Doctor Doom Reportedly Recruits the Hulk in the Avengers Doomsday Sneak Peek Coming With Endgame Encore

New reports about the footage coming with Avengers Endgame Encore have thrown a bit of a twist into what we thought we knew. The sneak peek of Avengers Doomsday that Marvel has already promised, the one Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans said would give fans an exclusive first look, is reportedly Doctor Doom trying to recruit the Hulk.

What we had heard before about the new footage supposedly coming with Endgame Encore still holds up, at least according to these reports. This new detail is separate from that footage and is specifically about the Doomsday sneak peek Marvel already confirmed was coming. And it has people asking how and why a scene like this would even happen.

Where the Doctor Doom and Hulk Report Comes From

This claim comes from an insider who is currently on the John Campea show and has reportedly been in the industry for a while. That insider and Campea have both claimed to basically know the entirety of the plot for Avengers Doomsday. I would still say take it with a grain of salt.

Reportedly, they got information from different sources and came together, and all of the information checked out between them. They both heard from different sources, but the information was all the same, which reportedly confirmed to them that everything they had heard was seemingly true. So there are clearly some sources feeding into this, but again, grain of salt.

The insider specifically said the Hulk is not being benched or sidelined in this scene, he is being recruited. He made that very clear. It is not confirmed whose dialogue this is in the scene, whether it is Doom speaking or Bruce Banner responding, but the recruitment framing is what the insider is standing behind.

Why Would Doom Want the Hulk on His Side?

I know people who have read the 2015 Secret Wars comic automatically jump to thinking this must be Maestro Hulk. But a scene with the Hulk and Doom in Avengers Doomsday does not automatically mean this is our Bruce Banner from the main 616 timeline. This is a big multiversal movie, and Doom himself comes from another universe, the Fantastic Four's Earth 828. There is no guarantee this Hulk is from our main universe, especially after already seeing a version of him in Spider-Man Brand New Day and other projects.

If it is our Hulk, that raises the question of when exactly Doom would have talked to him. But considering the Hulk is the one who snapped everybody back into existence, it kind of lines up with the line Doom says in the trailer, "All of you have lived stolen lives." The Avengers were supposed to take the stones back in time and put them back according to the TVA, but mistakes were made, and that is the whole reason Doom is doing what he is doing in Doomsday.

It looks like Doom does not agree with the TVA that the Avengers should have gone back and changed things. It seems like Doom thinks nobody should change anything, because that is how the multiverse started to collapse in the first place. So the Hulk figuring all of this out with the Ancient One makes it make sense that Doom would go seek him out, not necessarily for vengeance, but reportedly to recruit him.

Could This Be Maestro Hulk, and Who Else Is on Doom's Team?

We could get Maestro Hulk out of this. It might not be the same Bruce Banner, but it also still could be, and this version of Banner could still go on to become Maestro Hulk later. We do not know his story yet for either Doomsday or Avengers Secret Wars, but there are some cool theories floating around that could explain it.

One thing feels certain to me: Doom is probably going to have a pretty stacked team in Avengers Doomsday. He has Doctor Strange. He has his Latverian witches, and while we are not sure exactly who those witches are, we already know they include some very powerful people. Based on recent reports, it does not sound like Scarlet Witch is part of that team, but Doom should still have Sylvie and Clea, and he might also have another major character whose name has been thrown around recently.

Imagine if he adds the Hulk to that roster on top of everything else. I would not be surprised if he has a lot of other people too. Recruiting a different version of the Hulk, especially a Maestro version, would make sense for a team that already sounds this loaded.

The Second Snap Theory: How Doom and Hulk Could Meet Without Rewriting Endgame

There is a theory going around from the account Earth 616 that I think is really cool. If Doctor Doom really does appear alongside the Hulk in Endgame Encore, there is one moment that could explain it without changing the original story at all: Bruce Banner's second snap, when Hulk brings back half of the universe that had disappeared.

The theory goes that Doom's main goal is to undo loss and restore what was taken from him, especially his own family, and I would agree that is originally what I would say he wants to do. Watching the Hulk reverse a loss on such a massive scale could be the moment that inspires Doom to try to undo his own tragedy. The theory then goes further, suggesting Doom fights Hulk and Hulk gets beaten up badly, which raises the question of why that fight was never mentioned in Spider-Man Brand New Day. One possibility floated is that Doom wiped Hulk's memory of him and that this is what set off Doom's battleworld creation plan. I think that part is getting a little ahead of ourselves.

A version I find more convincing is that Doom could have secretly watched that moment using multiversal or time travel technology introduced in Doomsday, rather than fighting Hulk directly. That would not change anything about Endgame, it would just reveal Doom was watching from the shadows, and it could explain why Doom always seems several steps ahead of everybody else. I do agree with this one. I believe at some point it is going to be revealed that Doom has either been jumping across the multiverse or at least observing it, possibly from something like the library of worlds, or through a word of God style ability that lets him see into other universes.

The Tony Stark Connection and Why Doom Might Never Take Off His Mask

Watching a moment like that would also be an interesting way to set up the Tony Stark and Doctor Doom connection, because a lot of people have been wondering how Doom would even recognize that he looks like Tony Stark if there is no Tony Stark in his own universe. Maybe he sees a statue of Stark, or pictures, or murals of him in the 616 universe. Maybe he has known all along and eventually uses that as an advantage, possibly in Secret Wars.

On a related note, I have heard from John Campea and this insider that we reportedly do not ever see Doom take his mask off in front of other people, which tracks with who Doom is as a character. He is very vain and does not want people to see the scarring underneath, which is the whole reason he wears the mask in the first place. Reportedly he does take it off sometimes, just not in front of others, and if he ever does show his face to anyone, it is most likely the Fantastic Four, since they have already seen him without it. It might not be what fans want, but for Doom, it makes sense.

Putting my own read on the whole Hulk scene together, I do not think Doom actually fights the Hulk, and I do not think the Hulk has come in direct contact with Doom in this moment. I think Doom watches the second snap happen, and then at some point after that he goes and has a conversation with the Hulk trying to recruit him. Whether he succeeds is unclear, but a recruitment attempt is reportedly what this scene is.

The Reported Post-Credit Scene: Loki Visits Steve and Peggy

The Doom and Hulk sneak peek is separate from the post-credit scene, which is a different piece of footage entirely. Endgame itself never actually had a post-credit scene, just the clanking sound of Tony Stark building the first Iron Man Mark 1 in the cave, which was a nice piece of nostalgia but not technically a post-credit scene.

This time around, we might get an actual post-credit scene, and it is reportedly Loki visiting Steve and Peggy. Before that scene, there is new footage most likely set at Tony Stark's funeral, where Steve talks with Pepper Potts and with Ant-Man. That is a big report that has reportedly come from multiple insiders, and it is part of the movie itself within Encore, not a separate sneak peek.

After that comes the reported post-credit scene of Loki showing up to see Steve and Peggy, essentially telling them they weren't supposed to do what they did. It is unclear whether Loki just shows up as a tease or actually says something specific. What we do know is that Steve was not supposed to stay back in time, and that decision reportedly caused a lot of problems. Loki reportedly moves Steve, Peggy, and their family, possibly including their son, though maybe they do not have him yet at this point, over to the Fantastic Four's universe where Doom is. Only after that post-credit scene do we reportedly get the separate sneak peek of Doom recruiting the Hulk.

My Take on All of This

Out of everything that could have been teased for Doomsday, I think this is a genuinely interesting one to go with. The Hulk is a massive character, we would get a look at Doom, and it could fit the frame of Doomsday even though we do not really know the full context yet. If the Hulk being part of Avengers Doomsday and Doom recruiting him turns out to be true, it would show there is still a lot about Doomsday that we do not know.

I would actually think it was pretty cool if this ends up being the post-credit reveal, since we have not heard anything about it before now, which suggests there is a lot Marvel is keeping secret for Doomsday. I have personally heard that some fake leaks have been put out by Marvel Studios, and I believe that based on everything I have seen. At the same time, I also know there have been a lot of very real leaks out there that I have personally seen too.

What do you think about Doctor Doom reportedly trying to recruit the Hulk as our sneak peek into Avengers Doomsday?