Avengers: Doomsday rumors: Reed's plea to Shuri and Thor losing the Odin Force to Doom

Several Avengers: Doomsday rumors were circulating at the time. One concerned teaser dialogue in which Reed Richards asks Shuri for help. Another was a reported plot leak that Daniel RPK pushed back on, and I was glad he did. A third report claimed Thor takes the Odin Force, can't withstand it, and Doctor Doom ends up with that power. I found that last report very interesting.

A rumored Doomsday teaser had Reed Richards asking Shuri for help

This was a rumor, not confirmed. We do typically get leaks for trailers before they come out, but it was still one to take with a grain of salt. The same reports had been accurate about the X-Men trailer, so I was assuming these were accurate as well. It had been reported that the fourth teaser would focus on the Fantastic Four, and that Wakanda and Talokan were supposed to appear in it too.

According to the new report, Reed Richards would show up and we would hear dialogue between him and Shuri. That dialogue reportedly involved the countdown to the Doomsday clock that had been appearing in the trailers and that was expected in the movie. The report gave Reed's line to Shuri as something along these lines: "They say no problem on this earth is beyond your mind. On my world, that burden was mine to bear, but I have exhausted every solution." It continued: "I have exhausted every solution and my child is still gone. We need your help."

I could definitely see this happening in the movie, and maybe they would show it in that teaser.

My theory: Franklin and a collapsing multiverse bring Reed to Shuri

I believed the events that lead to Reed and Shuri meeting have to do with Franklin and the multiverse collapsing. My order of events started with the Fantastic Four arriving on Earth 616. Whether Doctor Doom is with them, we didn't know. We had heard a report that Doom might be on the ship with them and that, at the beginning of the movie, he is pretending to be a hero and trying to trick everybody. That's a very Doom thing to do, so it made sense to me.

One way or another, the Fantastic Four get to Earth 616 and explain what's going on. Reed's point, as I imagined it, is that he couldn't solve it even though he's the smartest man alive in his universe, so is there anybody here who could help him and the entire multiverse? I didn't know whether they would debate which universe is more technologically advanced.

From there, they turn to Wakanda and Shuri. As far as we knew after Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Shuri is the Black Panther. She's possibly the smartest mind on Earth, depending on how you look at things and on what Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame tried to say. Either way, she's one of the smartest people on Earth, so Reed going to her made a ton of sense to me. He would be explaining that Doom warned them about incursions, that universes are collapsing and having incursions, and that the whole multiverse is in jeopardy.

We had also heard that Reed, Shuri and Beast would create devices that count down until Earth has its incursion with one or many other Earths, because we had been hearing that multiple universes would collide with ours. The next trailer might have been teasing that. And if Doom does take Franklin, then he's clearly a villain, at least in the Fantastic Four's eyes. There had been many reports about that, and it seemed to be true, but Marvel hadn't confirmed it.

Daniel RPK pushed back on a leak that Doomsday would copy Endgame

One report going around at the time was one I didn't like. It claimed Avengers: Doomsday would do what Avengers: Endgame did. Endgame used time travel to revisit earlier parts of the MCU, plus some moments we hadn't seen before, like when Cap and Tony go back in time and Tony talks to his dad. According to this report, Doomsday would swap time travel for multiversal travel and do shot for shot recreations of key early 2000s Marvel movie moments that can't be changed: set points that have to happen in certain universes at certain points in time.

I could see a little appeal to this. I saw it more as a quick recap, visiting old points in time from the Spider-Man movies and the like. Spider-Man seeing himself fighting the Green Goblin, for example, could be cool. At the same time, I was thinking that's just Endgame. You have to do new things. I get the idea that if it's not broken, you don't fix it, but I felt it could be more creative. Doomsday and Secret Wars don't have to be an exact mirror of Infinity War and Endgame.

There will be similarities, sure. I believed Doom would win at the end of Avengers: Doomsday, the entire multiverse would collapse, Doom would be the victor, and Secret Wars would be about how to dethrone him on Battleworld. That parallels Thanos winning and the heroes having to undo it and fight him again in Endgame. But I didn't think there would be a big undoing in Secret Wars. I thought the multiverse would be restored, but as a reset universe that is new.

Daniel RPK responded to a post about this reported plot leak and said, "Not really." I was happy about that. I don't want the time spent with characters like Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man going to reliving moments from films we can watch ahead of time. With so many characters being teased as returning, you can go back and watch everything, and you should, because Doomsday and Secret Wars are the culmination of everything that has come from Marvel throughout its history. In Deadpool & Wolverine, we saw Wesley Snipes' Blade return, and that's before the X-Men. So many people can and will be returning.

Nicolas Cage and Robert Pattinson came up in Ghost Rider rumors

We had heard rumors that Nicolas Cage would show up as Ghost Rider, and I was excited about that. Speaking of Ghost Rider, there was also a report that Robert Pattinson was considered for the role of Ghost Rider in Avengers: Doomsday.

We had previously heard that a variant of Ghost Rider would appear in a quick cameo in Doomsday, and apparently Pattinson was considered for that cameo. We didn't know whether he would be in it. He was considered, but we didn't know if both parties agreed that he would officially appear. That was a wait and see situation.

A report claimed Thor takes the Odin Force and Doom takes it from him

The last report came from a very big Marvel account on X that also runs a large Spanish language YouTube channel. They had posted several times about leaked photos they had and other reports. According to this one, Love is losing power as Eternity weakens because the multiverse is dying. Thor asks Odin for more power and obtains the Odin Force, but he cannot withstand it and falls into the Odinsleep. Doctor Doom obtains this power. Thor doesn't die, but the report says he is in the Odinsleep during Secret Wars.

I didn't dislike anything about it, and I did like the idea of Thor getting the Odin Force and Doom taking that power. One big question I'd had, and I think many of us had, is how Doom elevates himself to becoming God Emperor Doom. In the comics, he takes the powers of the Beyonders, godlike beings, via Molecule Man. That's how he becomes God Emperor Doom, how he creates Battleworld and how he rules over it.

There were lots of theories about how Doom would do that in Avengers: Doomsday. One was that he takes powers from the children we had been seeing, including Love, who got her powers from Eternity because Eternity brought her back to life. Others had him taking power from Wiccan, Franklin Richards or the Scarlet Witch, treating heroes almost like Infinity Stones, which I thought would be very interesting. But the Odin Force would be a massive power for Doom and would put him tiers above where he would already be. Combined with his sorcery and his tech, I thought the Odin Force would elevate him to God Emperor Doom.

I hoped Thor would reclaim that power as Rune King Thor in Secret Wars

The report places Thor's Odinsleep in Secret Wars. I hoped that wouldn't really happen in Doomsday, but it would have to happen in Doomsday for Doom to get that power. So I hoped it would come at the very end, in a situation where the heroes are defeated and can't beat Doom. Thor asks his father for the power of the All Fathers, like he does in the teaser trailer, and he gets it. He tries to fight Doom, but he can't fully wield it, so Doom defeats him again. Thor falls into the Odinsleep and Doom takes the power from him.

In that scenario, other heroes save Thor, maybe Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man or Hugh Jackman's Wolverine. They go to a life raft, into the Quantum Realm or into the Void, and they survive somehow. Then Thor ultimately wakes up. I hoped that in Secret Wars he would take the power back, and I was hoping for Rune King Thor there. I didn't think that should come in Doomsday. I thought it should come in Secret Wars, where he uses that power to defeat Doom once and for all.

I did think Thor would be directly involved in defeating Doom, maybe alongside Loki, Hugh Jackman's Wolverine and Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man. I thought several key characters would be used to defeat Doom, and that Thor would definitely be one of them. Whether this report is real or not, it gets you thinking about what could happen in Avengers: Doomsday. The possibilities are limitless, and that's the most exciting thing about Doomsday and Secret Wars.