Avengers: Doomsday trailer: is Johnny Storm shielding Franklin?

One shot in the Avengers: Doomsday trailer may give away how the film ends. In it, Johnny Storm is hurt and crouched over someone while a wall of fire rushes toward them, and I think that someone is probably his nephew, Franklin Richards. At the time, Kevin Feige had also answered a run of rapid questions about Doomsday, Avengers: Secret Wars and what follows them, and I think his answers point to how the story could turn toward a Mutant Saga.

Johnny and Franklin come out of The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025), starring Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby and Joseph Quinn, and that film's post-credits scene is central to my reading of the shot.

The Avengers: Doomsday trailer shot I think shows Johnny Storm holding Franklin Richards

When I first saw it, I thought Johnny was holding his sister, Sue Storm. But Vanessa Kirby isn't much shorter than Joseph Quinn. Another member of the family has hair of this color, and it matches the curls in the shot. Johnny is also bending down to hold this person, so their height should be about right for Franklin Richards.

So yes, Johnny Storm is probably holding his nephew here. If that's true, it changes a great deal about what we should expect from how the film plays out.

Brightening the shot shows that the wall of fire comes from an atmospheric rupture. It's the same kind of event Charles Xavier is seen shielding his eyes from early in the trailer.

Why I don't think Doomsday opens with this incursion

This isn't another early incursion scene set in the 828 universe. The post-credits scene of The Fantastic Four: First Steps suggests that Doomsday will begin with Doctor Doom abducting Franklin Richards.

I don't think that post-credits scene was only about Doom getting to see the young Franklin, because Franklin would then have seen Victor's face behind the mask. I'm fairly sure part of Doom's plan is to deceive the Avengers and the other Marvel heroes. He would hide his true identity without the mask, present himself as a friendly ally helping to solve the incursion crisis, and pass off the masked villain as someone else entirely.

Instead, I think this shot shows Johnny near the very end of the film, or at least at some point in the third act. Time is running out and a three way incursion is under way.

Johnny Storm and Franklin may be in the Void as Battleworld forms

Other shots in the trailer make it look like Johnny Storm joins another group of Marvel heroes in part of the Void, which is slowly turning into Battleworld. Talokan from the 616 universe has been torn from the seabed of the 616 Earth and moved into the Void as a foundation of Battleworld.

That suggests Franklin Richards is in the Void too, since by this point in the film it's being transformed into Battleworld. It looks like Uncle Johnny is protecting his nephew to keep him safe during the incursion.

There are other possibilities. Maybe Johnny is shielding himself from a force field like Sue's. Maybe he's protecting himself from a force field Franklin has made, the way Sue creates force fields to guard them from fire. Or maybe the fire is having some other effect on Johnny.

How Hickman's Secret Wars could shape Johnny Storm's fate

Comics spoilers follow here. Marvel has made no secret that it is adapting this storyline, though I promise there will be some differences in how they do it. Kevin Feige has been open that Doomsday's ending will follow the road map from Jonathan Hickman's Time Runs Out into Hickman's 2015 Secret Wars event.

One of the grim things that happens as Battleworld is created is that Ben Grimm, the Thing, is turned into a giant living wall that keeps the dangerous regions of Battleworld apart. Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, is made into a burning sun that lights and warms that world, like Apollo in Greek mythology.

Maybe at the end of the film it's Franklin Richards who transforms his uncle into this endless living form to save him from death, so that he can later find a way to bring him back to normal. Seen that way, isn't it rather sweet? As everything faces destruction, five year old Franklin keeps Ben, who helped him be born, alive as a protective barrier. He keeps Johnny, the cool uncle who inspires him, alive as a source of light and warmth in a dark, cold world.

I think there's a kind of beauty in the way Omega level mutant reality warpers like Franklin Richards do their artistic work.

Kevin Feige tells Joshua Horowitz Secret Wars will not be two films

Joshua Horowitz put a string of rapid questions to Kevin Feige and got him to admit a lot. The first ones were about casting rumors. Asked why Ryan Gosling, who wants to be Ghost Rider, and Cynthia Erivo, who wants to be Storm, haven't been cast in those roles, Feige said no one knows what will happen in the future, and that both are very good actors and great characters.

On Adam Driver, Feige said it's no secret that Marvel wants him, but that talking to him and then having him turn them down has become something of a tradition. Horowitz then asked about Blade and how Feige was feeling. Feige said he was very happy to have gotten Wesley back in Deadpool & Wolverine, and that not being able to get started with Mahershala felt like his failure. Horowitz told him he wasn't a failure.

Then came Secret Wars. Asked whether there was any chance Secret Wars would be two films, Feige answered: "Not on this planet." Asked whether Doomsday was still coming on its release date, he said yes. Asked whether he saw the MCU after Secret Wars as a reboot, he said no, but that he always looks to the comics for story, and that after both Secret Wars, especially Hickman's from 10 years ago, there's a great road map for moving forward. Finally, asked whether X-Men actors had already been signed, he said certainly not.

Feige's Secret Wars road map and Franklin's new universe

With that road map, Feige is confirming how we will get into Secret Wars, with Battleworld built from the Earths of multiple collapsed alternate universes. It also points to how we get out of Battleworld at the end of Secret Wars, where God Emperor Doom is made to admit that Reed Richards was right.

In the comic, Reed tells him: "You saved what you could, but you never built the best world." Doom asks whether Reed thinks he could have done better, and Reed says yes. Molecule Man, Owen Reece, the true keeper of the Beyonders' power, hands that reality controlling power over to Reed. Battleworld falls apart as Reed's son Franklin uses his reality altering powers to build a new universe.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps confirms that Franklin Richards inherited the Power Cosmic, a power and a burden Galactus brought with him 14 billion years ago at the Big Bang that began this universe. I think that film is saying the Power Cosmic could build a new universe too. This new universe is what Feige is talking about, made up of the post Secret Wars reboot and a new cast of X-Men.

The Weibo interview: Feige points to a streamlined universe with the X-Men at its core

A post on Weibo, the Chinese social media platform, went viral. It was translated from Chinese and may not be accurate word for word, so it's worth reading the whole thing rather than a single quote pulled out by social media aggregators.

In it, Feige confirmed Time Runs Out and the 2015 Secret Wars comics as the inspiration. According to the translation, he said Avengers 5 and Avengers 6 are inspired by those Marvel Comics storylines, and that Marvel wants to do two things: bring an end to some stories that began long before Iron Man, including the original X-Men characters, and at the same time pave the way for the future. He said Avengers: Endgame was truly an ending and that Marvel has experimented with many new things since.

The translation then says Avengers: Endgame is a new beginning that will establish a streamlined, simplified, single universe that audiences can keep up with, where some things will feel familiar but many, many things will be completely new. It isn't clear that Endgame is meant as the new beginning here. Probably it's a translation error, and I think Feige meant Doomsday or Secret Wars is the new start. Simple and streamlined.

Feige also reportedly said the next universe will be built on what Marvel has talked about before, attracting young people and connecting with a new generation of audiences, and that the X-Men will be at its core. He said getting the X-Men rights wasn't only about a great character like Wolverine, who Marvel was able to pair with Deadpool, but that the X-Men are much more than Wolverine or the original team. It is a universe, a multilayered epic, and Marvel is working with much of it.

Planning to 2042 and the Mutant Saga

Asked about the plan, Feige gave a vague answer. He said that in Marvel Studios' meeting rooms, they were planning films out to 2042. Whether they'll last until 2042, and whether those will be the same films, he said, who knows? But that's how they plan, given the huge number of possible stories in the comics. He said they are always changing and evolving, but some guidelines help them work in a more planned way, especially with the X-Men. He noted that 10 X-Men films have already been released, that some are very, very good and some, he thinks, didn't live up to expectations, and asked how Marvel will plan the Mutant Saga on a very large scale.

Feige was due to share more at his Hall H panel at San Diego Comic-Con, which I was attending. Even though he didn't open up to Joshua Horowitz, this Weibo interview cleared up a lot. Kevin Feige sees Secret Wars as the start of a new creation, one that uses elements of the past and the future to build a new MCU in a complete 616 universe, with all the Marvel heroes and the mutants at its center.

2042 means the next 15 to 16 years, and I think that shows Feige's confidence in the Chris Claremont Mutant Saga stories. Yes, we'll hear announcements of an X-Men movie, Black Panther 3, Shang-Chi 2 and Deadpool 4 coming in 2028. But from 2030 on, I believe we'll get more than a decade of classic X-Men stories, crafted more precisely than in the Fox era, with stories that speak to a new generation.