Avengers: Secret Wars Plot Leak Claims Loki, a Casino Asgard and a Drunk Tony Stark Hold the Key to Beating Doom

An early plot leak for Avengers: Secret Wars claims that a year after Doctor Doom creates Battleworld, a small resistance of heroes who still remember the old world sets out to find Loki, the only one capable of reclaiming the power Doom stole from him. Along the way, according to the leak, they find a miserable, drunk Tony Stark gambling his life away in an Asgard that has become a corrupt casino.

Some of the details in this leak are absolutely insane. But the part I find the most unbelievable is how it ends for the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, and I will get to why further down.

The Secret Wars leak arrived just as principal photography was starting

When this leak surfaced, Avengers: Secret Wars would have only just started principal photography, which left me wondering where in the world anyone could have gotten this. You can ask the same about any information that gets out, but this one was especially early, with the film set to hit theaters at the end of the following year.

With the multiple rewrites, reshoots, additional principal photography and pickup photography that a production like this goes through, things were going to change between that point and release. Everything here is subject to change, so take it as you will.

The leak apparently came from the Twitter scoopster MyTimeToShineHello, who obtained it and reposted it. It was presented as a full plot leak, so I want to go through it in full and then break it down in the context of what we already know.

A year after Doom creates Battleworld, only a few heroes remember the old world

According to the leak, a year has passed since Battleworld was created by Doctor Doom. Most of its residents have no memory of the old world, and everyone on Battleworld, whose society is medieval and feudal, believes it has always existed. Their past lives have been rewritten into new roles such as barons, rulers and citizens of various domains.

There are exceptions. The leak says all three Spider-Men remember the old world, as do Namor, the Young Avengers, Vision, She-Hulk, Deadpool, Sadie Sink's Jean Grey, Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, Reed Richards and Sentry. They form a resistance after realizing that Doom is not just a ruler but the force sustaining reality itself. Battleworld exists, the leak claims, because Doom is actively maintaining it using Loki's stolen powers.

The resistance then splits up and travels through different domains, each acting as a fragmented version of the old universes. They search for weaknesses in Doom's structure and recruit allies who are beginning to glitch by retaining their memories or questioning reality.

Doom's army reportedly includes Thors, Doctor Strange and Yelena

On the other side, the leak says Doom commands an army of Thors, with Doctor Strange serving as his second in command. He also has his coven of witches and, of course, Loki's stolen powers. Yelena is described as his third in command, even though she has no powers.

Sentry, according to the leak, is captured and held under lock and key. Another key figure Doom keeps imprisoned is Steve Rogers, who is the only person whose memory Doom deliberately preserved. The leak says Doom hates Steve and wants him to witness his victory, to see that Doom has won and built a new family while Steve has lost everything.

The resistance turns Doom's forces against him while a team hunts for Loki

Rather than taking Doom on directly, the resistance in this leak focuses on turning his forces against him. She-Hulk gathers the Hulks, Deadpool manages to restore Thor's memories, and the Young Avengers unite the mutant population. Tom Holland's Spider-Man rallies New York, while Reed Richards gathers the remaining members of the Future Foundation.

Meanwhile, Tobey Maguire, Hugh Jackman and Steve Rogers, who escapes Doom's prison with Yelena's help, set out on a mission to find Loki. Since Doom restored everyone, the leak says, Loki is alive as well, and he is the only one capable of reclaiming Doom's stolen power.

They find Loki in an Asgardian domain that has become a casino, a shady, corrupt version of Asgard. There they encounter Sylvie, Mobius, O.B. and other TVA members working in the casino. Loki is the manager, but he refuses to believe their story and throws them out.

Tony Stark reportedly turns up as a drunk gambling his life away

At their lowest point, according to the leak, they discover someone unexpected: Tony Stark. He is described as a miserable drunk gambling away his life at the casino, and he initially refuses to join them. Eventually they convince him, and then they convince Loki as well.

The final battle at Doom's castle nearly ends the heroes

In the final battle, the leak says armies from across Battleworld gather to storm Doom's castle. Thor and the Hulks fight the army of Thors, while Sam leads the resistance against the witches, the Doombots and the rest of Doom's forces.

A large group confronts Doom directly: Reed Richards, Yelena, Sue, who now remembers everything, Steve Rogers, Hulk, She-Hulk, Tom Holland's Spider-Man, Sentry, Loki, Iron Man, Wolverine and Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man. Doom overwhelms them, defeating them brutally, and they are nearly killed.

Reed and Sue try to reason with him, telling him that he is grieving for his family and that Battleworld is not the answer. He is briefly convinced but ultimately rejects their argument and attacks them again. They are saved at the last moment by Tobey, Hugh and Tony, who hold Doom off long enough for Loki to reclaim his stolen power and restore the multiverse.

The leak sends the X-Men and Fantastic Four home and closes Steve Rogers' loop

Everything returns to normal in the leak. Loki returns to his throne, but not before saying a final goodbye to Thor and his TVA friends. Everyone is sent back to their original universes. Deadpool, Wolverine, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four return to their own realities and do not join the MCU, and the leak says what this means for the future remains unclear. The MCU continues as it did before.

The TVA later brings Steve, Peggy and their son, who is now alive again, to a new universe where they originally existed but had died, which prevents any incursions from occurring again. Before leaving, Steve asks the TVA for one last favor.

Years later, an older Steve is visited by the TVA, who bring him back to Earth-616 at the end of Avengers: Endgame so he can pass the shield on to Sam. After saying a final goodbye to Sam and Bucky, he returns with the TVA to the reality where Peggy and their son are alive. That is where the leak ends.

This Secret Wars leak is generic enough to get some things right

I have been covering MCU plot leaks of every kind pretty much the entire time I have been doing this, no matter how believable or unbelievable they are and no matter where they come from, whether that is anonymous 4chan or Reddit posts or industry insiders. I always try to approach them with the same skeptical mind and the objective reality of what we already know about the projects.

Can you throw together a bunch of key characters and say they are all going to fight Doom and that Doom created Battleworld? Sure. My point after reading this is that it was "just generic enough to maybe nail some parts of the plot." We basically know what we are in for with Secret Wars, the creation of Battleworld and what we already know about Doom, and pretty much everything confirmed about his story fits nicely into the box.

That said, the touch at the end was very nice, closing the loop on how old man Steve got back to give the shield to Sam. Maybe we will even see where that shield comes from in the first place, and they will leave a little time loop in there like they did with Ms. Marvel.

Why I do not believe the X-Men and Fantastic Four would be left out of the MCU

Working under the assumption that even if there is some thread of reliability here, things are going to change drastically, "the one part of this that is the most unbelievable is about them resetting a timeline where the X-Men and the Fantastic Four aren't in it." We know they are about to reset the X-Men, but this same leak names Sadie Sink's Jean Grey as one of them. And bringing the Fantastic Four into a singular MCU timeline, where all the properties are united, is one of the main ways they are going to use Secret Wars in this soft reboot.

I know about our most recent report on the mutant saga that Fantastic Four 2 is no longer a priority. I talked about why, even at a slight loss at the box office, that property is just too important to Marvel. Reed Richards is too important to the future of Doctor Doom past Avengers: Secret Wars for me to see them scrapping that franchise completely. I also cannot see them leaving the team isolated in their own universe, not when they can join them up with what will be the new X-Men and a lot of returning original Avengers.

Some original cast members will die. It will be a while, but some of them will get recast. Some of the old Fox X-Men might end up sticking around to join the new X-Men, say Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool or Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, or both. But what is probably not going to happen is Marvel Studios going back to a segmented multiverse without the X-Men and presumably this Fantastic Four in the MCU.

Look at who they cast with Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby. Trust me, there are multiple pictures on those contracts. They are not going away from that team. They are also not stranding them back in the 828, disconnected from everyone. If anything, some of those characters, specifically the Fantastic Four but also the new X-Men characters, will persist into the 616 after the soft reboot.

Do you think Marvel would really send the Fantastic Four and the X-Men back to their own universes after Secret Wars?