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During what could easily be considered the main event of San Diego Comic-Con, Marvel Studios announced that Robert Downey Jr., the actor who helped kick off the MCU as Tony Stark, will be returning to Marvel Cinematic Universe. The big twist, though, is that he will be returning not as Tony Stark, but as Victor von Doom, perhaps Marvel Comics’ single greatest villain. For a company who would rather reboot or memorialize a character than recast them, casting the same actor in two very prominent roles seems like a very strange move. And that’s why we think it’s possible that this is one big misdirect.. Robert Downey Jr. may be playing Victor von Doom, but what if he’s not playing the Victor von Doom.
Of course, keep in mind that we don’t have any secret spies at Marvel Studios, a special friendship with Kevin Feige, nor have we mastered the mystic arts to become the Sorcerer Supreme to see 14,000,605 different futures for the MCU. In other words, this is all theory crafting based on what we know about Marvel Comics, the MCU, and some assumptions about human behavior. And maybe Downey is actually playing the real Doctor Doom. If he is, there might be only one way to make that work just right.
It’s hard to take this announcement at face value, though. This doesn’t feel like a creative move made because it’ll lay the groundwork for an interesting story. Instead, it feels like the kind of thing studio executives come up with to put butts into movie seats. It’s hard not to let the way the MCU has been struggling at the box office since Avengers: Endgame color our perceptions of this casting choice. There are other actors out there who could play a compelling Doom, and for whom the casting wouldn’t raise an eyebrow for so many fans about the MCU going back to what worked before instead of trying something new and interesting.
It also seems like a strange move for Downey, who helped kick off the MCU, made Iron Man and Tony Stark household names, and who rebuilt his career alongside the rise of the character he played. Marvel Studios already paid him truckloads, and this seems like a move that would muddle Downey’s legacy with the character. At its very worst, this could feel like a “Somehow, Palatine Returned” moment for the MCU.
What if this is merely a tease for something entirely different, though? There are a few different ways Feige, the returning Russo brothers, Downey, and the rest of the MCU’s creative forces could be taking things. Let’s lay down some context.
The (Second) Man in the Iron Mask
Assuming that Robert Downey Jr. really is playing the Victor von Doom, there’s a chance we just never see his face. Doom is a (usually) heavily-scarred character who wears a mask at all times. It could even be a variant of Tony that went through with the snap, lived through it, but found the world didn’t live up to his expectations and took a heel turn.
The Multiverse
It’s important to remember that, for now, the MCU is a multiverse. While that may not always be the case–multiverses collapsing as are common as sand on a beach in comic books–our favorite superheroes are each just one version of countless possible variants. Thus far, we’ve met variants of a bunch of characters. They often share the same face and name, as has been the case with Doctor Strange or Guardians of the Galaxy’s Gamora. But just as often they share a name only (see Spider-Man: No Way Home) or face only (see the Kang variants in Loki and Ant-Man and the Wasp in Quantumania). And then there are mischief characters like Loki and Deadpool who have variants in all shapes and sizes.
In one What If…? storyline, Victor von Doom swaps minds with Tony Stark and takes his place. In a book titled Infamous Iron Man, Doom tries to turn over a new leaf following Tony Stark’s death, making his own Iron Man armor and trying to play the part of a hero in his place. In another, “Anthony” Stark becomes the Sorcerer Supreme and Victor von Doom becomes Iron Man.
This version of Victor von Doom, who shares Tony Stark’s face, could be any of those–it’s extremely unlikely that a guy who looks exactly like Tony Stark has been wandering around Latveria unnoticed. If he really is Victor von Doom, he has to be from another universe at the very least.
Doombots
Doctor Doom is not Thanos. Thanos was a force of nature, as inevitable as a tidal wave. He had one plan and he was going to execute it no matter what the cost. Doctor Doom is a human whose road to villainy begins with a mistake that scars him so deeply that he feels the need to cover himself in metallic armor to hide his face.
He is familiar with failure, in other words. He doesn’t have a plan, he has plans within plans like the Bene Gesserit of Dune. His backup plans have backup plans.
One constant about Doctor Doom is that, as you battle him, you probably aren’t battling him. You’re battling a Doombot. Doombots are particular to Doctor Doom. They’re not just robots, and they’re not Ultron. They look and sound like Doctor Doom, but more importantly they fully believe themselves to be Victor von Doom to their very cores. In the comics, these robots even have circuitry that can fool low-level telepaths into believing the Doombot is Vic himself.
Even if Doctor Doom turned out to be played by, say, Daniel Day Lewis (We’re kidding. Unless it happens.), there’s no reason that a Doombot would have to look the same as Victor von Doom.
Doom and the Fantastic Four
Doctor Doom is to the Fantastic Four as Magneto is to the X-Men, and as Lex Luthor is to Superman. The Fantastic Four movie comes out next spring, and chances are this is where Doctor Doom enters the picture as well. The Fantastic Four is Marvel Comics’ First Family–the original sci-fi superheroes for the longtime comics publisher. They appeared at a time when space exploration was only just starting–they first popped up in 1961, just four years after Russia put Sputnik in orbit around Earth.
These days, companies are working on commercializing space travel, so imagining some intrepid explorers simply breaching the atmosphere would be less than impressive. Jeff Bezos has been to space. Instead, what if the Fantastic Four become the first explorers to intentionally breach the Multiverse. Previously, this has been done by magic, like Doctor Strange’s sling ring, or by accident, as with Photon in the final moments of The Marvels. The TVA is its own thing–Kang exists outside of time and space, and it’s tough to say that, in Earth-616’s timeline, no one has yet crossed multiversal boundaries. We’re betting that the Fantastic Four crosses from their retro-futuristic 1960s world to the modern-day MCU at some point in that film, and brings Victor von Doom–once a friend of Mr. Fantastic, AKA Reed Richards–with them, or creates him in the modern-day MCU in the process.
So that leads us to the question of why he has the same face as our buddy Tony.
If he comes from the F4’s Earth, he could simply be a Tony Stark variant, another technological supergenius whose origin puts him behind a metal mask. At that point, we’d likely never see Downey’s face again in the MCU, as Doom is known for never taking off that mask.
But Doom could just as easily build a Doombot that has the same face as Tony Stark. If you’re capable of building automatons so lifelike that they don’t know they’re robots, you’re not limited to using your own face. And what faster way would there be to put yourself into positions of power than to be a resurrected Tony Stark? This Doom would have instant access to unimaginable wealth, powerful people, and other desirable resources, and people would welcome him in.
Robert Downey Jr. returning to the MCU is not an inherently bad thing. If played correctly, it could be interesting. But Marvel Studios has to play it just right to convince us that this is a narrative move more than it is a business move. Part of that is that Doctor Doom can’t be another decade of Downey’s life–his time as Doom can be part of the MCU’s story, but it shouldn’t overshadow his time as Tony Stark.
D23
If Downey’s Doom is to be a big part of the MCU moving forward, it seems like the kind of thing they’d talk about quite a bit, right? So here’s one last thing that we think points to there at least being something weird going on. Every other year, Disney does a big D23 presentation. These things are huge, and this year they even made the panel a separate event for the first time. It had everything: Nine Inch Nails, The Rock with pyrotechnics, Debra Jo Rupp singing, and a David Blaine magic trick. But what it didn’t have was a word about Downey or his Victor von Doom character. Disney talked about other Marvel stuff from their recent Comic-Con panel, like Captain America: Brave New World, so it’s not that it was off topic. It just wasn’t there. In fact, Disney’s Fortnite presentation had more Doctor Doom by virtue of the fact that it had any Doctor Doom.
They have to get this right
If there’s a Doom masquerading as Tony Stark, here’s one way we could imagine it going down: While Doom won’t be the villain in Fantastic Four: The First Steps, he’ll show up, perhaps in the final moments, with Tony Stark’s face.
If there’s a Doom masquerading as Tony Stark, here’s one way we could imagine it going down: Doom will appear dramatically at the end of Fantastic Four, with Tony Stark’s face. Avengers: Doomsday will have the Avengers thinking they’re fighting their old friend, or some variant, and the Avengers will kill him at the end of Avengers: Doomsday. The real Doom will reveal himself at that point, played by an entirely different actor. The heroes will have been through this seemingly tragic event of having to fight their friend, only to find that the fight hasn’t even started.
The hardest part of writing Doctor Doom is that he’s supposed to be a genius on the level of Tony Stark, Reed Richards, and Bruce Banner. As we referenced before, he is not Thanos, and can’t simply march forward relentlessly. He has to mess with the heroes and, by extension, with us. Instead of being this looming, encroaching threat, he has to surprise us and, when it gets down to it, that’s what we really want.
Image credit: Getty Images/Jesse Grant
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