Avengers Doomsday Report Claims He Who Remains Already Won No Matter What Happens

A report from Alex Perez at thecosmiccircus.com claims that no matter what happens in Avengers Doomsday or Avengers Secret Wars, He Who Remains, the character Kang the Conqueror is a variant of, has already won. That single line from a recent Q&A session is the center of a theory that the entire multiversal war might still be part of a plan set in motion long before either film takes place.

Perez was asked to tease something exciting in Doomsday and Secret Wars that fans do not already know about, and the answer touched on He Who Remains directly. "Even though he's not in either movie, bummer. Just right away, just want to say bummer. He Who Remains won and we'll leave it at that," Perez said. There are two ways to take that first part. I'd like Kang himself to be in this movie, or at least some kind of on-screen closure, because the end of Loki season 2 gave us some closure with the TVA handling Kang variants, but I want something more on screen. I want to see Doom destroy that whole Council of Kangs we saw in Loki. Whether Perez meant He Who Remains specifically or the entire family of variants including Victor Timely, Rama-Tut and Immortus, the point stands that none of them are confirmed to appear, which I think is a bit of a bummer even if Marvel addresses it without putting him on screen.

Alex Perez says the Infinity Saga may have been "He Who Remains' road" all along

A follow-up question asked whether Doomsday will reveal that everything watched since Iron Man was an elaborate fabrication engineered by He Who Remains, comparing it to the Maker's interference with Earth-6160 in the current Ultimates comics. Perez responded, "I think you're referring to the theory slash report I mentioned where the Infinity Saga was nothing more than He Who Remains' road. So we've never really seen what the original Marvel Cinematic Universe was supposed to look like."

Perez went on to lay out four canonical versions of the main MCU: the one everyone knew up through Endgame before Loki and the multiverse, the one that followed Loki, the one that comes with Doom, and the one after Doom. Perez added that it's "not a coincidence that certain things have been popping up post-Loki that don't really make a lot of sense in the context of the MCU," without elaborating further, and suggested that whatever world we get in Battleworld might end up being a little different from the actual new main universe once that era passes.

Taking that together, it sounds like He Who Remains really was manipulating the sacred timeline we watched across nearly every MCU movie and show, aside from Deadpool and Wolverine and The Fantastic Four. Perez has also previously reported that one of the original ideas for the Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars involved everything being stuck in a literal time loop, which lines up with He Who Remains telling Loki and Sylvie "reincarnation, baby, it all leads back," and later taunting Loki during the Loki season 2 finale by claiming credit for planning everything. Some people think he was lying about that, but I think it's worth taking seriously.

Why the multiversal war could loop back into another cycle

Based on everything reported so far, this does look like a literal multiversal war, with the X-Men reportedly jumping to other planets and destroying them to save their own, treating it as a matter of survival. Doom is waging his own war, and everyone else will presumably fight against him until it ends, likely with Doom winning and sealing off his own universe the way He Who Remains once harnessed Alioth to defeat his rivals and seclude the sacred timeline.

From there, the plan seems to be a single new universe where the X-Men, Fantastic Four and Avengers all exist together without Doom in charge, until something starts to go wrong and other branching universes begin to collide with it again. If that happens, we could be right back in another multiversal war, looping back to He Who Remains. Why he would want that is the real question. Maybe it gets him more power even though he'd already won once, or maybe he was simply bored, since he already described himself as old and might want to come back younger with more power. That's speculation on my part, but it feels plausible to me.

Discord theories on what "He Who Remains won" could actually mean

I put Perez's quote to the Discord to see what people thought it meant. BlazeVoid suggested he won by separating the main universe from the others and possibly preventing another Kang war, since only one universe, Battleworld, would remain with no branches left for Kang variants to come from, and Kang would probably end up killed by the Dooms as has been speculated elsewhere. In that reading, He Who Remains might have been meant to end up as the sole ruler of one world, only for Doom to take him out instead. I think it would be interesting to actually see Doom take Kang out on screen, since it would show how powerful Doom really is.

Svennon offered a longer theory that He Who Remains was working for the Maker all along as a kind of puppet warden for a dome the Maker has been manipulating, with Kang amounting to an echo of the real Tony Stark. In this version, the MCU's Stark was actually a Reed Richards variant who turned toward ego instead of curiosity, meaning Iron Lad would be the real Stark, and Robert Downey Jr.'s Doom would be a Richards variant who turned into Doom, which Svennon ties to the Susan and Franklin material and the father-like beat in the First Steps post-credits scene, where Richards touches Doom's face after Doom removes his mask to speak to Franklin. I think it's an interesting idea and would give the story a lot of connective tissue, though I think a lot of people would have a problem with it since it erases the individual backstories of these characters. Marvel doesn't always stick to comic origins, and Wonder Man's recent debut was nothing like his comic origin, so it isn't out of the question, though who came up with it is unclear.

Godfather Coop argued that He Who Remains wanted to maintain the illusion of free will while actually controlling events, and that after Sylvie and Loki killed him, Loki took up the mantle and kept the work going, meaning that even after Doomsday and Secret Wars there will be one timeline and no more multiversal war from his variants, which could be an easier path for Kang. I think even if that was his plan from the start, which does make sense to me, Doom stepping in got in the way, since Doom was a real threat to Kang. I also think Loki taking the throne was probably part of Kang's plan, since it let the multiverse have free will that is now leading to the war and the eventual collapse into one universe under Doom instead of Kang. Samu Guru pointed out that He Who Remains won because the total collapse of the multiverse is exactly what he warned would happen if he were removed from power, and that does check out. Whether that was a plan for him to return at the end is the open question, and I'd personally like to see Kang return, since I thought that era was going fairly well outside of Quantumania.

Alex Perez says Doom's understanding of the multiverse covers science, magic and experience

Asked whether Shuri and Reed Richards will interact over science, incursions and the multiverse in Doomsday, Perez said, "Yes, definitely. Not just them necessarily though. My word of warning is that it could be slightly confusing to the average viewer because there are different interpretations of the same thing depending on who's being asked to explain the incursions and the multiverse. Reed, Sue, Shuri, Beast, the TVA, and Monica have more of an explanation rooted in science. Thor and Loki have one rooted in magic. Steve has one rooted in experience, but Doom has one that incorporates all of them."

That suggests Doom has the biggest advantage of anyone in the film, since he has apparently been out in the multiverse getting firsthand experience rather than relying on just one lens the way other characters do. Doom isn't only magic, brawn or intellect, he's all of it, which is presumably why he's able to see the whole picture and use everything to his advantage.

Alex Perez says deaths in Doomsday won't necessarily be permanent

Asked whether there will be permanent deaths, Perez answered, "Yes, and then no." That lines up with the idea that people will die in Doomsday, but once Doom wins and creates Battleworld, they could be brought back to life. I think that could undercut some stakes, so the better approach might be having some permanent deaths while leaving a few people out of any mass resurrection, or saving permanent deaths for Secret Wars instead. Bringing people back could still work as the hope audiences want after the villain wins, and it's worth remembering that people did die permanently in Endgame even though some said those films lacked stakes beforehand. Now that the multiverse is involved, some returns seem likely, and some have already happened.

Would you rather see the characters who die in Doomsday return, or stay dead?