Avengers: Doomsday Promos Reveal Castle Doomstadt, Doombots and What Looks Like Deadpool

Marvel has dropped a huge batch of official Avengers: Doomsday promos, and buried among them are our first proper looks at Castle Doomstadt and Doom's Doombots, plus a shirt that appears to put Deadpool in the film. Several of these reveals cover things that, until now, had not been confirmed anywhere outside of the plot leaks.

All of this landed while we wait for the next Doomsday trailer, which was rumoured to arrive last week but didn't. It might end up being called the final trailer, although we all know it won't be, and it will probably give us an extended look at the film beyond the frames we have seen from the same scenes across the last couple of preview trailers. In the meantime, these promos are just as good.

Marvel's Avengers: Doomsday promo drop hides a handful of genuine reveals

Late yesterday, about 30 or more official promo images for Avengers: Doomsday products dropped all at once. Most of them simply showed characters and poses, or compilations of characters we have already seen announced or in the trailers. Three or four of them, though, contained brand new reveals.

I am going right down the list of everything in this drop that we haven't seen in the trailers or heard about officially, starting with Doom's army and ending with the shirt everyone is talking about.

Doom's Doombots are confirmed, and I suspect they are the final battle army

The first reveal is Doctor Doom's Doombots. We already know Doom will have followers in the form of witches and sorcerers who sort of look like him. They have Doom inspired masks, and some of their cloaks are green. But those followers aren't the Doombots we expected to see in the film.

Any good Avengers movie needs an army of mobs for the heroes to fight against. The Avengers had the Chitauri, Age of Ultron had the Ultron bots, and Infinity War had the Outriders. These Doombots are what we suspect the final battle will be against. Going by the rumours and plot leaks, the heroes march on Latveria before they ultimately face off against Doom and his witches and probably lose. We suspect that is when they will be fighting waves of Doombots, and now the existence of the Doombots is finally confirmed by these promos.

Castle Doomstadt looks built for the Earth 828 universe

Speaking of the final act and the march on Latveria, we finally got our first look at Castle Doomstadt. Strictly speaking it is our second, because last year at a Shanghai expo, a laser show displayed this same structure. At the time we thought it might be Doom compiling Battleworld. It is not. It is actually Castle Doomstadt.

It looks specific to the 828 universe, minimalistic and monolithic, and it looks like what you would expect from Doctor Doom's castle, more so than the traditional Castle Doomstadt that resembles a medieval castle. The iconography is undeniable: it is definitely a tower. And before it was named Avengers Tower, a tower that is still in the MCU today, there was one other character who had his own tower: Tony Stark.

To be totally fair, the Baxter Building is a bit of a tower as well, though I really thought that was meant to suggest it was also a launch facility, because the Fantastic Four go to space. Remember, this is set in the retrofuturistic world of 828, and I think this castle fits. Whether it is meant to invoke Tony Stark and Stark Tower is something you will have to decide for yourself.

The castle reveal confirms we will visit Latveria

The massive reveal here is not only that this is Castle Doomstadt, but that Latveria itself is confirmed as a location. Outside of the plot leaks, we hadn't heard or seen anything about actually visiting it during the film. "But they wouldn't have it on a t-shirt." It wouldn't be part of the promos if we weren't going to see it.

Yes, we have seen the inside of the castle in the trailers. But this location, shown prominently from the outside, is described in most of the plot leaks as a third act setting. That is where the heroes finally figure out Doom is the real enemy and band together to march on Latveria and face him one last time to stop the incursions. Since we are headed into Avengers: Secret Wars, they probably have very little chance of succeeding.

A Doomsday shirt appears to hide Deadpool, with one asterisk

This is the image everyone is saying confirmed Deadpool, and I think it does, but I definitely need to put an asterisk by it. The shirt shows Doctor Doom's name being scrawled across and ripped up by a gauntlet, with four characters confirmed for Avengers: Doomsday: Thor, Gambit, the Thing and Beast. Down in the thumb area, if you zoom in really close, it is undeniably Deadpool riding his unicorn.

The reason I think this is a Doomsday design is that it showed up alongside a bunch of other material we know is Doomsday, either because it carries the Doomsday title or because it shows the actors' likenesses, like Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards. This shirt also puts the X-Men, the Fantastic Four and the Avengers side by side in the fingers, with Gambit and Beast alongside the Thing and Thor. That is what is going on in Doomsday.

The asterisk is that this shirt uses comic book representations of the characters. You can clearly see it with Thor, and that is not our MCU Thor. All in all, though, it is definitely a Doomsday design, released at the same time as the rest, and the fact that Deadpool is on it is reason enough to get excited.

In my view, Deadpool and Wolverine were already confirmed

As we have maintained, and I know some people got confused by this, when Marvel brought Deadpool out at San Diego Comic-Con and then did the skit at D23 with Hugh Jackman asking for a place in the film, that was its way of announcing and confirming both of them for the movie. They wouldn't be involved in a skit and joke promo if they weren't. Even though Marvel never came out and said it, them asking to be in the film was the official announcement.

I like the way they did it, but I certainly think Marvel had set a precedent of sort of formally confirming these things with an actual announcement. Because it didn't do that here and left it open to interpretation, some people were thrown off. If you were one of those who thought they might not be in the film or still hadn't been confirmed, I don't fault you at all. I just think Marvel didn't anticipate the confusion.

Deadpool is rumoured to have a bigger role, and the tone worries me

Light spoiler warning for anyone who hasn't heard this yet. Deadpool is now rumoured to have more scenes beyond just the intro. It was pretty much confirmed that Deadpool and Wolverine would be part of the contingent attacking or erasing Tobey Maguire's universe to save their own. A lot of the plot leaks indicated that Maguire's universe won't be the first they have had to fight off, and that when we catch up with the X-Men, they are worn down from doing this several times already.

The newest plot leaks indicate Deadpool may take off somewhere between the second and third acts, during the march on Latveria, and then show up at a crucial point in the third act with reinforcements. Those may include Rocket, the Guardians of the Galaxy, Star-Lord and other maybe half comedic characters you would expect to be in line with Deadpool.

Here is my concern. This movie is supposed to be seriously toned, and some rumours point to shocking scenes Disney may pull with Steve Rogers' son and an ending that is surprisingly satisfying and leaves us on the edge of our seats. "It's very hard for me to see how they're going to interpolate Deadpool's breaking of the fourth wall," along with his immediate comedy and dry sarcasm. That sort of thing is awesome in the context of his own films, but it could break the verisimilitude of a film that has no comic levity and is very obviously taking itself seriously.

Nothing we have seen in the teasers or the trailer, or heard directly from the directors and Kevin Feige, suggests there is room for joking, especially in the third act. Deadpool is exactly the type of character who would make fun of this situation, so having him take it seriously without breaking the spell will be a feat. Marvel is going to spend a lot of time taking us to that place over a two and a half hour film. "I'm just very curious how they're going to work Deadpool into all of this."

One last note: several people sent me one shirt thinking it had just confirmed the Hulk, but it was really Beast. It is very hard to tell from the silhouette, which is why it is not included here.

Do you think Marvel can bring Deadpool into the third act of Avengers: Doomsday without undercutting its serious tone?