New Avengers: Doomsday TV Spot Hints Thor and Steve Rogers May Be Headed to the TVA

The newest Avengers: Doomsday TV spot shows Thor and Steve Rogers leaving the new Avengers Tower by Bifrost, and I think they may be headed to the TVA to find Loki. If that's right, I think it cuts against the big theory going around that Steve Rogers is Loki in disguise.

I expected new TV spots every day. I didn't expect three in under 24 hours, mostly built from the same material. This latest one is a longer version of the trailer that ran as an advertisement, with an extended Captain America joke. It gives us three new things: a Thor voiceover, more of that joke, and the Bifrost scene I consider the most important frame.

Thor's new speech points to CGI omissions in an earlier Doomsday scene

The first addition is a Thor voiceover about doom rolling over the world if they don't stand together and fight. This is probably an extension of the same speech we heard before, where he refers to foes that have already fallen against threats that scared him far less than this one. Thor is taking the role of Captain America here, inspiring everyone to band together.

Almost certainly, that confirms what we theorized, along with many others: an earlier scene had CGI omissions in who was standing in the room. In it, you can see Ant-Man, Sam Wilson and Thor on the right side with the Fantastic Four members of the new Avengers. You can't see Steve Rogers, the other Falcon or Shang-Chi, but they're undoubtedly part of this scene. The CGI team may have removed them or hadn't composited them in yet. Either way, we now know several characters were left out of that shot from one of the original trailers.

Ant-Man's Captain America joke may be the lone laugh in the Doomsday marketing

The second addition is the longer Captain America gag, with Ant-Man fumbling his way through the name. I love this on many levels. I did see more than one comment calling it maybe the only joke in the entire movie. You have to admit that before this moment, we hadn't seen much comic relief at all in any part of the trailers. So it's good to hear Ant-Man still cracking a couple of jokes, chasing that normal Avengers feel.

Some of you may have seen reports that higher-ups at Disney watched internal test screeners or initial cuts of Doomsday and were worried it felt like what they called "an execution of the franchise." The concern, as reported, was that there was so much death and such a dour tone across the film that it didn't feel like a normal Avengers movie, where there's enough comic relief to offset the stakes.

But there were definitely jokes throughout Avengers: Endgame, and the stakes there were about as high as they'd ever been in the MCU. There's room for humor in the right moments. I do shudder to think how they'll fit Deadpool in if he shows up in the third act and not just the beginning of the film. For now, this is the first and maybe the only joke we'll hear in the Doomsday marketing. The majority of the film may be absent of jokes, at least if the reports about its tone are true. As I warned when those reports first surfaced, don't take early reactions to heart, because who knows what biases the people seeing it early actually have.

Thor and Steve's Bifrost exit could mean a trip to Loki at the TVA

The frame that matters most to me shows Thor and Steve, using the Bifrost proxy we know Stormbreaker can summon, teleported off what looks like the deck of the new Avengers Tower.

The prevailing theory since we first saw Steve standing on that platform catching Mjolnir is that this is Loki posing as Captain America, something we've seen him do before in Avengers: Endgame. The evidence people point to: Thor saying that's impossible, how long and ragged Steve's hair looks, and the color scheme of his outfit. I have to admit something seems a little off about Steve. It isn't only the hair or the matching outfit. It's the coy smile he seems to wear the entire time we've seen him in these trailers.

Here's what we're theorizing instead. This could be the point in the film where Steve reveals what happened to him: Loki relocated him from a timeline that would have been pruned after he went back in time to be with Peggy Carter. Thor would want to reunite with Loki no matter the circumstance. Loki would presumably have already told Steve about his part at the TVA, the department that manages the multiverse. With Doctor Doom as the threat and the multiverse collapsing, that would only add to Thor's urgency to visit this Loki.

We also know from the trailers that Loki left Thor some sort of card, maybe a calling card or a way to reach him if he needed to. That may be where they're going now.

A TVA trip would undercut the Steve as Loki theory, with one catch

If they're headed to the TVA to meet Loki, Steve isn't Loki in disguise. Unless he is, and he's telling Thor they need to go to the TVA to show him that Doom is the real villain, so Thor learns that Doom isn't the ally he's presenting as.

The problem with that version is that this scene seems to come at the end of Thor's speech about how dangerous Doom is. So something here is a bit incongruent with the timelines. I know the Loki theory is going to prevail, and I can't deny that Steve's demeanor seems a little off. That coy smile isn't the normal demeanor we see from Steve Rogers. But keep in mind he's a changed man. This isn't Captain America anymore. This is a Cap who went through it all and then decided he wanted a different life with his family.

The older Steve from Endgame may point to a time loop

People don't seem to be pointing this out enough: we already have an old man Steve. Unless he passed away, which I feel would have come up at some point in the MCU, there's an older Cap who returned to give Sam Wilson the shield at the end of Endgame.

What I'm suggesting is that a time loop may be happening here, where that older Cap already went through all of this. Nobody has been able to source the shield he hands Sam, because it looks different. We know it isn't the same shield. He may have taken it off Sam's corpse, if Sam dies in one of these two films, and brought it back to give to Sam. That could explain why, when Sam asks, "Are you going to tell me about her?" Cap answers, "No, I don't think I will." He doesn't want to tell him anything about what's about to happen.

I know that sounds even crazier than Steve being Loki in disguise, but I think something deeper is going on than this simply being Steve Rogers. I'm not shying away from that theory at all, and there could be a lot at play that we don't understand yet. Either way, this movie is already shaping up to be an all-time banger.