basically a scientifically advanced Westeros, complete with its own Red Keep in his castle. In First Steps we see an empty seat for Latveria at the Future Foundation, and that's it, along with the post credits tease.

In the comics, Doom stole Reed's wife and kids out of jealousy

In Hickman's comic, Doom also stole Reed Richards' wife and kids. "That Jonathan Hickman, it was spicy." And we loved it. But Doom doesn't take them because he's in love with Sue Storm, even if he says so to some degree. He does it because he's jealous of Reed.

In the MCU, at least so far, Reed and Victor have no backstory to build on, and I wonder how they'll deal with that. They can't have Pedro Pascal's Reed confront Doom and expect us all to catch up. The reason it hit so hard in Secret Wars was decades and decades of storytelling.

How Hickman's Secret Wars comic built Battleworld

Marvel's original comics universe is the 616. To help sales, Mark Millar spearheaded the edgier Ultimate line, and I think the greatest thing to come out of it is Miles Morales. Eventually those sales lagged, and Miles was so popular that Marvel wanted him in the regular story. They needed an event to merge the two worlds. Enter Hickman's Secret Wars.

In Hickman's story, the two universes were about to collide and destroy each other. Doom found a way to make himself god and saved who he wanted by remaking both into Battleworld, where he ruled as god emperor over territories, each holding different comic book groups, like the houses in Game of Thrones. Sheriff Strange was his enforcer, with the help of the Thor Corps. Later it's revealed that Molecule Man, who could also manipulate reality, was the engine of Doom's power.

Why Franklin, not Wanda, looks like Doom's reality warper

So the MCU's Doom needs a Molecule Man, and why introduce another character when there are already two reality warpers? I'd hoped it might be Wanda in Doom's basement. Perhaps Doom needs so much power that he needs several. But based on the post credits scene, I think Franklin is definitely going to be his primary reality warper, perhaps because Franklin is a child and Doom feels he'll be easier to manipulate. Wanda, as Agatha found out, is very difficult to control.

Right now Franklin is little more than an inanimate object in First Steps, and I'll be interested to see how he develops. I hope it doesn't take him as long to talk as it's taken Grogu. Doom might play god in Secret Wars, but Franklin truly is a god, as Galactus picks up on in the film.

Who is Franklin Richards in the Marvel comics?

To be honest, Franklin can do whatever the writers need, and they've had him do a lot. In the Onslaught story, Onslaught, who turned out to be the combined subconsciousness of Professor X and Magneto brought to life in psychic form, borrowed Franklin to reshape reality. In the battle, heroes including Reed and Sue were killed. Just as Franklin resurrects his mother in the new film, he brought those heroes back, but kept them in a pocket universe he carried around like a toy. With the way Feige is going through comics, Onslaught is in our future.

Franklin has even caught the attention of Mephisto, who had just entered the MCU and who Feige promises will stick around. In the comics, Mephisto claimed the soul of Doom's mother, Cynthia von Doom. It's all coming together.

Still, Marvel Comics hasn't been sure what to do with Franklin over the years. I don't think he's ever been firmly established. Everyone knows who he is and what he can do, but I don't think there are many Franklin fans, and he doesn't have many storylines of his own. Should he be a child or an adult? For most people familiar with him, I think it's the adult stories; when he's a child, his sister Valeria is usually in charge. He can age himself up, or perhaps someone else. Maybe he'll be the one who ages up Prince T'Challa to take the Black Panther mantle, on his own or because Doom has him do it.

Franklin's hair, the Young Avengers and his MCU future

Is he a mutant? Marvel played with that for a while. Should he have black or blonde hair? Reed has brown hair, so I don't know where the black came from; blonde ties to the Storm family, and so far the MCU keeps him blonde. People love Pedro Pascal as Reed, so maybe an older MCU Franklin could be Latino or half Latino. Latino moviegoers are such a force at the box office, and Star Wars has done nicely with Latino characters, including Pascal. They'll probably age Franklin up, and there are Latino actors who already have a relationship with Disney.

Franklin could join the Young Avengers, which Feige has said he may still do. He could go to school with the arriving X-Men, though he's usually homeschooled at the Future Foundation. Or he could start his own team, as he did in the comics with Power Pack, made up of himself and the four children of Dr. James Power, a scientist who gave his kids superpowers. I think the Young Avengers make the most sense, since X-Men aren't supposed to get their powers until they're teenagers.

Valeria Richards could be on the horizon

In the comics, Franklin's sister Valeria is his closest ally and, at least in the comics I've read, his only real friend. They're homeschooled, and the beings Franklin meets are usually cosmic entities, "and they're hard to have playdates with." The two have gone on some amazing adventures together.

When Valeria is first introduced, she comes from another universe and presents herself as the daughter of Sue Storm and Doctor Doom, with his brilliance, attitude and fashion sense. Later it's discovered she's Reed and Sue's child, lost to a miscarriage, and Franklin brings her back. That's a complex, emotionally charged storyline for movie audiences. But considering how intently audiences reacted to Reed and Sue's fertility journey in First Steps, it might be a direction Marvel takes. I do think Valeria is on the horizon.

Could Sue Storm become Doom's nemesis or Malice?

In the comics, Sue has often been a prize coveted by the likes of Doom and Namor, and Reed has to get his wife back. The MCU's Sue is a much more modern woman with her own agency. Yet she's constantly asked to safeguard Franklin rather than having her own storyline, and that seems set to continue. Some would say that's a realistic depiction of motherhood. I think that, at least for the time being, First Steps makes it clear that after protecting her son from Galactus, and even from Reed to a degree, she'll next have to deal with an even more formidable foe: Doom.

I've noted that the MCU's Sue is more aggressive than the comic version, and Vanessa Kirby has made clear in interviews that she's interested in Sue's darker side, Malice. Will Sue, not Reed, be Doom's nemesis? They'll be fighting over her child. Or will she join Doom? How else do we get to Malice? The comics have a long history of this: Sue as Malice, Jean Grey and the Hellfire Club, Madelyne Pryor and Mr. Sinister, and Scarlet Witch and Doom.

Wanda Maximoff and Wiccan are already tied to Doom

Where is Wanda? Maybe Marvel is redoing WandaVision to a degree, and that's why they don't want her around. She can reshape reality like Franklin and wields magic like Doom, who in the comics is Romani like her. Now Doom looks like Tony Stark, whose weapons killed her parents and whose push to put her under house arrest helped spark the MCU's civil war. Vision, the love of her life and father of her children, was built by Stark from Jarvis and the Ultron defense system.

Then there's Wiccan, who can also reshape reality. He created the Witches' Road in Agatha All Along, put himself in another body and could age himself up. He and Franklin share a comics babysitter, Agatha Harkness. And when Billy and Tommy go looking for their mother in the comics, they find her with Doom. Does the MCU's Doom need Wanda and Billy when he has Sue and Franklin? How can Wanda not factor in when she's so intertwined in both the MCU and the comics? A conundrum indeed.

Reed's life rafts and the heroes who bring down Doom

Reed has always been the fly in Doom's soup, and Secret Wars was no different. The two are always trying to one up each other. Against Doom's grand plan, Reed had a smaller, more realistic idea: multidimensional life rafts, a Noah's Ark of selected heroes. There were three ships, and one had a horrible accident at the last minute. Sue, Franklin and Valeria fell off, which is why Doom could reshape them. He couldn't reshape Reed or the survivors.

When the rafts resurfaced in Doom's world, those heroes weren't brainwashed and remembered Doom as a villain. Reed, Black Panther, Spider-Man, Captain Marvel and Miles Morales brought him down, which is how Miles moved into the new comics. In the MCU, maybe the heroes need their own reality warper, and maybe Wanda and Wiccan will be on that side against Franklin. Maybe Wanda won't want to fight a kid and sends her kid instead. She'd certainly be motivated against a Doom with Tony Stark's face. In the comic, Thanos was a wild card in the background, and since he's no longer in play, maybe Wanda takes that spot.

Johnny, Ben and the backstory the MCU hasn't built

Johnny and Ben didn't have much to do in Secret Wars, but it was amazing: Doom turned Johnny into the sun and Ben into a giant wall. Doom hated the Fantastic Four with a passion in the comics, and it was amazing to see how cruel he was to them. But I don't think audiences will understand why he hates them so much, because the MCU hasn't had the space to establish it.

Are Doomsday and Secret Wars big enough to hold Tony Stark and Doctor Doom, Sue and Franklin, and Wanda and Billy Maximoff? Maybe, just maybe, they are. I like the way I worked it out, but we'll see what Marvel decides to do. I hope they work it out. But I'm worried they brought on Michael Waldron. Multiverse of Madness had such a great path forward and such great theories, and it ended up being a mess. I hope this isn't the same situation, "Although Michael Waldron's never a good sign."