Marvel finally confirmed what MCU fans have been dying to hear: Robert Downey Jr. is coming back to Avengers movies. However, he won’t play Iron Man in Avengers 5, now titled Avengers: Doomsday. He’ll be Victor von Doom, a big villain from The Fantastic Four comics and a character some people expected to see in the The Fantastic Four reboot.
RDJ should also appear in Avengers: Secret Wars. That’s probably the whole point of bringing the actor back, even if he’s seemingly playing a different character.
I already explained why I think RDJ will actually play a Tony Stark version who doesn’t become Iron Man in his reality. Instead, he takes up the Doctor Doom mantle to become a villain, at least from the perspective of the main MCU reality, Earth-616. That’s speculation from yours truly. I’d expect plenty of speculation as to why the MCU’s first Doctor Doom needs to have the same face as Iron Man.
While I mused on the real identity of RDJ’s next character, I also said Marvel has a problem to fix. Unlike Thanos (Josh Brolin) in the Infinity Saga, the main villain of the Multiverse Saga hasn’t had any big cameos. That’s because Kang was supposed to be the saga’s big baddie, of course. But Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom will start showing up in the MCU before we get to Doomsday.
An insider tells us where the character will show up next. Before we look at that, I’ll tell you that big spoilers will follow below. While you might expect RDJ cameos in future movies, you might want to be surprised.
After Infinity War, the world realized that Marvel made a mistake by not showing the villain more. Infinity War was a movie about Thanos, a character we only explored via credits scenes in previous films. He could have benefited from more screen time.
Marvel corrected its approach with Kang in the Multiverse Saga. The nature of this story allowed Marvel to give us a look at several Kang variants as we were heading to The Kang Dynasty. Jonathan Major’s real-life legal problems forced Marvel to reconsider its plans for the final two movies of the Multiverse Saga. And that’s how we got Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom, a character who did not appear anywhere in the MCU.
We know the Fox Doctor Doom variants exist within the larger multiverse thanks to Deadpool & Wolverine. But they’re unimportant for the Multiverse Saga storyline. RDJ’s Doctor Doom is, and we have to see more of him.
If my theory pans out, RDJ’s Doctor Doom has already appeared indirectly in the MCU. He could be the Tony Stark whose Ultron project worked on Earth-838.
That’s the reality we visited in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, a reality where the Illuminati had no problem keeping villains in check. Then Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) happened, bringing disaster to that universe. I think Doctor Doom hails from that reality and might be hell-bent on enacting his avenging on Earth-616’s Avengers. That’s why he becomes a villain, Doctor Doom.
But it’ll be a while until we learn the backstory of Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom. It might all start next year if TheInsneider report is correct. Jeff Sneider says he received a tip in mid-May that RDJ will return to the MCU as Doctor Doom. Marvel denied that was the case.
The same tip said that Doctor Doom will first appear in the movie you expect this character to show up: The Fantastic Four. Well, it’s called The Fantastic Four: First Steps, as Marvel tweaked the film’s title again. RDJ will supposedly show up in a credits scene at the end of the film.
Unsurprisingly, this cameo will set up Avengers: Doomsday. However, Doctor Doom will not be the villain of The Fantastic Four, at least, as far as we know.
I’ll remind you we had Doctor Doom cameo rumors before related to a different credits scene. The character was rumored to appear at the end of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, but that never happened.
Fast-forward to Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom. The character has to be from some other reality. It’s part of my entire scenario above. But if he’s the Doctor Doom of Earth-838, where John Krasinski’s Reed Richards died, RDJ can’t play the Doom version from the Fantastic Four universe.
Yeah, things are getting complicated here, as it’s unclear whether the MCU’s Fantastic Four hails from this reality or a different one. We do know the movie is a period piece set in the ’60s in a different New York City.
Will they meet Doctor Doom while they get stranded in the multiverse themselves? If that’s what happened to them, that is. Or do they share the same reality as RDJ’s Doctor Doom, which is different than the Earth-838 world? We’ll have to wait until July 2025 to see what happens.
Until then, I’m still hoping this Doctor Doom is a different Tony Stark version. I will point out one more tidbit from Sneider’s story that seems to back at least parts of my theory that RDJ is playing a Tony Stark version:
Robert Downey [Jr.] is coming back to [the] MCU as an alternate multiverse Tony Stark, who is actually Doctor Doom. Lucrative payday, etc. Will be first appearing in an end credit kicker. Enjoy.
Don’t get too excited yet. The scooper later said that others contradict that point of view and that RDJ is playing Doctor Doom.
