Captain America: Brave New World: did it hint at an Illuminati?

I think we may have accidentally learned who was meant to die in the opening scene of Avengers: Doomsday, at least as Marvel was planning it at the time. It all comes from one of the strangest interview exchanges I had read in a while, in which the director of Captain America: Brave New World (2025), starring Anthony Mackie and Harrison Ford, appeared to give away more than I think he was supposed to.

The question at the heart of it is which leaders of the Earth-616 Marvel universe are watching over the multiverse, whether they were originally meant to appear in Brave New World, and whether they are the Illuminati I believe were set to be massacred again, this time under Robert Downey Jr.'s Doctor Doom.

Julius Onah's Brave New World interviews with Variety and The Wrap

After the film's release, director Julius Onah broke his silence with detailed interviews with Adam B. Vary of Variety and Andi Ortiz of The Wrap, answering many of the questions fans had. He told Variety that the decision to have Bucky Barnes run for Congress was closely tied to Thunderbolts, which was still to come at the time, and he confirmed that Bucky was running in a New York City district.

If you know anything about real world politics, you'd know that almost all New York City districts, except those in Long Island and Staten Island, are gerrymandered to be Democrat leaning, and I joked that these are exactly the voters who would elect a 110 year old assassin once mind controlled by Hydra. If we assume Bucky ran in his home borough of Brooklyn, that would be the district of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in our world, which I found very, very funny.

Onah also told Variety that there was a version where President Ross didn't necessarily die at the end, but the public might have believed he had. That might explain why the trailers showed so many shots of a funeral we were fairly sure was Ross's, at least from the public's point of view.

The Wrap asked Onah who was in his Illuminati

The Wrap also dug into the reshoots, the alternate versions and the evolving design of the Leader. But one exchange caught everyone's attention. The interviewer said they had heard that at one point there was meant to be an Illuminati in the script, and asked who was in it, since audiences had seen one in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

Onah laughed and replied, "I won't say. I won't say." He then added that things are intentionally vague in that post-credits scene for a reason. That scene is the one where Samuel Sterns, the Leader, talks about alternate worlds out there where ordinary people want to fight to protect their world as much as our heroes want to protect ours.

Who the Illuminati are in the comics and in Multiverse of Madness

Marvel's Illuminati is a group of roughly six leaders representing different factions of Marvel heroes who keep watch over world level threats. In the comics the council usually includes Doctor Strange, Professor X, Tony Stark, Reed Richards, Black Bolt, Namor and sometimes Black Panther.

In the 2022 film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, they appear in the alternate Earth-838, where the group was Sorcerer Supreme Mordo, Professor X, Black Bolt, Captain Peggy Carter, Captain Marvel Maria Rambeau, and the man they called the smartest on Earth, Reed Richards, played by John Krasinski. A seventh seat on that stage sat empty, and we're fairly sure it belonged to Thor's half-brother Balder the Brave, played by Daniel Craig. A behind the scenes green screen photo shows his crumpled body, apparently killed by Mjolnir, which suggests the council was meant to have an Asgardian representative, possibly someone like the ruler of the Nine Realms.

The Scarlet Witch killed most of those leaders in that film, which is why this interview is really the first hint that a separate Illuminati exists in the 616 universe, even though they didn't end up appearing in the fourth Captain America film.

Why the Illuminati matter to Hulk stories and Secret Wars

The Illuminati play an important role in Hulk's comic history. After the destruction of Las Vegas, they exiled the Hulk from Earth, and he returned in the World War Hulk storyline and brutally killed many of their members. To be clear, World War Hulk isn't the story that inspired parts of Brave New World. That was the Red Hulk and the Leader material, and they are two different stories.

More important for Marvel Studios' future plans, the Illuminati are central at the start of Jonathan Hickman's Time Runs Out storyline, which leads into the 2015 Secret Wars crossover event. In Multiverse of Madness, writer Michael Waldron and director Sam Raimi lifted much of Reed Richards' explanation of incursions and multiversal logic directly from his presentation to the rest of the Illuminati in that moment of the comics.

Onah never confirmed the Illuminati were cut from Brave New World

When content aggregators reposted The Wrap's story, many misquoted Onah completely, claiming the director had confirmed the Illuminati were originally in Brave New World and were cut. That isn't what happened in the conversation. The interviewer framed the question around having heard there would be an Illuminati at some point in the script, then asked Onah who was in his lineup, which from his side might even have sounded like an invitation to fancast his dream Illuminati.

Onah playfully dodged it and said only that the post-credits scene, where the Leader warns about fighting heroes from other worlds, was kept vague for a reason. Essentially, I take it Marvel Studios executives had told him something like: don't say anything specific about this post-credits scene, just say this vague line.

Why I trust The Wrap but had never heard this before

When I read it, I became very curious about the premise of the question, because I trust The Wrap. This is the outlet that held weekly interviews with Agatha All Along creator Jac Schaeffer and got exclusives about what was really happening on that show. I trust their reporting, I trust their sources, and they know what they are talking about.

At the same time, I had followed the making of Brave New World for almost four years and was well aware of what each version of the film was going to be. This was the first time I had heard that Marvel's Illuminati might appear in it. I don't know where The Wrap got the information. Searching the film's various titles alongside the word Illuminati, going back to the film's announcement in April 2021, the only possible origin I found was a random theory piece from Screen Rant in March 2023, speculating that President Ross might try to form his own Illuminati based on the Dark Reign storyline. That article cited no source connected to the film, not even a scooper guessing it might happen.

Four ways The Wrap might have heard about an Illuminati

I can see about four ways The Wrap could have heard this, confidently enough to ask the director about it. One, they may have mistaken World War Hulk for the comic inspiration behind this film's Red Hulk, read about the Illuminati's connection to Hulk in that storyline, and assumed the group would be involved.

Two, they may have read about the Intelligencia, the Leader's villainous organization that turns Ross into Red Hulk, confused it with the Illuminati, and asked Onah about the Illuminati thinking they were the same group. Three, they may have noticed that the film's title changed from New World Order to Brave New World to avoid any link to globalist conspiracy theories, then mentally connected that to Marvel's decision to call the Multiverse of Madness lineup the Illuminati, a word that carries similar conspiracy associations in the real world. Or four, The Wrap may have a reliable source at Marvel who independently confirmed that a version of Captain America 4 included a 616 Illuminati lineup.

Again, I trust The Wrap. I don't think they would have risked asking Onah about the Illuminati, and kept the word in their edited, published interview, if there were a chance of confusion with the Intelligencia, New World Order or World War Hulk. And Onah didn't answer by saying he had no idea what they were talking about and that no version of his film had an Illuminati. He pauses on it, and he doesn't want to say what he had in mind. So I think there may be some truth to what The Wrap asked, and that at some point a specific cameo lineup of 616 Marvel leaders, meant to represent this universe's Illuminati, was discussed with the Marvel Studios executive team.

The Shang-Chi post-credits scene may have shown half the Illuminati

If that's true, who would those members be? In Earth-838, Mordo explained the seats: one for the Sorcerer Supreme, one for the First Avenger or leader of the Avengers, one for the Keeper of the Terrigen Mist or Inhuman king, one for the Defender of the Cosmos, one for the smartest man on Earth, and one for a representative of the mutant nation. They never said what the seventh chair was, but it was implied someone brave was meant to sit there, possibly the ruler of the Nine Realms or a wielder of Mjolnir. Technically, the 616 universe has leaders who could fill most of those chairs.

Here's the twist: Marvel Studios may already have shown us half of that Illuminati, in the post-credits scene of Shang-Chi. Wong, Carol Danvers and Bruce Banner were there, and we never learned what their group chat was called. Some of us assumed the Avengers; it could have been an Endgame veterans chat or a D&D group. It's equally possible they are this universe's Illuminati. If Shang-Chi and Katy were invited into a group of three high ranking Marvel leaders focused on a cosmic threat raised by a pulsing signal from the Ten Rings, I think it's safe to say someone at Marvel Studios wanted that group to be three members of the 616 Illuminati.

My Earth-616 Illuminati lineup, from Wong to Namor

Sorcerer Supreme is Wong. Spider-Man: No Way Home and Multiverse of Madness made it clear that Wong, not Stephen Strange, is this universe's Sorcerer Supreme, and I think we were told that for a reason. Defender of the Cosmos, I think, is Carol Danvers, especially now that she has the bangles. We've been told she is Marvel's most cosmically powerful hero and knows every threat in the universe; she killed the Kree Supreme Intelligence.

Smartest man on Earth is, I think, why Bruce Banner was on that call. That doesn't make him the smartest of all time. The role could have been Tony Stark's, or maybe should have been Shuri's or Vision's, though Vision is a synthezoid, not a man. Maybe one day it should be Amadeus Cho, but after Tony's death I can see why Bruce would be considered the smartest man on Earth. And maybe it's because he's the smartest man on Earth that this universe's destruction is coming.

The Avenger seat should obviously go to Sam Wilson, and I think the scene was meant for Brave New World to establish Sam as the true leader of the Avengers. So few mutants have been established in the 616 universe that I think the mutant seat goes to Namor. There's a reason Black Panther: Wakanda Forever used that word about him, and in the comics he's an original Illuminati member. If there's an Asgardian seat, the ruler of the Nine Realms, Valkyrie, ruler of New Asgard, should sit there.

As for the Inhuman seat, sorry to Quake fans, but I think in the 616 universe they would make it a seat for the Eternals, taken by Sersi, Phastos or Kingo, probably Kingo. Finally, I think this Illuminati would have a Wakandan representative who probably hates the rest of the group and only shows up to some meetings to point out how foolish everyone else is, such as Shuri, M'Baku or Okoye. If this lineup sounds a bit weak or ineffective, that's the point. I'm not building a dream team; I'm building a student council that decides when Hulks should be punished or when some percentage of the world's population can be sacrificed.

Why I think Doctor Doom kills the Illuminati in Avengers: Doomsday

That's why I think Avengers: Doomsday would have opened with the 616 Illuminati meeting, still trying to work out what the Ten Rings were pulsing for, only to be brutally killed. Originally that would have been at the hands of the Kang Dynasty; now, at least in some draft, I'm saying it's Robert Downey Jr.'s Doctor Doom.

Hopefully Sam Wilson survives it, maybe spared to deliver a message. But otherwise, doesn't this sound like exactly the kind of lineup of leaders Marvel Studios would get more out of killing in the opening minutes, just to show how ruthless Doctor Doom is?