Doctor Doom theory: is RDJ's Doom Rabum Alal, not Kang?

A report from The Cosmic Circus seemed to offer a glimpse of what Marvel had planned for Robert Downey Jr's Doctor Doom in Avengers: Doomsday, and I think it points to a Doom who is what we expect and also not quite what we expect. Marvel might be putting a twist on the character. The story it points to still leads to God Emperor Doom, but the variant Downey plays may have far more in common with Kang than many people thought.

Since Doom was set as the main villain of the next two Avengers films, Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars, it was obvious he would come to power. We had long expected the Beyonders to play some role, as they do in the comics, and that seems to hold for the MCU too. The story would still involve multiverse travel and time travel, specifically Doom controlling time. It would take place before Secret Wars and the events building up to it. It looks like Marvel is taking a page right out of the comics, and it sounds like not much might have changed from what we could have gotten with Kang.

Alex Perez answers how the MCU replaces Kang with Doctor Doom

The report comes from Alex Perez at The Cosmic Circus. Alex has had an outstanding track record recently, especially with Deadpool and Wolverine. During a Q&A on The Cosmic Circus Discord, someone asked him how he thought Marvel would justify the switch from Kang to Doom as the main villain of the Multiverse Saga.

He answered with two words: Rabum Alal. If you read these comics as they were coming out, you know this story was wild, because Rabum Alal is Doctor Doom.

Who Rabum Alal is: a future Doctor Doom from the comics

In the comics, Rabum Alal is essentially a Doctor Doom from the future. He is the 616 Doctor Doom, but a future version who travels into the unknown with Molecule Man. Doom then travels back to find the cause of the multiverse collapse, and that ultimately leads him to becoming Rabum Alal.

Molecule Man showed Doom that he was the only one who could save the multiverse. Many times Doom would say we, and Molecule Man would answer no, not we, you are the one who will have to save the universe. This is how I think Doom is most likely going to become the villain in the MCU.

It would be somewhat like Thanos and also like Kang, and the explanation is fairly simple, except it is a whole lot worse with Doom. Thanos wanted to save the universe by destroying half of the life in it, because he thought everything would run out of resources and every living creature would eventually go extinct. That's what happened to his home, so he thought it would happen to the entire universe. With Doom it is much heavier, because it isn't one universe in jeopardy but the entire multiverse, and Doom does initially try to save it.

Molecule Man is the Beyonders' bomb, and Doom forms the Black Swans

We find out that Molecule Man was made by the Beyonders. He exists exactly the same in every universe across the multiverse, with one of him in each. He is a bomb, and the Beyonders planned to set every one off at the exact same time, destroying the entire multiverse. This is where I believe we're going to get the story of Robert Downey Jr's Doctor Doom.

Doom went through time and space to the universes of the multiverse with a plan to kill the Molecule Man of each universe and stop the bomb. But he realizes he can't do it alone. He tells Molecule Man that success seems unlikely against an infinite number of worlds, and that it is impossible for one man, even Doom, to do such a thing. Molecule Man's answer is that he needs to start a religion.

So he does, under the guise of Rabum Alal. He recruits members to the cause and calls them the Black Swans. Five years pass, and Molecule Man points out that in that time Doom has only killed a thousand of him, and asks when they will get to billions and when things will start smashing together.

Doctor Doom confronts the Beyonders

To oversimplify, Doom eventually concludes that he will have to kill the Beyonders. He, Doctor Strange and Molecule Man go to confront them. The Beyonders announce themselves as gods, and when Doom names himself, they dismiss him as a small man pretending to be more than he is.

Doom replies: "I am Doom the Destroyer I have broken worlds to taunt you I have shattered universes to mock you I have taken what is yours and made it mine." The Beyonders answer that men and women will weep at the stories of what was done to him that day. Doom responds that no one will ever hear the word Beyonder again, because he will erase their name from history.

As he says it, he throws a giant shipping container at the Beyonders. It is a huge bomb made up of multiple Molecule Men. Before this, Doom destroyed universes because sometimes you had to do that to save others. Many viewed Rabum Alal and the Black Swans as an organization trying to destroy the multiverse, but they were trying to save it, until this moment.

Why this Doctor Doom ends up worse than Thanos

Here Doom goes against everything. He realizes he can't save the multiverse, but he might be able to save one thing: one universe. Doctor Strange tries to reason with him, asking how what he is doing is any better than the Beyonders if the end result is the same. Doom asks whether it would be worth it if they could avoid their certain doom and save something, and Strange says yes.

The result of the Beyonders' plan was the destruction of the entire multiverse, with nothing left at all. Doom thought that if he couldn't save the whole thing, he could at least save one universe. The bomb gives him the powers of the Beyonders, he becomes God Emperor Doom, and he eventually creates Battleworld out of the remnants of the leftover universes.

So Doom, though he wanted to be good at first, ends up far worse than Thanos ever was. Thanos, at least in Infinity War, left half the universe alive. Doom ends up killing most of the multiverse. The bomb doesn't destroy everything, as 12 universes are left, but by Secret Wars there is only Battleworld, because those 12 are destroyed too.

The Library of Worlds and how Doom could take out Kang

While Doom was killing the Molecule Men of different universes, he used the Library of Worlds. It is a conduit between universes, originally built by the Beyonders, and it exists outside the observable multiverse. The Beyonders created it when they still had faith in humanity and believed life was valuable. When they changed their minds, they abandoned it.

That let Doom, Molecule Man and the Black Swans use it without being detected by the Beyonders, or by anyone else, like the Illuminati and the Avengers, who believed they were destroying universes to destroy the entire multiverse. The Library of Worlds, combined with technology Doom came up with and Molecule Man, let them travel throughout the multiverse.

You can see how this could be linked to Kang, and more importantly how this Doom could defeat him. Kang the Conqueror is a man, Nathaniel Richards, with no superpowers. He is all tech. Doom could have similar tech, plus the Library of Worlds, plus sorcery. If Downey's Doom is Rabum Alal, he wants to save the multiverse, at least at first, and Kang would be a threat to it, so Doom would take him out. The TVA already pruned many Kangs, so it wouldn't be hard for Doom to clean up shop.

I hope Marvel Studios does tell a story like this, simply explaining that Kang is gone because Doom took care of him. It would be a great way to get some closure with Kang and to show exactly how strong and how powerful Doom is.

My theory for the ending of Avengers: Doomsday

My theory is that the end of Avengers: Doomsday will be the end of the story I've laid out. The Avengers, the Fantastic Four and maybe some X-Men will try to stop Doom because they believe he is trying to destroy the multiverse. By the end, Doom throws the Molecule Man bomb, or maybe another bomb if Marvel doesn't want to include Molecule Man, and kills the Beyonders. The result would be the destruction of basically the entire multiverse, maybe all but 12 universes.

In the films between Doomsday and Secret Wars, the multiverse would truly start to fall apart. Then in Secret Wars we would get Battleworld, with nothing else left, just one universe, and that's where the heroes would have to take on Rabum Alal, also known as Doctor Doom.

Given his time travel and multiverse hopping abilities, this Doctor Doom makes the most sense. And since Alex Perez name dropped Rabum Alal as the way Marvel would deal with Kang, I'm assuming most of what I've described here is probably going to come true, though that is only my thought.