Avengers Endgame Encore's Three Post-Credit Scenes Point Straight At Doctor Doom's Endgame

Avengers Endgame Encore started rolling out globally this week, with the US release following on Thursday. As is typical for Marvel releases, descriptions of the three new post-credit scenes have already made their way online, along with major outlets reporting on what they contain. Consider this your spoiler warning: everything below covers all three scenes, how they tie to Doomsday, the actual dialogue, and what they signal about Marvel's plan for Avengers Doomsday.

We are going to talk about all three post-credit scenes for Avengers Endgame Encore, how they tie to Doomsday, what actually happened in them, the descriptions and breakdowns of the dialogue, and what it all means for what Marvel is trying to tell us about Avengers Doomsday.

Loki Finds Steve Rogers And Peggy Carter, Confirming He Moved Steve To The 828 Timeline

The first scene picks up within moments of Endgame's ending, reusing the same shot of Steve dancing with Peggy Carter, the embrace, the kiss, frame for frame identical to what we already saw, with the music continuing exactly where it cut to credits before. This time there is a knock at the door. From a bird's eye view we see both of them look up, Steve hides behind the wall, and Peggy answers. A man says hi, she asks if she can help him, and Loki steps in and says "both of you," because he already knows Steve is hiding there. Steve recognizes the voice and slowly comes out, shocked, before the scene cuts. Loki is dressed in his jacket and tie as a TVA agent.

It has been heavily rumored for roughly two years that Loki is the reason Steve Rogers ends up in the 828 universe alongside the Fantastic Four, because the TVA would otherwise prune the branch reality Steve created by staying in the past with Peggy, and Loki does not want that pruned. My theory is that Loki is playing a longer game here, relocating Steve because he will need him later to help hold the multiverse together once things start falling apart in the fight against Doctor Doom. Loki may already be able to see what is coming, and that is something I plan to dig into further.

Setting speculation aside, this scene confirms two concrete things: that was indeed Peggy Carter and Loki from his own season one, and that Loki has now directly intervened in their timeline. If the plot leaks that have corroborated each other over the past two years are accurate, he is the reason Steve ends up in the 828, the same timeline as the Fantastic Four and Doctor Doom, a movie reported to feature a huge grudge Doom holds against Steve because Steve is ultimately responsible for the death of Doom's family.

Hulk's Underground Message Gets Cut Off By Doctor Doom

The second scene finds Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner filming himself explaining that he had an incident tied to Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which led him to lock himself in a military bunker two miles under the earth, fully stocked with lab equipment. He states plainly, "Hulk is not getting out of here." Some early rumors described this as Banner being in jail, but this reads more like self-imposed containment, since no jail would actually hold the Hulk anyway.

Banner goes on to say he has been working on a gamma suppression serum and is about to share his findings when the camera and every monitor in the lab start to glitch and flicker. Doom then addresses him as "Mr. Banner," which is a small joke given that Banner is technically the doctor between the two of them. A green glow appears, and the same rune seen on Doom's glove throughout the promotional material flashes on screen.

Doom then says something that sounds like either "I'm here to connect you" or "I'm here to collect you." The camera gets knocked over, the Hulk roars, and then everything goes silent, leaving only the glowing rune on the floor, the same one shown in front of Doom's throne in one of the trailers. Some reporting has framed this as Doom absorbing Hulk's power, but it could just as easily be a teleportation, especially if he really says "collect." Earlier rumors that Doom was assembling his own evil version of the Avengers had gone quiet, but if he is taking the Hulk to fight on his side, that points to a wild third act. Savage Hulk appears to be back in the MCU just in time for Doomsday and Secret Wars, and I am genuinely thankful to the Russos, who depowered Hulk into Professor Hulk in the first place, for apparently deciding to revert him before the saga ends.

The TVA Scene Shows Incursions Multiplying Into The Thousands

The third scene is set inside the TVA, where Mobius watches a screen showing the timelines newly aligned into the World Tree we saw at the end of Loki season two. Casey is also present. An incursion begins: two Earths on a collision course, rendered on screen as an animation where the planets appear to be firing at each other. Casey asks, "Are they firing missiles?" and the answer is that the two Earths are trying to destroy each other before mutual destruction occurs. Then another incursion starts, and another.

The count escalates on screen from 300 incursions to 3,000, and Mobius says ominously, "The multiverse is collapsing." This lines up with what I have been saying as we get closer to Doom's reveal in Doomsday, that we are watching the final steps of a plan he has been running for a long time. If Loki bringing Steve and Peggy into the 828 is what forces Doom to experiment to save that timeline, that is likely where he loses his family and is disfigured, and where his grudge against Steve begins.

What is unfolding here looks like Marvel Studios' cinematic version of Jonathan Hickman's Time Runs Out, showing the final steps of a response to everything set in motion right after Endgame ended and Steve made his choice. The multiverse collapsing at this scale points toward the creation of Battleworld for Doom, following a massive destruction of timelines including the 828 and the 616 or 1,005, matching the three Earths colliding that we already saw represented in the trailers.

My Take: Doom's Absence From These Scenes Left Me Wanting More

Having Hulk end up on Doom's side, or at least in Doom's possession, does reveal a piece of the plan we were not fully aware of, but the first scene with Loki is not really a reveal at all, since it was already possible to line up Loki standing outside Steve's house in the trailers with Steve holding Loki's card. The TVA scene similarly just confirms what we already saw represented in the sky during promotional material.

This is purely a personal opinion, but I was really hoping for some earnest screen time of Doctor Doom with some actual dialogue. He is obviously the central character of this film, and the intrigue has only grown since we started hearing his accent. Robert Downey Jr.'s interpretation of this character would have already been highly anticipated on its own, let alone as the follow up to him having played Iron Man through Endgame. I wanted some real buildup and screen presence, and instead of the scenes we got, I would have preferred that.

Still, the Hulk and Doom scene is clearly the most interesting to me, because it is a piece of Doom's plan we had not heard before. I believe he is recruiting Hulk, that the silence is because they are teleporting away, and that the rune on the floor may be part of how that happens. If Doom really does have a group of superheroes on his side to fight the Avengers, there are some genuinely wild action sequences left for the end of this film, and I cannot help imagining the X-Men fighting the Hulk, though I suspect a Wolverine versus Hulk fight is being saved for Avengers Secret Wars.

We already know Doom has been recruiting powerful sorcerers, with Doctor Strange and Clea almost assuredly already on his side, and recent reports suggesting Scarlet Witch may be there as well. Adding a Savage Hulk to that mix fits the pattern of him gathering the most powerful beings across the multiverse, which raises the question of exactly which heroes he has taken and when we will finally see them in the third act. Earlier rumors and confirmations from industry insiders had said Tom Holland's Spider-Man and Hulk were not part of Avengers Doomsday, but we now know Mark Ruffalo's Hulk is involved in some way. It is also worth remembering there are still deleted scenes built into this Endgame Encore release, so this is not the full picture of material still to come.

Which heroes do you think Doom has already pulled across the multiverse to his side?