Robert Downey Jr.'s Doom Easter Eggs May Hint at Tom Holland's Spider-Man

Robert Downey Jr. marked Easter with an Instagram post of Doctor Doom painting Easter eggs, and those eggs teased major characters and teams for Avengers: Doomsday. One of them, a cropped spider symbol, might seemingly be Downey confirming that Tom Holland's Spider-Man is in the movie, which hadn't been confirmed at the time.

Downey didn't say anything in the post. He just shared the picture. Before anybody says it doesn't mean anything, I definitely think it does, and there's one pretty big surprise in it. Later in this piece I'll also get into a report about Doom and Reed Richards building special cannons to stop the incursions.

Doctor Doom's Easter eggs point to Captain America, Ant-Man and Doctor Strange

Most of the characters and teams on the eggs are ones we already knew about, so there aren't many big surprises. At the top is Captain America's shield, which is an easy one to spot. To the left of that are ants, so that's Ant-Man, and Ant-Man is going to play a big role in this, pun intended. I've seen a lot of people talking about two spider eggs, but that top left one is definitely Ant-Man.

To the left of that is Doctor Strange. The argument isn't about whether that's his symbol but whether he's actually in the movie. Benedict Cumberbatch said at one point that he wasn't in Avengers: Doomsday, but days later, when he was asked about it in another interview, he corrected himself and said he was in the film. We'd already heard a lot about Doctor Strange being in it, so yes, he's in it.

I don't think Doctor Strange switches to Doom's side until later in the film

It sounds like Strange is going to switch sides and go be with Doctor Doom. I don't think that happens until the end of the film, or maybe halfway in. Maybe it's when Doom finally shows his true colors and essentially announces that he's the villain, which ties into the cannon report I'll get to below.

Namor, Black Panther and an Avengers logo with an asterisk

Below Strange is Namor, and above that are Black Panther and the Avengers logo with an asterisk. We've basically kind of gotten a trailer for these three already, because we've seen Shuri, we've seen the Fantastic Four and the Thing in Wakanda, and we've seen Namor with them as well. With the whole Talokan army on the surface, it seems like they're preparing for war.

I group the Avengers logo with those two because I do believe there are going to be some New Avengers there. The asterisk is basically the new symbol combining the Thunderbolts, who have the asterisk, with the New Avengers. So this is literally the symbol for the Thunderbolts and Sam Wilson's Avengers team together.

The X-Men, Shang-Chi and a crossed out Fantastic Four logo

To the right are the X-Men. For me the best trailer was the X-Men trailer, with Magneto, Professor X and that awesome Cyclops scene, so they're obviously returning. Below that is Shang-Chi. He'd already been announced, but I'm super stoked and really glad to see that character back.

To the right of that, and I love this, is the Fantastic Four logo with a red circle and a slash over it, because Doom obviously doesn't like the Fantastic Four. I think that's very telling. Based on what we've heard about the plot, it sounds like Doom is going to be kind of good at first. He realizes the multiverse is being destroyed and everything is about to collapse, so he goes to Reed for help, essentially saying they're two of the smartest men alive and they have to fix it. I doubt Doom would ever admit Reed is the smartest man alive, though.

Why I think the cropped spider symbol is Tom Holland's Spider-Man, not Tobey Maguire's

Above that is Thor, and to the right is Loki. Then in the bottom right is the one that's very interesting. I believe it's Tom Holland's Spider-Man symbol. It's very cut off, and I think that's done very intentionally, because Tom Holland hadn't been confirmed for Avengers: Doomsday. Marvel hadn't confirmed it either, but most of the insiders had basically confirmed that Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man is going to be in the film.

Some people think this is Tobey's symbol. I do think Tobey's going to be in the film, even if it's just for five minutes at the beginning, but I think this symbol is Tom Holland's. The two are very similar, but you can tell the difference in the bottom legs. On Tom's symbol, the leg closest to the spider's body is shorter than the one to its right, so the outside leg is longer than the inside one, and that's what seems to be in this photo. On Tobey's symbol, the inside bottom legs go the longest. They do look the same, but I think this is definitely Tom Holland.

Tom Holland in Doomsday would make sense, and Sadie Sink could join him

We all thought it was kind of weird that Tom Holland wasn't going to be in the movie, and there are plenty of theories as to why. The easiest one, and I say easiest because I think it's just what most people kind of believe, is that Spider-Man: Brand New Day takes place at the same time as Avengers: Doomsday. We've heard Yelena Belova is going to be in Brand New Day, and we've heard Sam Wilson's Captain America might be in it. Maybe they're there to try to recruit Peter for the events that are happening.

Spider-Man is also probably the biggest and most well known superhero of all time, so it would make sense to have him in Doomsday, especially if you're trying to make it your biggest movie ever. We also heard Sadie Sink signed a deal for five pictures. If she's Jean Grey, that makes sense. We'd heard she was going to be in Secret Wars, which seemed to fit with the idea that she and Tom Holland's Spider-Man would return together there. But maybe they both appear in Doomsday. If she really did sign that deal, with shows possibly included, she could appear in Doomsday alongside him.

I do believe Tobey is showing up at the beginning, but now I do think Tom Holland will show up as well, because I think it's kind of a no brainer. Why wouldn't you want Spider-Man in it? He might not get a ton of screen time, but that just means he probably will in Avengers: Secret Wars, where we've even heard he's going to reunite with the other two Spider-Men.

Doom and Reed Richards reportedly build special cannons to stop the incursions

The new report I find very interesting comes from Daniel RPK, who states that Doctor Doom and Reed Richards will reportedly build special cannons on every Earth to stop the incursions in Avengers: Doomsday. It ties back to Doom kind of pretending to be good. In fact, I don't think he's going to be pretending that much at first. Maybe at the beginning he actually does have good intentions, and then he realizes he has the best solution to everything, but nobody really wants to go along with it because it might be hard for some people to do.

These aren't cannons that blow things up, like on a pirate ship or a spaceship. The X-Men might have some of those, though. What we'd been hearing for a while is that the X-Men have gone through multiple incursions and simply destroyed the other Earth they were about to collide with in order to survive. So I'm sure they've got all sorts of weapons. I hope that's true and I really hope we see that. In this case, though, I think these are more like thruster cannons, boosters used to push the planets away from each other.

I think every Earth will mean only a handful of Earths

The report says every Earth, but I think that's going to mean four or five different Earths. In the comics, as the multiverse is about to truly be destroyed, there are about 12 universes left out of an infinite amount. That's how it is in the comics, and that's how I think it's going to be here. We'd already been told the title Doomsday has a double meaning: it's Doom, of course, but it's also like a countdown to the actual doom of the multiverse.

So right before Doomsday happens and the multiverse gets destroyed, there will only be a handful of Earths left. We obviously know about the 616 universe, the X-Men universe and the Fantastic Four universe, so that's at least three, and maybe there are one or two more thrown in. When two of those Earths get close to each other, they ignite the cannons and try to push them apart.

My theory: the cannons fail and Doom decides to do it himself

Unfortunately, I think they're going to realize the destruction is kind of inevitable and the cannons aren't going to work. I think Reed and Doom start building them, then Doom finds out more and says this isn't going to work, and he realizes everything is going to be destroyed. I also think he's doing a lot in the background at the same time. Ultimately, I think he says, "Look, it's my way or it's the destruction of everything."

Then there will be people like Reed Richards, probably Captain America, and I mean Chris Evans' Steve Rogers, and probably Sam Wilson as well, saying they can't just save themselves, because that's probably what Doom is going to suggest. Doom is probably going to say he wants to save his own universe rather than the 616 universe. That leads to conflict, which I think ultimately ends with Doom deciding, "Fine, I'll do it myself," like Thanos. He eventually goes to the TVA and to Loki, and I think at the end he takes the strands of universes that are left and puts them together, and that's how we get Battleworld. But at the beginning he's going to be working with the team, and I don't think he's truly pure evil at that point.

A Doom origin linked to Steve Rogers could give him a mix of motives

We have heard that Doom has been trying to develop something to stop the incursions, and that his experiment goes wrong and explodes, scarring his face and killing his family. That probably sets him on a bad path, and it was somehow going to be linked to Chris Evans' Steve Rogers, which is why Doom has a grudge against him and wants to destroy him.

So there's going to be a lot of evil in there too. People sometimes say it's good to have a villain with good motivation, but sometimes it's good to have a villain who's just evil. We might be getting a mix of both, which I think is appropriate for Doctor Doom. He's a very complicated character and a genius, with the tech and the sorcery. This should be the biggest and baddest villain we've had in the MCU so far, bigger and badder than Thanos, since he's essentially going to rule the multiverse, or just one universe, by the end.

I'm really excited to see the cannon scene because I wonder how it goes. I wonder if it works temporarily and then fails, or if Doom sabotages it so he can get his way. I'm also very curious to see whether Tom Holland's Spider-Man shows up, and with this literal Easter egg, I think he probably will.

Do you think the cropped spider symbol on Doom's Easter eggs belongs to Tom Holland's Spider-Man or Tobey Maguire's?