How Robert Downey Jr's Doctor Doom, Anchor Beings and Kang Could Shape Avengers: Doomsday and Secret Wars

Robert Downey Jr came on stage at San Diego Comic-Con and announced he was back in the MCU, this time playing Doctor Doom. With that, the Kang Dynasty became Doomsday. Everything was still building to Secret Wars, and Deadpool & Wolverine had introduced new rules to the multiverse that I think explain where things could be heading.

Those rules centre on anchor beings. Below I go through what they are, how they connect to Jonathan Hickman's comics, and why I thought Kang might end up being used to set up Doom.

Robert Downey Jr's Doctor Doom could take the Thanos role in Doomsday

My first reaction was that Marvel couldn't live with their failure, so they went back to Downey. I pictured him sat like David Brent in The Office asking how much they had, because this was going to cost them. Jokes aside, I was excited. There had been some backlash, but I think overall the hype was pretty high, especially with Downey playing a villain.

The multiverse has lots of versions of characters, and variants allow for lots of possibilities. At the time I felt Doom might feature in Fantastic Four, with that film laying the groundwork for Doomsday. I could imagine Doomsday doing something similar to Infinity War, with Doctor Doom taking on the Thanos role and the film showing the character taking over the multiverse.

Deadpool & Wolverine's anchor beings keep each reality stable

When Deadpool gets taken to the TVA, we learn about anchor beings. These are multiversal anchors that keep a universe and its reality stable. Branches are created every time a choice is made, which leads to an almost infinite number of realities. In the past these were kept in check by the TVA, who mercilessly pruned timelines that might be problematic, or might not be making Disney much money.

That pruning was meant to stop realities in which Kang rose up, which inevitably led to a multiversal war. The Kang variant who went on to rule at the end of time came out the victor, which we know was down to having Ravonna Renslayer. She is a key cog in it, and it's possible he was the only version that had her. Either way, he won and ruled at the end of time, ordering the TVA to keep the branches pruned. Once Sylvie killed him, the multiverse broke free, creating the Council of Kangs and the infinite branches that now exist.

Marvel exists in a polymultiverse, a term used in Across the Spider-Verse. It means there are multiverses within multiverses. Everything stems from the same point, but branches form their own multiverses centred around key concepts, like the Spider-Verse, the X-Men universe and the MCU. Within those there is time travel and alternate realities. The more branches there are, the more fragile these realities become, and the more open they are to death and decay.

Each universe's anchor being keeps its reality stable, and if they die or are removed, that world starts to die. This is similar to how removing an Infinity Stone slowly causes issues for a universe. The death of a universe takes thousands of years and is a naturally recurring process, because heroes can't live forever.

Anchor beings echo Molecule Man in Hickman's Avengers run

This is akin to Jonathan Hickman's Avengers and New Avengers run. There we learn of the Beyonders, an all powerful group of beings that oversaw the multiverse and decided to destroy it using Molecule Man. He is a nexus being, meaning he is the same in every reality, which made him an anchor point across the entire multiverse tying every reality together. The Beyonders basically turned him into a bomb and detonated him in every universe to wipe the multiverse out in one fell swoop.

That is similar to anchor beings in the MCU, except every world has a different hero. It could mean these key figures are the ones who will have to team up to fight the multiversal Secret War. I can see a situation where Tobey Maguire is the anchor being of his universe, the actor who plays Wolverine is the anchor for the X-Men's, maybe Robert Downey Jr in some form, and so on. These would be the keys to saving the multiverse.

Doom's Black Swans accidentally caused the slow death of the multiverse

In the comics, Doctor Doom learned about Molecule Man's true purpose and set out on a secret mission to destroy every version of him. The hope was to stop the detonation and save as many worlds as possible. Because there were so many Molecule Men to kill, he subcontracted it by creating a religion known as Rabum Alal and recruiting women known as the Black Swans, who worshipped him like a god. They spread through the multiverse killing Molecule Men and recruiting more Swans.

The plan backfired. Killing a Molecule Man caused that world to become unanchored, so it travelled through the multiverse and, almost like a marble, crashed into another world, destroying both. The ripple effect meant the multiverse fell apart world by world. The Beyonders wanted the destruction to be instantaneous, but "Doom had accidentally created the slow death". In the MCU, I feel we'll see something similar, with anchor beings killed one by one until the multiverse is whittled down to a single timeline.

Kang may have been wiping out realities from the inside

That is where I think Kang was originally going to come in. He has been a threat across different universes. In Quantumania he says he has killed a Thor before, and potentially that Thor was the anchor being of his reality, which may have let Kang wipe it out more easily. I'm still going back and forth on this, because Quantumania showed a montage of him wiping out timelines. By the sounds of it, though, he has to go to each one and wipe it out from the inside, so it makes sense he'd come face to face with heroes there.

In the comic Kang War, or Kang Dynasty depending on where you pick it up, the villain did something similar, but instead of destroying a timeline he took it over and became its ultimate ruler. I definitely recommend the book, as it's one of the best the character has ever been in, and I don't feel we'll be seeing it on the big screen anytime soon.

Doom could kill a recast Kang the way Thanos beat Hulk

Doom eventually strips the Beyonders of their power and becomes a god himself. That happened in 2015's Secret Wars; in the original 80s version the Beyonder is a single character, but either way Doom ends up with their powers. A couple of years before Comic-Con there were rumours that the MCU would change things up with an ultimate Kang who would have the power of the Beyonders and be like a god.

I felt everything surrounding Jonathan Majors meant we were likely to get a recast, who would then be known as the Beyonder. Then I felt Doom would step in and kill him in the intro of Doomsday, much like Thanos beat the Hulk. There's an extremely iconic image in the Secret Wars comic where Doom rips Thanos's skeleton out of his body, and something like that with Kang would immediately make him seem like a threat, keep things in line with the comics and sort out Marvel's major issue with Kang.

Marvel fumbled Kang compared with Thanos

I think the studio mishandled Kang quite a lot and, on the whole, fumbled the villain. Compared with Thanos, "it's night and day". Thanos was teased at the end of Avengers, showed up looking mean in Guardians of the Galaxy, his ship dwarfed the one at the end of Ragnarok, and he beat Thor and Hulk in his first scene in Infinity War. He killed Loki and came out beating the heroes we'd followed for years. Even though he died, it still felt ominous.

Apparently the suits were so blown away by Majors that they retooled their slate to include him even more, hammering home that Kang was the one to fear. The Quantumania trailers seemed menacing, with him holding Scott at his whim, and he ruled over the quantum realm, so the hype was pretty big. From the original leaks, which we reported on before the movie, Kang was supposed to win. We got 90 percent of the plot right except the end. In the leaks he fled into the multiverse, saying he would destroy every other timeline, and promised Janet he'd come for her last.

The ending was reshot right before release, with the actors spotted in San Francisco filming moments we now know were for the end. I feel Marvel may have chickened out at the last second, which is annoying if we guessed right, or maybe it's not bad because of what happened with Majors. I think the character could have been salvaged, but then Victor Timely made him a bit of a joke. He got killed a lot, even hundreds of times in a montage in the Loki season 2 finale, which removed the threat. At this point, I think Kang should just be used to set up Doom.

A hero turned villain gives Doom a crazy direction

I feel it makes for a pretty crazy direction, with the Avengers fighting someone who looks like the hero of their Earth. How crazy would it be for Spider-Man to battle not only his mentor but someone who became like a surrogate father? "Turns out you can die a hero and still become the villain", which I think is such a smart way to take things: instead of someone who saved the universe, we have a variant trying to destroy the multiverse.

We could also get something ripped right out of Hickman's Avengers run, where the heroes come across a universe in which the Avengers are all bad guys. That could mean the original team fighting the new lineup: Doctor Doom, an evil Black Widow and Hydra Captain America, whose shield was spotted in the Void in Deadpool & Wolverine. It would be a crazy Civil War type event. With Downey back, they could also do Ironheart much better. In the comics Iron Man was her mentor but died before she met him. I don't know if they'll do that since he's Doom, but I do think we'll probably get Iron Man versus Doom at some point.

The Void could become Battleworld

I also feel they may have been teasing Battleworld. It formed after Doom stole the Beyonders' powers, when only two worlds remained, the 616 Earth and the Ultimate Universe's. In Time Runs Out, the two were crashing into each other, and when Earths collide they wipe each other out unless one destroys the other first. In the end both were destroyed, which should have ended the multiverse, but Doom used fragments and memories to create Battleworld, containing elements of the multiverse and basically all that remained.

Somewhere I think would be perfect for this is the Void, which featured in Loki and Deadpool & Wolverine. Everything pruned gets sent there, so it makes sense pruned timelines would too. We may even see a tease of Battleworld when a version of Thor is crying over Deadpool, and Paradox says this happens in the future and we're not supposed to see it yet. The footage reworks moments from Thor: The Dark World, and Thor has the same cut on his forehead, but the sleeves are missing from his costume, which makes it seem like a different moment.

Loki could recruit heroes as in Avengers Prime

Marvel have said they're bringing their comics and films under the same banner with one overseer, so it's possible to predict where things could be going. We may see something akin to Avengers Prime, where it was only recently revealed that Loki had been going through the multiverse collecting the best heroes. At its most basic, that team had two missions: stop Doom Supreme, who had been leading the multiversal Masters of Evil, and stop Mephisto, who could be coming, probably not, but he could be.

Loki is now the God of All Time sat at the centre of the World Tree, so he could remain on the throne while projecting himself to other worlds and recruit against whatever threats are coming, which could be Doom Supreme. Judging by Comic-Con, Doom is going to have a council, or maybe at least robots that look like him, and we'll have to wait and see. I feel Marvel might not even know what they want to do yet.

Do you think anchor beings were the key to how Doom would bring down the multiverse?