Avengers: Doomsday Shanghai Light Show Hid a First Look at Battleworld and a Trail of Iron Man Easter Eggs

Marvel's Doctor Doom light show at Disney's Shanghai expo carried what I believe is our very first look at Battleworld, along with a string of Iron Man references tying Victor Von Doom back to Tony Stark. It was not a teaser trailer, but in a couple of quick frames there were definitely Easter eggs for our version of Doctor Doom and for Avengers: Doomsday.

Disney held a major marketing expo in Shanghai. Earlier in the day we got a first look at Doctor Doom in his full MCU outfit, and then Marvel went one step further with the light show. Because some of these images were flashed for literally about a second, I went through it frame by frame, skipping the obvious shots of Doom and focusing on everything else.

Doom's gauntlet tears through reality, possibly near Loki's throne

The first shot is a sort of slice that immediately looked to me like the green vines we last saw Loki, God of Stories, among at the center of the multiverse. Very quickly it becomes apparent that this is a slice in reality, with Doom's gauntlet reaching through it.

These may still not be the vines that Loki was among, but the shot really reminds me of where we last saw Loki and the steps up to that throne. Based on the comic book imagery from Jonathan Hickman's 2015 Secret Wars run, it will eventually be Doom on that very same throne Loki now sits on. Ipso facto, they are going to have to meet. Why wouldn't it be at the center of the multiverse?

An Iron Man mask blueprint turns into Doctor Doom's mask

This is where the light show starts to get really interesting, because it begins dropping major Tony Stark references. It shows a schematic or blueprint for a mask, and that design slowly turns into the Doctor Doom mask. Right off the bat, there is a hint of Tony Stark built into Doom's look.

Doom tears apart a Thanos style figure, but I don't think it will be Thanos

After a couple more shots of Doom, we get what looks like Doctor Doom ripping out the skull and spine of what should be a classic comic panel of Thanos. A lot of people have noticed that this image is cast in red. From the waist up it looks like Doom: you can see the chest piece, the small skirt coming down under the belt, and the cowl. But look at the legs in the foreground. From the knee down, those could easily be the Mark 7 armor, and his hand is lit up blue like a repulsor. Personally, I think that is just energy coursing through him.

It is also pretty unclear which character Doom is tearing apart. Based on Hickman's Secret Wars run, it is supposed to be Thanos. I could see Marvel doing an Infinity War of it all, with Doom facing off against a Thanos variant to prove his actual power set. But they have done that before in the What If series, where Thanos goes down almost instantly to Infinity Ultron, and they did it in Multiverse of Madness as well. The whole Thanos setup feels like it has been done.

So my honest opinion at the time was that we would get a scene like this, but not with Thanos. It could be another really powerful character who pulls on our heartstrings, someone we have cared about during the Multiverse Saga, or maybe an Omega level mutant such as Magneto. On that point, I think a lot of the Fox X-Men won't be seeing Secret Wars because they won't make it out of Avengers: Doomsday.

The multiverse shards and an Endgame style snap

After a couple of shots of Doom coursing with energy, a bunch of shards explode outward from him. These are very clearly an homage to what What If used to represent all the shards of the multiverse, and here Doom is exploding them outward. For me, that is certainly foreshadowing that it will eventually be Doom at the center of the multiverse and not Loki.

Then Doom holds his right hand up as if he is going to snap, exactly like Tony Stark did at the end of Avengers: Endgame. That is a huge Easter egg connecting the two. The way I read it, Tony Stark's death and his snap eventually led to this version of Victor Von Doom, and that is why he looks like our 616 variant.

Battleworld is built from the pieces Doom kept

When Doom holds his fist up, he starts to radiate power, all in split seconds with the lasers. Then those same multiversal shards are suddenly rearranged into a new formation. This is our first look at Battleworld: Doom taking the pieces of the multiverse he wanted to retain and reshaping them together. That is what this is meant to represent.

As we get a look at what he has constructed, it spins around during the light show. In little blips you can see Doom standing in the foreground admiring his work, probably monitoring everyone who is now in his newly created Battleworld.

An arc reactor becomes rings that match the Shang-Chi beacon

The symbolism only gets crazier from there. Two gauntleted Doom hands use what looks like green magic to construct a ring. With the prongs on the outside, to me that is definitely meant to replicate an arc reactor, which is yet more Iron Man symbolism.

That arc reactor then turns into one solid ring, which becomes a series of concentric rings. Freeze on that moment and remember the beacon I covered recently. Compare those rings to the Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings post credits scene, where Wong is examining the Ten Rings. They're exactly the same.

A gyroscope and a symbol that looks like Loki's horns

What is even crazier is that the rings then become what I first took for a Dyson sphere, but which is actually a gyroscope. You can clearly see the rings moving. In the middle sits a strange symbol, again seemingly made of green magic, which equally stands for Doctor Doom and Loki. Those certainly look like Loki's horns on the top, the sides and the bottom.

As for the center, I am not sure it is a symbol we have seen in the MCU. It was not one I was able to find or figure out, so that remains a little mysterious, but the outside still looks like arc reactors. When I was thinking Dyson sphere, I was thinking of Doom powering something: starting with a single circle as an arc reactor and building it into bigger technology, like what powered Kang's chair, like the Ten Rings, and apparently like whatever he created in his hands here.

The four teams: Avengers, Wakanda, Fantastic Four and X-Men

That leads to another explosion, and probably the biggest Easter egg of all: confirmation of the four teams at work in Avengers: Doomsday. They come in sequentially in this order: the Avengers, Black Panther representing Wakanda, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men.

More Easter eggs than a real teaser trailer

I have been doing this for almost a decade, and I have definitely found fewer Easter eggs and less symbolism in an actual two minute teaser trailer than I found in this light show. To me, it is "crazy" that Marvel Studios would take something as obscure as a light show at an expo and weave in so many pertinent parts of the storyline for Avengers: Doomsday.

If Marvel was willing to put that kind of time and attention into a light show, I couldn't wait to see the first real teaser trailer, which, at the time, I expected we would most likely be waiting until the end of the following summer to get. This breakdown took me about two or three hours, and I fully expected to spot something new as soon as I finished.

If Doom isn't tearing apart Thanos in that red tinted image, who do you think it is?