The Russos Hint Avengers: Doomsday and Secret Wars Could Set Up a Full MCU Reboot

Back in March 2025, the Russo brothers gave what I considered a massive update on how they planned to set Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars apart from Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. Their comments revealed something about those two films and about how they would shape the new MCU, and to me they made it sound like Marvel Studios was about to reboot the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe. The Russos might also have been hinting that they would stick around to oversee what came next.

That lined up with the rumours we had been hearing for two or three years at that point about a reboot of sorts. Because it came from the directors themselves, I felt this was as official as you can get, and it definitely made it sound like a reboot was on the way.

The Russos called Doomsday and Secret Wars "a new beginning"

The quote came out of the Russos' press junket for The Electric State over the preceding two weeks, where, as I saw it, everybody was just asking about Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars instead. They were explaining why they came back to Marvel and how these films would be very different from Infinity War and Endgame when they said: "what's compelling about these two new Avengers movies is that they're a beginning it's a new beginning." They added that they had told an ending story, and now they were going to tell a beginning story.

What stands out in that short quote is how often the word beginning comes up. They were not mincing words. They knew exactly what they were saying about these films.

In the wake of any Secret Wars saga, whether the one from the 1980s or the 2015 event, you would assume some sort of restoring of the Multiverse, the way it happened in the comics. When that comes together, the result could look a little different from how the 616 universe looked at that point.

Time as a circle could explain the Russos' choice of words

For context, I was assuming that Marvel Studios removing Kang from the storyline did not mean it was throwing out all of the lore built up during the Multiverse Saga. In that lore, time is described as a circle. Loki broke the machine that forced that circle and created a world tree out of the timelines, but in the nature of a circle, where things end is where they begin. They are basically the same exact thing.

That might be what the Russos were implying when they talked about moving from an ending story to a beginning story.

Secret Wars could usher in a second firmament for the MCU

More likely, though, the Russos were talking about what happens after the film is done, because they were basically creating a new MCU in what we might call the second firmament of the MCU.

Firmaments are how the Marvel Comics universe refers to resetting its Multiverse, which has happened across eight incarnations at this point. Every time we get to the next firmament, that is the restart of the Multiverse. It sounded like that was exactly what was about to happen in the MCU.

The Russos hinted they may stay beyond Avengers: Secret Wars

As I said above, it sounded like the Russos may stick around to help steer a lot of that. Asked about their future beyond Secret Wars, they said: "who knows where we'll go from there maybe it'll be another 5 years I think we just needed that time and perspective to figure out where it needed to go next and the only thing that brought us back was the story."

Notice they did not say they were going to take more time off from Marvel or that they were not coming back. One industry insider had reported that they were basically overseeing the Mutant Saga and the X-Men. That did not necessarily mean directing the X-Men, but at least according to this insider, they were overseeing it.

So when they said who knows, maybe it will be another five years, I really took that to mean they knew they were sticking around at least for the short term, not that they would probably take another five years off and then see if they could find the right story to come back. They did not say something like we don't know what our future looks like, we'll decide down the road. That told me they do know exactly what the future looks like, and that they were sticking around past Secret Wars to help steer the beginning of the next saga.

One guiding voice could have fixed the Multiverse Saga's messy start

Honestly, I think that is for the best, because no matter how die hard a fan you are, you can't deny that the beginning of the Multiverse Saga was a complete mess. Several things did not help: Marvel lost Chadwick Boseman, there was a major pandemic, and the studio decided to bite off more than it could chew with Disney Plus without really knowing what it was doing.

All in all, I think those problems could have been solved by having one voice and one idea steering the overall narrative, instead of going wide with cameos and post credit scenes that don't make any sense, and rolling out a bunch of B and C tier publishing characters while expecting the weight of Avengers: Endgame to carry all these titles, then not making good on quality. It really was a recipe for a lot of fans losing interest, unfortunately.

Marvel Studios had been great about calling itself out internally and making a lot of changes over the previous 12 to 24 months to try to right the ship. Hopefully one of the lessons it was learning is that coming off Secret Wars, it needed to come out of the gate swinging with the X-Men, show everyone its direction, and then make sure the narrative over the next four or five releases follows that same story, giving fans something to latch on to.

Shang-Chi could have been the point of view character the MCU needed

Especially important are point of view characters, which the MCU lost with Steve Rogers and Tony Stark. T'Challa might have been meant to fill that role, but with Chadwick Boseman's passing, rest in peace, Marvel did not have Black Panther to lean on as that frontrunner character, or the quarterback, so to speak.

They really could have done that with a number of characters, including Shang-Chi. He just needed to show up two or three times throughout all of these projects to be that point of view character we could keep resonating with as he saw all these events go down. Hopefully, when and if the Russos stick around for the Mutant Saga, as had been reported, they will make sure that does not happen again.

A soft reboot could bring back a new Steve Rogers and Tony Stark

As for a soft reboot of the MCU, we had known this was coming for quite some time. It is not just about giving actors a way out if they have been in these roles for 20 years. It is about making sure that when we get to the X-Men, they are not isolated from some of the classic characters we have been dying to see them interact with.

By that point we had already lost Captain America, Black Widow and Iron Man, and we might lose Doctor Strange and or Thor by the time the Multiverse Saga is done. Get to the X-Men and all the original Avengers could be gone, when the whole reason Marvel brought all the rights together was to have these characters in these continuities interact.

No matter how you feel about recasting Steve Rogers, you had to expect Marvel would keep a Captain America in the MCU going forward. It might be Anthony Mackie's Falcon in Captain America 5, but at some point we are going to get a new Steve Rogers, a new Tony Stark, and these characters back.

A soft reboot is Marvel's opportunity to do it, with a lot of characters returning: the Fantastic Four, who would only have shown up a handful of times by Secret Wars, newer characters from Phase Four and Phase Five like Shang-Chi, and some of the original characters back with new actors playing them. It all works because it is a new firmament for the MCU, which does the heavy lifting to explain the backstories of where these characters were and how they all came together in a new continuity. I assume they will still call it the 616.

Who would you want to see recast if the MCU gets its new beginning?