Avengers: Doomsday Trailer Detail Hints Doctor Doom Is Causing the Incursions With Magnets

From the Avengers: Doomsday trailer and its official poster, I think I figured out what Doctor Doom was aiming to do in the movie, and the tactics the Avengers, X-Men and Fantastic Four would try in order to stop him. My theory rests on Doom's plan and motive as the poster lays them out, plus a pretty big detail I uncovered in the trailer itself.

To make it all make sense, I need to walk through the trailer, then the poster, then the detail I spotted.

Doom's trailer warning pointed to an unthinkable decision within a single day

In the trailer, we hear Robert Downey Jr. as Victor Von Doom deliver this line: "Something's coming. Something we may not be able to deter. Before this day is done, we shall be faced with an unthinkable decision."

Victor was not kidding about it being a literal day. When the Avengers meet in the Avengers Tower penthouse, a countdown clock on screen indicates they have less than 24 hours to try to fix the incursion crisis. Perhaps that is why the Fantastic Four's every Sunday at 7:00 tweet had Reed and Sue saying: "We make a point to do family dinner every week. Sunday at 7:00 on the dot no matter what." That was followed by the exchange "How long do we have?" and "Not long."

Doom only defends himself against Thor, and he does not sound like Loki, Ultron or Thanos

Every time we see Doctor Doom in the trailer, he is fighting Thor. Or rather, he is defending himself from Thor's attacks, using some kind of magical protection on his armor to withstand the full power of Stormbreaker. That is the god killing weapon that could have killed Thanos with all six Infinity Stones if Thor had gone for the head.

Victor's line also does not sound like the proudly evil lines of past Avengers movie villains in their first trailers: Loki, Ultron and Thanos. It honestly sounds like the words of an "empathetic dude who's just trying to soften the blow of what's going to happen."

A three world incursion is too coincidental to be natural

We know the crisis they face is three worlds merging at the same time. The issue I raised in my earlier breakdown was how astronomically coincidental it would have to be for three worlds to collide at the same time, at the same exact speed, in a three way incursion. Someone like Reed would certainly conclude that this incursion was not naturally occurring, and that these three universes were nudged together by some force.

So Victor's plan could be to pose as an ally to the heroes while he gets closer to them, so that he could take the powers of the reality warpers among them. That means Franklin Richards, Loki, and maybe, for the X-Men, their anchor being Wolverine or maybe Magneto's daughter, the Scarlet Witch of that reality. I have a theory for how that could make sense, which I will get to below.

An unmasked Victor may be hiding in the trailer, and the poster's tapestry holds the clues

How could Victor even control incursions like this? Earlier that week, I argued that a number of shots in the trailer are hiding an unmasked Victor: a seemingly helpful variant scientist from another universe, played by Robert Downey Jr. with a distinctive head of hair. While I was looking at the empty space where I think Victor might be standing, I discovered a new visual detail I had not seen before. Before I get to it, I need to go through the poster.

The poster shows Doom in front of a massive tapestry rug, and I think it might be hanging in the Doomstadt armory. As I have pointed out before, the film's opening day of musical scoring showed a screenplay slug line on screen for an interior armor room in Doomstadt. On the poster, Doom holds his mask in hand as if he just finished welding it together. So imagine Doom looking up at this thing whenever he hammers his armor together.

The rug shows an apparent Madonna and child at the top of a globe, surrounded by four angelic figures with wings that kind of look like forks. The globe itself is surrounded by clouds and features a prominent crack or canyon on its left side. A few orbs surround the globe above that, also on the left. Beneath the globe is a figure carrying a staff or scepter topped with a glowing orb. Less noticeable, in the bottom right directly to the right of Doom's mask, is some other forsaken figure.

The Madonna and child could be Victor's lost family, his mother Cynthia, or Sue and Franklin

My first instinct was that the Madonna and child could show the wife and child Victor lost. We are pretty sure Victor will be, or once was, a father in this movie. Maybe he lost that family in an incursion event that he blames on Steve Rogers' decision to stay in the past with Peggy Carter.

But I also think we could read it as Victor as a child with his mother, Cynthia. To the left of them there is a castle, and I think that is supposed to be the Doomstadt castle in Latveria. Putting Cynthia and himself up with the angels would be pretty ironic, because famously in the comics Cynthia is trapped in hell with Mephisto. I do not even think Mephisto is going to be in Doomsday, and I am not reaching to put him there, but it is worth knowing this history.

In 1971's Astonishing Tales number 8, we find out that Doctor Doom's mother practiced witchcraft and was trapped by a demon in hell. In 1986's Fantastic Four Annual number 20, Doom uses a four year old Franklin Richards to try to get his mother's soul back from Mephisto. That puts what Doom is doing with Franklin, who is around the same age in the post credit scene of The Fantastic Four: First Steps and in this movie, in a whole new context. In 1989's Doctor Strange and Doctor Doom: Triumph and Torment, the two doctors aim to rescue Cynthia Von Doom from hell, and they successfully use a loophole to free her soul to a better afterlife.

There is also an obvious parallel between this mother and child and Susan Storm with Franklin Richards. Maybe Doom admires in Franklin what he wishes he had himself: the ability to use cosmic powers to revive his mother.

The globe could be Battleworld, walled off and ringed by Doom's own moons

I think the globe embodies Doctor Doom's task in this movie: to put a suit of armor around a world, his world, Battleworld. The hairline crack on the left side of the globe could be the border of a continent with an ocean, or a canyon, or a man made structure visible from space, like the Great Wall of China or a particular border wall. When Doom forms Battleworld in Jonathan Hickman's storyline, he transforms Ben Grimm, the Thing, into a literal physical wall that separates off the more dangerous regions.

As for the orbs on the left side, if Doctor Doom can rearrange three Earths into a new planet, he is probably free to have as many moons or orbital satellites as he wants. An unusual arrangement of moons could give Doom control over the tides, letting him control the water in unusual ways. He could also potentially control Moon Knight, who derives his powers from the moon through Khonshu.

The figure at the bottom of the tapestry is not Mephisto, I do not think. This one carries a torch that seems to be helping build a new utopian world. Is this bringer of light, this luminary, what Victor sees himself as across his dual Doctor Doom and Victor identities? Someone to illuminate the world and redeem the mother and child at the globe's northern pole, while Doom himself stands at its southern pole, positioned directly in front of it.

Reed's incursion display appears to show the three Earths' cores as magnets

That mention of poles brings me back to the new detail I spotted on the Avengers' screen, in Reed Richards' explanatory display of the incursion crisis. On the left are three Earths with their cores exposed, colored blue, yellow and red. On the right are three circles in the corresponding colors. I was trying to figure out what was inside those circles, and the shapes move when you go frame by frame. Then I realized they are magnets.

That is typical of Reed and H.E.R.B.I.E.'s sense of humor "when they like to explain science to dum-dums," as in the Fantastic Science with Mister Fantastic kids TV show. Reed, like Bill Nye the Science Guy, is demonstrating the electromagnetic cores of each of these Earths and how they are attracting each other.

If that is what we are actually seeing, it would explain the whole Ian McKellen and New Jersey thing, where McKellen keeps saying in interviews that Magneto destroys New Jersey in this movie. In the comics that plot point seems to be based on, Magneto inverts the planet's electromagnetic poles to cause a tidal wave that wipes out Manhattan. I thought the heroes would try something like that, at least on Earth 10005, both to repel that Earth from the others and maybe to release an EMP that disables the Sentinels.

Unfortunately for them, based on some possibly leaked visual effects material, Doctor Doom is going to resurrect and control those Sentinels with his green sorcery. And the tidal wave that takes out New Jersey could be aimed at Westview, New Jersey, on Earth 10005, where Magneto's daughter Wanda Maximoff lives. She could be Doom's reality warper target in that reality.

My theory: Doom's secret weapon is magnetism

So how is Victor Von Doom controlling these incursions? My theory was that through his advanced science, he found a way to change the magnetic cores of each of the three Earths so that they attract each other with equal force. That would be the literal mechanics by which Doctor Doom builds Battleworld, combined with his advanced sorcery and a key reality warper from each reality to help him shape his perfect world.

In a word, the secret weapon of Doomsday turns out to be magnets.

Do you think magnetized Earth cores are really how Doom pulls these three worlds together, or is some other force nudging the incursion along?