Leaked Avengers Doomsday teaser showed Steve Rogers on a bike holding a baby

The first of the Avengers Doomsday teasers leaked online before it had even fully released in theaters. It showed Steve Rogers riding home on a bike and holding a baby, exactly as one insider had described. What was also interesting was what insiders said about Marvel Studios switching up its plans for the four so-called trailers, which I guess weren't really trailers, at least not the official trailer.

The timing was the first surprise. We had assumed the online leaks would arrive once the teaser was playing fully in theaters, but this one got out ahead of that. The insiders who talked about it beforehand all seemed to agree on what it was.

An insider said Marvel moved Steve Rogers ahead of Doom

Before the clip came out, the insider My Time to Shine Hello posted a reaction to the news that the order had changed. "Oh, interesting. So, they switched the order. Doom was supposed to go first," the insider wrote, adding that there was no reason to hide it any longer.

According to that insider, the four trailers "aren't really trailers." They are four short scenes, each focusing on a different character. The one with Steve was originally supposed to be third, but it looked like it was going to be first. The insider said it shows Steve riding home on a bike, that he has a baby boy, and that a tagline reads Steve Rogers will return in Avengers Doomsday, followed by December 2026 and then a countdown.

Because the order had changed, the insider assumed Thor would be the second one. That left Steve first, Thor reportedly second, and Doom most likely last. The open question for me was who the third would be.

The leaked Steve Rogers scene matched the insider's description

I didn't post the leaked clip, because of the risk of a takedown. We had heard that Marvel Studios was going to be strict about who was releasing the trailer online. There was a joke about it going around, but there was also some serious news circulating that Marvel was going to take serious action.

What the clip shows is exactly what My Time to Shine Hello described. Steve shows up on a bike, puts the kickstand down, takes his helmet off and walks up to a house. The house looks modern, so maybe the universe is a little different. Who knows? Then we see what seems to be the old Captain America uniform, with the star on it. And, just like the report said, he's holding a baby.

That's it. As the insider mentioned, the text then reads Steve Rogers will return in Avengers Doomsday, and a countdown clock follows. The logo and the countdown both struck me as wild.

Why I thought this worked as a first teaser

I thought this might be a cool way for fans to learn that Steve Rogers was returning, simply by stating it on screen. Imagine you had never heard anything about Steve coming back. You go to the theater and see Chris Evans, and the music sounds like Avengers music.

Then the Captain America suit he's holding comes into view, and you're left wondering what is going on. Steve Rogers will return in Avengers Doomsday appears, and then you get a countdown clock.

The countdown clock seemingly confirmed an earlier Doomsday leak

I found the countdown clock incredibly interesting. It seemingly confirms a leak we heard in the past that Avengers Doomsday would feature a countdown, a timer until Doomsday happens and the multiverse gets destroyed.

The leak we heard was that Reed Richards, Beast and Shuri figure out when the incursion will hit Earth 616 and other Earths. It sounds like many different Earths are going to crash into each other, including the 828 universe, 616 and the Fox X-Men universe. According to that leak, they create a device that works as a countdown clock to when they're going to be destroyed.

If that holds, it means we can go back to other reports from that same insider and treat them as probably legitimate. Many of the insider reports I've covered seem to be very legitimate.

Marvel appeared to swap full trailers for minute-long scenes

It seemed to me that Marvel had changed what it was doing. We heard Marvel Studios had over 30 different trailers made, and evidently it decided to go with minute-long scenes instead. The leaked version ran a minute and six seconds online.

So it seemed Marvel would release these scenes first and then release the first teaser trailer. Many people had complained about having to go to the theater to see four different trailers, with the movie ticket acting as what some called a paywall. We thought the teasers might go online a few days after their theatrical debut. Now that we knew they weren't full trailers, it looked like the full official trailer would probably go online for everybody rather than sit behind that ticket.

I was still going to the theater to see the scenes myself. This is my job and I love it. I probably wasn't going to watch Avatar a single time in theaters, but I was going to try to catch these scenes. I assumed they'd go online at some point. Knowing these were teaser scenes, with a real teaser trailer coming later, made me feel a little better about Marvel's plan, and I thought it should help other people come to terms with it too.

Who the third teaser could focus on, and how this one leaked

The fact that these weren't the official trailer put together with all the teams gave me an idea for the third scene. Maybe it would be an X-Men character, such as Professor X. Maybe Sam Wilson, or maybe Captain Marvel. I thought an X-Men character would be cool to see.

I was also wondering how this got out. If all the trailers were locked and encrypted until their release day, where did it come from? Was Marvel Studios doing it themselves? I didn't know.

What I did know was that the marketing for this movie was going to be completely different and on another level from anything we'd seen before. The four trailers plan was unexpected, and learning they weren't really trailers was unexpected too. I thought the year leading up to Doomsday was going to be "absolutely insane," and incredibly exciting.