Avengers: Doomsday Leak Reportedly Reveals the Opening Scenes of the First Act, and Wakanda Is Missing

A new insider update claimed to reveal the scenes that make up the opening sequence, and possibly most of the first act, of Avengers: Doomsday. According to the update, the film would open with six scenes: the X-Men versus the incursions, Steve Rogers and his life with Peggy Carter, Doctor Doom interacting with the Fantastic Four and Steve, the New Avengers, Sam Wilson's Avengers, and Thor and the kid he is raising in New Asgard.

This came in the wake of what I was hearing was an authentic plot leak for the film. Below I go through each scene, how it adds to the plot, and why I think one major group being left out of the list is surprising.

An insider with some proven scoops claimed to know the Avengers: Doomsday opening

As I have said before in my coverage of these recent plot leaks, they are not very comprehensive. There is still a lot of what is supposedly going to be a three hour film that is left out. Even so, this newest industry insider update added some brand new scenes to the opening of Avengers: Doomsday, including certain scenes that had not been talked about before.

The update came from an insider and scooper on Twitter who is rather new to the scoop game, at least as far as my reporting on him goes. No scooper has gotten everything right, but he has had some scoops come true in the last year or so, so take that as you will. And if this list really is just the opening sequence, it certainly means the film is going to keep up the pace in how it weaves together all the threads.

The X-Men, Steve and Peggy, and Doom's visit to Reed were already established

The first three of the six scenes had been pretty well established by the earlier leaks. The X-Men versus incursions scene would apparently be set in Tobey Maguire's timeline, where we would find out that the X-Men have been erasing multiple timelines and fighting against other timelines to preserve their world. If everything I was hearing is true, the X-Men should be totally stretched thin and worn out by the time we pick up with them and get introduced to them alongside the 616 when they travel there.

The second scene showed Steve living out his life with Peggy, and this is apparently the sequence where Loki and Mobius appear. That is reportedly where Loki relocates Steve to the 828, which leads into the third scene of Doom, the Fantastic Four and Steve Rogers all interacting. That follows the Fantastic Four postcredits scene in which Doom is seen in the living room with baby Franklin.

Doom will apparently tell Reed what is going on with the multiverse and the incursions, and then ask whether there is anyone in the 828 who should not be there. Reed is apparently going to run some sort of scan, and they will see the anomaly that is Steve Rogers. Again, if there is any truth at all to the plot leaks, we know what is going on in these opening sequences. I would expect each of these scenes to linger, since they need to explain quite a bit at the beginning, so we are already talking about maybe 15 or 20 minutes deep.

The New Avengers and Sam Wilson's Avengers each reportedly get their own scene

It is the back half of the list that gets more interesting. The next scene is the New Avengers with events leading up to the postcredits scene of Thunderbolts. I do not know what the film is looking to imply or establish there about the relationship of those characters. From everything I have heard, though, it hits the ground running with what is currently going on in the MCU, with at least one scene putting the team together or establishing what is happening before that postcredits moment with the space anomaly and the Fantastic Four ship.

I point this out because I am not sure how much backstory we need to spend on them. The whole Thunderbolts movie was sort of devoted to how they were built as a team, and certainly not more has happened there than with Sam Wilson's Avengers. I definitely want the film to spend more time on Sam Wilson's Avengers and how that team came together than on any more exposition about the Thunderbolts. We are pretty well caught up.

Apparently we will see how Sam's Avengers are put together, although the update does not give any more detail about weaving in their backstory. We pretty much know who is going to be on that team, and keep in mind that I reported exclusively that She-Hulk will be a member. I could not wait to see whether they establish that right in the opening scene.

Thor and Love in New Asgard round out the six scenes

The final scene is Thor and Love in New Asgard, which means that is probably where he relocated to raise her, and that is where we see them in their home.

Look at everything in this list: the X-Men, Steve and Peggy, Doom with the Fantastic Four and Steve, the New Avengers, Sam's Avengers, and Thor and Love in New Asgard. That is all the main players of this film in sequence, one after another, each being established as to where they are and what is going on when we pick up with the movie. That is why I think it makes this "ultra believable," because it spends at least a little time going scene to scene, from character to character or group to group, so that the film can start running all of these teams into each other.

I assume that will happen rather quickly. In fact, if some of the rumors are true, the New Avengers scene might overlap with the Sam's Avengers scene, and we might see both teams at the same time.

Wakanda and Talokan are surprisingly absent from the Avengers: Doomsday opening

There is one group noticeably absent, even though an entire preview trailer was spent on them: the Wakandans, along with Namor and the people of Talokan. They are not mentioned in this update at all. That may be because one of the next moves is for the characters to travel to parley with that group, which is where we would see the Fantastic Four meeting up with them in the first place.

Still, if they were part of the preview trailers, I would imagine they were one of the major groups the film wanted to establish. Shuri is one of the big brains left in the 616 alongside Banner and a couple of others. If there were space anomalies and an impending incursion, Shuri would surely at least know what is going on through her own research, if not through communication with organizations like SWORD.

I keep bringing this up, but if Wong is truly part of the contingent that includes Captain Marvel, Hulk and now Shang-Chi, some of the primary players in Sam Wilson's Avengers, then it is presumable that his knowledge of America Chavez and the multiverse would offer some easy answers, or at least some direction, about the impending incursion. Shang-Chi's beacon from his Ten Rings is also definitely going to play a part, which would be yet another connection to characters like Wong. There had been no confirmation on Wong, but I would be more shocked if he was not in this film than if he was, and I think the Wakandans surely have a huge role to play as well.

Too much catch up could kill the pacing of Avengers: Doomsday

All six of these scenes, with any real time spent on them, could easily run a half hour or so, at least a good chunk of the first act. Doomsday still needs to function like a normal film, and plenty of people in theaters will not have seen every single Marvel movie. Some exposition is needed, along the lines of: "Hey, these are the major characters, these are where they are right now. You might not have seen Thor: Love and Thunder, but yep, Thor is playing dad and raising a kid and they live in New Asgard."

But I hope they do not spend too much time doing that. "That's the one thing that I think could kill the pacing of this film," along with a lot of false action and false dialogue where characters we already know introduce themselves to each other. I have always been a huge fan of not having your hand held in these massive crossover moments. The 2015 Jonathan Hickman run had a massive lead up, with stories written across different characters and groups for a while, so if you wanted to trace everything back you could get a full view. Sometimes, though, it is really cool to drop us in right where the action is and not fill in all the blanks, leaving some mystique and wonderment to how we got there. It actually helps suspend disbelief.

One quick asterisk: if you are worried the film will not fill us in on Doom's backstory at all, it still needs to explain how and why Doom looks like Tony Stark from the 616. There is for sure a reason for that, it is not just coincidence, and it will be revealed. I wonder whether Doom's backstory will be woven through a lot of what he says and does in these upcoming films.

Do you agree that Avengers: Doomsday needs to hit the ground running, or does it owe audiences more catch up at the start?