The MCU Reset May Come at the End of Avengers: Doomsday, With Doctor Doom Replacing Kang

Kevin Feige, the President of Marvel Studios, has confirmed the Marvel reset, but I no longer think it happens the way many people, including me, first expected. As of August 2025, when I put this theory together, I had come to believe the reset would come not after Avengers: Secret Wars but at the end of Avengers: Doomsday, with Doctor Doom literally taking the place of Kang.

Both films were still ahead at that point, so everything below is my theory as it stood then. The confirmed part is that we are getting a new universe, one where the Avengers, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four and more finally exist together. What I am offering is how Doom replaces Kang, how he resets the universe, and how that reset universe moves forward after Doomsday and Secret Wars.

Why I stopped thinking the void would become Battleworld

Much like the Secret Wars comics and the Time Runs Out story that leads into them, the MCU is heading toward the multiverse being completely destroyed. My original assumption was that once the multiverse was gone, the void would basically become Battleworld. To be clear, I mean the void from Loki and Deadpool & Wolverine, not the one from Thunderbolts.

Admittedly, that idea made sense. The void is where remnants of destroyed or pruned universes end up, so a Battleworld built from several destroyed universes landing there would be logical. However, I think Marvel has a different plan for the void, and I will come back to it further down this piece.

Doctor Doom thinks he is the hero, and he may not be wrong

Recent reports from insiders have said that Doctor Doom thinks he is the hero. Honestly, if he is truly trying to save the multiverse from incursions caused by other heroes, he is not exactly wrong to see himself that way. I would not really be surprised if Marvel literally makes him out to be the hero in the film. After all, it is Robert Downey Jr., and people do love him.

Even if he starts out as the hero, though, that does not mean he ends the story as one, at least not in the eyes of the Avengers.

Doom's problem with Kang and the Sacred Timeline

We have been told that Robert Downey Jr.'s Doom hates Kang and what Kang did with the TVA and the Sacred Timeline, secluding it and not allowing branches to happen. Insider Alex Perez has also said that the original 616 timeline did have the X-Men and the Fantastic Four in it, but that Kang did something so they would not exist in that universe. Doom has a problem with this.

Yet at the end of it all, I think Doom simply takes Kang's place, or Loki's place as things currently stand. When I say take his place, I mean Marvel swaps out Kang for Doom and gives him a pretty similar story.

Doom takes over the TVA instead of destroying it

I originally thought Doom would destroy the TVA at the end of Avengers: Doomsday. Now I think he takes it over and does exactly what Kang was going to do: he reduces the multiverse to one timeline, fusing a number of universes together. The point is not to get rid of the multiverse. It is the only way he can save something, anything, much like he does in the comics.

The multiverse is going to be destroyed regardless, because incursions work like a domino effect. Once one starts, others follow, and I think we will really see that begin in Doomsday. In the comics, once it starts you essentially cannot stop it, and eventually everything is destroyed.

So at the end, Doom does what Kang did and saves one timeline, the sacred timeline. This new sacred timeline, however, is made of many universes combined into one, essentially giving us Battleworld. I think this new timeline for the reset is the Battleworld grounds, a new universe that Doom rules over. He wants to save the multiverse, as he does in the comics, but ends up saving only one universe. A universe still exists this way, whereas my earlier idea left only the void, which is not exactly a universe.

The Russo brothers called Secret Wars the new beginning

The Russo brothers, who directed Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame and are directing Doomsday and Secret Wars, said something that has finally clicked with me, and Kevin Feige basically said the same thing. They said Secret Wars is the new beginning for the MCU. Not what comes after it, but that movie itself.

So what if the reset does not happen at the end of Secret Wars, but before it, at the end of Doomsday? In my version, Doom ends up at the TVA and defeats Loki and all of the Avengers. From there he rules the TVA, watching over his newly created sacred timeline. Think about all those Timekeeper statues, the Kang statues, at the TVA. Doom would love statues of himself all over the place, ruling what is left of the multiverse and monitoring it from outside space and time. He would go back and forth, of course, because Doom has to physically rule Battleworld from his castle. That is just what Doom does.

God Emperor Doom rules Battleworld with an iron fist

In this new universe, nobody remembers the universes that came before. All they know is this current universe and that God Emperor Doom saved them and now rules as their king. It seems fine at first, but Doom rules with an iron fist, backed by a police like force doing his bidding. In the comics, that is the Thor Corps. In the MCU, it is probably just going to be made up of a mix of well known characters.

I expect him to rule with Strange in charge of that police force, and with Sue and Franklin by his side. We have actually seen this in the leaked concept art for Avengers: Secret Wars. In it, someone is being brought to Doom's feet, forced to their knees by chain by somebody who possibly looks like Yelena Belova. Either way, I think this person is part of Doom's police force, and it shows he is not exactly the nicest ruler. Just like in the comics, some characters start to realise Doom is not who they think he is, and eventually they revolt.

Survivors hide in the void and keep their memories

This is where the void comes back in. I think some characters use it to survive the end of Doomsday, placing them outside the creation of the new universe so their memories are not erased. Essentially, the void becomes the life rafts from the Secret Wars comics, and it would also mean Doom could not monitor them. In the comics, the people on both life rafts remember everything from before the multiverse was destroyed, which is crucial for Battleworld. There have to be characters who remember the past.

That matters even more for a reset universe, because we have basically been told the reset is going to be like Crisis on Infinite Earths, where only a handful of people remember the universes that came before. As long as a handful of characters remember, we still keep everything Marvel created in the Infinity Saga and the Multiverse Saga. We honour the past while moving forward with a new timeline and giving Marvel a fresh start.

In my theory, these survivors escape to the void, then use some TVA tech to reach the TVA, which Doom rules, and see everything he has done. From there they can go to Battleworld and defeat him. These would be the main Avengers: Reed Richards, Spider-Man, Yelena, the Hulk and Wong. Not Strange, because he is probably on Battleworld as Doom's second in command, like we have seen in those images. Deadpool and Wolverine are most likely the ones who tell the Avengers about the void, and the heroes think they can hide there based on what Cassandra Nova said in Deadpool & Wolverine, that she would destroy the entire multiverse until nothing is left but the void.

After Secret Wars: one universe, and Doom still in it

Eventually, in Secret Wars, the Avengers defeat Doom, but we are left without a multiverse. We have one universe, a combination of many universes, with the X-Men, the Fantastic Four and the Avengers all finally together. A lot of these characters will not remember the world before what I call the Battleworld timeline, but that is okay, because some will, and it is a fresh start.

In the comics, Reed Richards and his son Franklin literally rebuild the multiverse one universe at a time. It sounds like Marvel wants to avoid the multiverse for a while in the next saga, so perhaps they wait to rebuild it while Franklin is still young, leaving just this one universe, with Doom still in it.

There have been reports that Marvel is thinking about keeping Robert Downey Jr. on as Doom after Secret Wars, and if so, this would all make a lot of sense, because you do not have to kill Doom. In the Secret Wars comics, they do not. Instead, Reed Richards gets the powers Doom had and basically renders him kind of useless, although Doom does get his facial scars healed, and he remembers everything. I think the MCU should do the same. Doom could remain a constant threat while also being able to argue, as he would, that he was only trying to save everybody. That leaves room for stories where he is sometimes an ally to the heroes, much like in the comics.

What odds would you give this theory, and what would you change about it?