Every Clue Marvel Has Dropped That Seems to Confirm the Avengers Doomsday X-Men vs Spider-Man Leak

I don't think we can avoid talking about this any longer. I think we have a pretty good idea of Avengers Doomsday's opening sequence, or at least how the movie was at one point going to be structured, and every new bit of information released for Doomsday seems to confirm it with increasingly higher degrees of certainty.

What I'm about to discuss does concern something we categorize as a leak, and it's the kind we don't fully trust because dozens of versions of it have been circulated, echoed, and altered. But now that major Disney actors are talking about it openly at Disney's own expo, I feel like Marvel and Disney want us talking about it. These are dots that are begging to be connected.

The February Leak Described an X-Men vs Spider-Man Opening on Earth 96283

Rewinding to February, various scoopers began reporting rumors that Avengers Doomsday would feature some kind of opening scene involving the X-Men, Deadpool, Wolverine, and Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man from his world of Earth 96283. It was one of dozens of wildly speculative rumors that I just did not believe at the time.

Over the summer, leaked plot descriptions began circulating on social media, framing that scene within a longer plot summary. There are half a dozen variants floating around, but they share the same core: the story opens on Earth 96283, where the X-Men, particularly Beast, have developed a planet killing bomb to destroy that Earth entirely in order to save Earth 10005 from an incursion. Wolverine and Deadpool fight Spider-Man to stop it, but Wolverine plants the device and stays behind when it detonates, killing both him and Spider-Man, while Charles Xavier watches the alternate Earth get destroyed with sadness. The leak also mentions Loki visiting Steve Rogers to give him a card to call him back with, and masked witches used by Doctor Doom. Reading that, you could assume that's why the X-Men seem so antagonistic in this movie: they're fighting for their own survival and think everyone is there to kill them.

The First Trailer Quietly Added the Loki TVA Card Detail

The first Doomsday trailer was shown in April at CinemaCon, then released publicly on YouTube on July 20th with one new shot added: Loki handing a TVA card with a specific number on it to Steve Rogers. If that leak with Loki's card was already floating around, why include a shot of Loki at all, let alone the card specifically, when the description had already circulated before that shot was added?

Two days after that trailer went public, San Diego Comic-Con put on display three masked Latverian witches. Both of those details aligned with what was already sitting out there in that possibly leaked plot description.

The Second Trailer Showed a Witch and a Destroyed New York

On Saturday, July 25th, Marvel showed convention attendees the second Doomsday trailer, which includes a shot of one of the witches in the background behind Doom, plus a shot of the ruins of a New York City with a clearly identifiable Central Park and Chrysler Building seen from above. Those details became visible to everyone once the trailer went public a couple of weeks later at D23 on August 14th.

Also during that convention panel, Ryan Reynolds appeared in character as Deadpool doing a bit to tease his possible involvement. Asked when he starts filming Doomsday, he replied, "It's in the can, bro. Look around you. Did you bump your head?" When pressed about additional photography or last minute additions, the joke landed on: "We keep making the movie until they pry it out of our hands."

Spider-Man Brand New Day's Post-Credit Scene Pointed to Another Spider-Man in Space

Spider-Man: Brand New Day came out a week after that Comic-Con weekend and ended with a post-credit scene showing Ned's Spidey Tracker app coming alive and locating another Spider-Man in space. Channels like ours pointed out that in No Way Home, Ned's sorcerer abilities let him open a sling ring portal to another Peter, the second of which opened onto Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker. We also pointed out that Doomsday's central problem involves other Earths appearing nearby in orbit.

Others looked closely at the static glitch on the tracker in that scene and believe the pink section of the static contains humps for five digits, possibly 96283, Maguire's Peter Parker's universe number. I don't know about that one.

D23's TVA Walk-Through Added a Broken TVA and X-Men Sets

At D23, the TVA walkthrough experience largely reused the 2024 setup but was modified to include the X-Mansion sets, X-Men costumes, a Sentinel head, Avengers Tower with Avengers costumes, and Doctor Doom's throne room with his new suit before looping back to the TVA. The 2026 version added a new detail: the TVA was now shown attacked and broken on the way out, another detail that seemed to align with the plot leak.

Hugh Jackman's D23 Video Followed Up Ryan Reynolds' Tease

On the night of August 14th, while Kevin Feige and the Doomsday cast were discussing the film at the Honda Center, Hugh Jackman appeared in a pre-recorded video message as a follow-up to the Reynolds bit from July, offering to help "rounding out the cast" and joking he might convince Reynolds to appear too. The takeaway at this point is that Jackman's Wolverine and Reynolds' Deadpool are going to be in this movie, but Marvel and Disney are being weird about it, wanting us to think they're in the movie while staying cryptic about how.

Walker Scobell Became the First Disney Star to Discuss the Leak Openly

That same D23 weekend, Percy Jackson and the Olympians star Walker Scobell became the first major Disney star to discuss this rumored leak at all. He said: "There was a big doomsday leak. Who knows if it's true. The leak is that the X-Men, like the Fox X-Men, are going to have to fight Tobey Maguire, Spider-Man, because he's the only hero of his universe. So, he's going to have to fight all of them for his universe to continue existing. And that is the coolest thing I've ever heard." He added that he doesn't want Maguire's Spider-Man to die.

To be clear, Scobell isn't part of the Doomsday film. He's commenting as a fan and isn't under any particular embargo from the Russo brothers, Kevin Feige, or Marvel Studios.

Marvel's Official Watch List Recommends No Way Home, Not Brand New Day

This week Marvel Studios released its official watch list of films and shows it says fans need to watch before Avengers Doomsday. It left off movies where we last saw some of these characters, like Thor: Love and Thunder, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and The Marvels. But it did include Spider-Man: No Way Home, not Brand New Day. Maybe they assume everyone already saw Brand New Day this summer, and they'd be right, but it's still odd because neither Tom Holland nor Benedict Cumberbatch has been confirmed for Doomsday, even though we assume they're part of it somehow. No Way Home was the movie that brought Maguire's Peter Parker into the MCU, along with Norman Osborn, Otto Octavius, and Flint Marco from Earth 96283.

Blurry Watermarked Set Photos Are Probably Fake

Some images watermarked with Russian words have been circulating that appear to show Reynolds, Jackman, and Maguire, the latter in a mocap suit, on some kind of set. I don't think they're even real. There was a very AI version of these three actors together that made the rounds earlier this year, which makes me distrust these too.

Could Disney Actually Put Maguire's Spider-Man in a Non-Sony Movie?

You may ask whether a Disney movie, one not co-produced by Sony the way No Way Home was but 100% funded by Disney, could open with Maguire's Spider-Man in the Manhattan created by Sam Raimi for Sony back in 2002, 2004, and 2007. These Spider-Man sharing deals are complicated, and everything is on the table for a price. We used to assume Kingpin could never appear in a Spider-Man movie due to legal rights, according to Vincent D'Onofrio himself, but when Kevin Feige was asked about it, he said "anything can get worked out," with Amy Pascal, the person who'd first have to sign off on Maguire appearing in a Disney Marvel movie, sitting right next to him.

Part of Marvel's past licensing agreement with Sony is that Marvel gets to place one major MCU sourced character alongside Peter Parker in Sony's Holland Spider-Man movies. Brand New Day gave Sony four: Hulk, Punisher, Yelena Belova, and Jean Grey, star of Marvel's upcoming X-Men film. Those additions helped Brand New Day break the box office records it's currently breaking. Disney and Marvel get a cut of that, reportedly 25%, but they might have negotiated even more as part of that exchange, something we could see pay off in Doomsday.

The Destroyed New York Shot Raises More Questions Than It Answers

For me right now it really comes down to that one shot of the destroyed New York in the new trailer. Why are so many buildings destroyed and burned while so many trees in Central Park stayed completely green? Is that some kind of ship visible in the lower border of the park? Why is the iconic top of the Chrysler Building still intact, and why is there no Avengers Tower where an Avengers Tower would be? Could it be a universe that never had one?

Could this shot even be reversed, so that we're actually seeing it from the point of view of a Blackbird jet flying away from this ruined city while Charles Xavier sheds a tear?

My Verdict: Marvel Wants Fans to Feel Right, Not Surprised

My final verdict on all of this is that I do now think some version of this is going to be how Avengers Doomsday opens, a horrifying promise that lives up to a disaster movie title like Doomsday. I think Marvel Studios wants us to know this because deep down Marvel fans don't want to be surprised as much as they want to be right. They don't want to say they never saw it coming. They want to say, "I knew it."

What do you think is really happening in that destroyed New York shot?