Fantastic Four ship theory: is Ben Grimm flying it in Doomsday?

After The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025), starring Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby, my biggest question was how its ending would connect to the Thunderbolts post credits scene and to Avengers: Doomsday. My prediction is that Ben Grimm is at least one of the people on the Fantastic Four ship, not Doctor Doom. Jessica Clemons and I also worked through why Franklin touches Doom's face, how much of Doomsday might take place in the 828 universe, and why the timelines jump the way they do.

When we talked this through in August 2025, Avengers: Doomsday was still more than a year away, set for December 2026, and many of these questions had no answers yet.

Jessica Clemons on The Fantastic Four: First Steps as a family story

Jess loved the film. She had seen it twice and said she was obsessed with it, enjoying going back to find things she hadn't realized she loved the first time. Going in, she didn't know what to expect. She knew it wouldn't be an origin story and that it would revolve around Galactus wanting a baby. Hearing that Sue would be the real lead, then watching it, made her understand that it's a story about family.

It's a family story, and Sue is the matriarch. The discussion also turned to how the film shows that being part of a family can be difficult, with hard decisions and the risk of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Reed playing devil's advocate in that moment was the example: the impact of what you say can outweigh the intent, and plenty of family fights start that way.

How much of Avengers: Doomsday could be set in the 828 universe

We know some portion of Avengers: Doomsday will be set in the 828 universe, the Fantastic Four's home reality. First Steps didn't end with that universe being destroyed, and I'm glad Kasra Farahani, the film's production designer, is also production designer on Doomsday.

Jess thinks the time will probably be split down the middle between 828 and the main 616 universe, though she wasn't sure it would be exactly 50/50. Her reasoning: the Fantastic Four and Doom have the baby, and we'll somehow need to see the Fantastic Four ship arrive in 616. She doesn't think the X-Mansion will get the same amount of screen time. Marvel wants to stay with the Fantastic Four for a long time, but they belong to 828, not 616. So she expects a little in 616, a little in 828, and the rest scattered all over the place.

I think we'll see the X-Mansion, but more as an early act two stop, with the rest of the movie spent somewhere between 828 and 616. I also think the reason we learned so late that Farahani would design Doomsday is that the filmmakers were still figuring the movie out. My guess is they decided they wanted more time on the Fantastic Four sets, and with so much time in the TVA and the 828 universe, Farahani had already done much of the work, so it made sense to let him design everything else too.

Jess added that if you already have a set built, you're going to shoot on it. What she wants to know is whether Farahani is building new sets from the ground up or whether the production is reusing what we've already seen. My estimate is that about 70 percent of the movie will be on a set built and designed by Farahani.

Who is on the Fantastic Four ship in the Thunderbolts post credits scene

Neither Jess nor I could say for sure who is on that ship. Many people think Doctor Doom is aboard, using it as a Trojan horse. That reading was granted as plausible. The possibility that it's simply the Fantastic Four came up too, and that stayed on the table. Her point was that nobody can give a real answer without having seen what the Russos have written.

Here's what I think: no one is better at piloting the Fantastic Four ship, whether it's the three pronged version or the four pronged one, than Ben Grimm. So I think Ben has to be on board. Jess noted that it looked like it was coming in very hot, and I said that was a good point. She floated that it could be H.E.R.B.I.E. flying alone with no idea what he's doing, and the idea came up that it could be H.E.R.B.I.E. by himself with the baby while the others fight Doom.

I don't think it's the baby. My worry is that Doom has taken the child and the ship carries some combination of the family. I don't think Doom needs that ship. He can teleport with his time door or use some other vessel. A Trojan horse also wouldn't work, because the Thunderbolts watching the ship on their screen don't know who the Fantastic Four are. So my prediction is that it isn't Doom, that it's at least Ben Grimm and maybe some of the others, and that Doom has another way of getting around.

Why Franklin Richards touches Doctor Doom's face

Jess called it a weird situation and offered the only reading she could make of it while staying grounded in reality. If someone walks into a child's space in a metal mask and takes it off, the child might be seconds from crying. The person says it's just them, and the child touches the face to make sure it's real. She noted Franklin isn't a baby anymore, more like three or four, but thinks the same idea applies: touching it makes it feel real and less scary. She thinks the face is just a normal Robert Downey Jr. face.

I think so too, and I expect it to be mostly a familiar looking Downey. I've seen theories that Franklin might be healing the scarring on Doom's face. Doom wears a mask because he's vain, and he blames Reed for the college era invention that blew up and scarred him. But I don't think Franklin will heal him that early. Marvel cast Downey so he'd still look like Downey, but I expect they'll do something to make his face look rough and stick with it for most of the movie.

Instead, I think there's some connection to the power cosmic. I don't expect Doomsday to use the Beyonders, but I do think it will establish something about anchor beings, with Doom absorbing their power from collapsed universes, and maybe calling it the power cosmic for this God Emperor Doom. Galactus had a hunger connection to Franklin while he was still in the womb, and maybe Franklin has a similar mystic connection with whatever Doom has, drawn like a moth to a flame because he sees something in Doom's eyes.

The 14 month and four year time jumps

The Thunderbolts post credits scene says 14 months later, while the First Steps scene jumps four years in the 828 universe. Jess said she has no idea why. Four years seems to be about needing Franklin to be a kid who can talk. She finds 14 months strange and very specific, though maybe it's long enough for the New Avengers to settle into a new Watchtower.

My earlier theory was that 14 months connected to the X-Men universe. If its 2024 matches the 2024 of 616, jumping ahead lands in 2028, a peak year for that version of the X-Men, one year before Wolverine, that universe's anchor being, dies. But that rule doesn't apply to 828 if it's set in the 1960s, since different universes can sit at different points in their own timelines. So I still don't know why those numbers matter.

When I asked whether it would matter to the Russo brothers, Jess said no, then yes, then that she didn't know. To her, the MCU timeline is always going to be broken and needs more than Miss Minutes to fix it. She thinks the time is simply different in their universe, though it could have aligned. If it is explained, she expects one sentence and then everyone moves on. It doesn't affect Galactus taking the baby or Doom taking over the universe, so for her it's just curiosity, and that's why she doesn't care.

Who wrote the Fantastic Four post credits scene

To me the time jumps look like a specific choice meant to make us assume a certain amount of time has passed. The Russo brothers shot both post credits scenes, but the Thunderbolts one was written by Joanna Calo, one of that film's writers, making it a collaboration between the Thunderbolts team and the Doomsday team.

So who wrote the Fantastic Four scene? Was it the First Steps writers, including Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan and Ian Springer, or Stephen McFeely, who is writing Doomsday? Michael Waldron is also consulting on Doomsday. My theory is Eric Pearson, because he's something of a Marvel Studios scribe who has worked on many of its films and did a draft of Thunderbolts. But I don't know.

Jess thinks anyone could have written it, with whoever holds the timeline bible dropping in the number later. Nothing in the Thunderbolts scene itself shows the time: it shows a team working better together and getting an upgrade, and someone simply had to put a time on it. The Fantastic Four scene didn't need much writing either: Sue reading Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar to Franklin, asking if he wants to read something else, Sue and H.E.R.B.I.E. finding another book in the kitchenette, then music and visuals.

The creepiest detail in the First Steps post credits scene

What creeped me out on my fifth viewing is that Sue doesn't just sense someone in the room. She can see the back of Doom's cloak on the other side of the fireplace. I imagined walking into where I'd left my son playing and seeing the back of a hood. That's James Wan horror, Insidious or The Conjuring. Then you round the corner and see a greenish hood and a metal mask, though Franklin isn't in real danger in that moment. My son is also starting to get the same curly blonde hair Franklin has, which unsettled me even more.

Will these questions get satisfying answers? Jess thinks some of them probably will. She's learned patience with the MCU. Questions like these come up, we grasp at an actor who said something misconstrued or gave someone a look when asked something, that person comes under fire, and she wonders why we did that, so she just waits until the movie comes out. At the time, I had a feeling that teasers, trailers and further marketing wouldn't answer these questions, and that we would have to wait until December 2026 for the movie itself.