Robert Downey Jr.'s Doctor Doom will find an unlikely ally inside Avengers: Doomsday, according to a new report. The fifth Avengers film is set to cram Earth's Mightiest Heroes, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, the Thunderbolts, and the Wakandans into one Multiverse-wide crisis, and most of them will spend the runtime trying to take Doom down. One of them, however, will reportedly be cooperating with him, at least at some point in the film.
Per scooper Daniel Richtman on his Patreon, that hero is Pedro Pascal's Reed Richards. Richtman reports that Doom and the Fantastic Four's leader will join forces in Avengers: Doomsday to stop Incursions by building "special cannons":
"I can confirm that in Avengers Doomsday, Reed and Doom's plan to stop the Incursions is to build special cannons on every Earth to repel the worlds from one another."
It is a strange position for Doom, given everything else Richtman has reported about him. The insider has previously said Doom enters the film on a revenge quest and a "vendetta against the Multiverse". Working with Reed to save the Multiverse is, on paper, the last thing this version of Doom should want to do, especially taking another look at the Doomsday trailer Marvel Studios premiered at CinemaCon 2026 in Las Vegas. The Latverian is shown to be very ruthless and very keen on destroying the heroes.
In the footage, Doom is shown kneeling, in full armor, green-hooded and metal-faced, speaking in a heavy Latverian accent. His big line in the trailer is, "Before this day is done, we shall be faced with an unthinkable decision," which gives the villain an even more menacing vibe.
His biggest moment in the trailer, though, comes when Chris Hemsworth's Thor throws Stormbreaker at him. Doom stops it in mid-air with one hand. Thor follows it up with a speech to the rest of the heroes, ending on the line, "Everything they sacrificed will be for nothing, if we don't stand together," before adding, "We're going to need a miracle."
The trailer then reveals a miracle in Chris Evans' Steve Rogers, now with long hair and a beard. He walks up behind Thor and says, "Hey, pal." Thor responds, "It's not possible," with a look of disbelief, and Mjolnir flies out of his hand into Steve's.
Pascal's Reed Richards also pops up in the trailer, but only briefly. He's spotted in the X-Mansion alongside the other heroes. He doesn’t get much of a spotlight, but he's definitely going to be central to the movie.
Why's Avengers Doomsday's Villain Working Alongside a Hero?
Robert Downey Jr.'s Doom and Reed working together comes as a surprise, given that Doom is the villain of the movie and Reed is one of the heroes trying to stop him. But it's actually not uncommon for them to team up in Marvel lore. In the comics, Reed and Doom have been forced into uneasy alliances plenty of times. A typical one being Jonathan Hickman's 2011 FF comic run, where the two would close ranks against a larger cosmic problem, the Council of Reeds.
In the MCU, a cosmic problem like Incursions is reason enough for Robert Downey Jr.'s character to team up with Reed. Stopping the Incursions is not something Reed can solve on his own. He is the smartest person in the Fantastic Four's reality, but he has only just arrived in the wider MCU and probably has no real experience with universes colliding. Doom likely can’t figure it out either, which makes a team-up between the MCU's biggest minds plausible.
Building cannons on every remaining Earth is also not the kind of job one person can pull off. It takes resources, manpower, and access to multiple realities, which is why splitting the heroes into teams and sending them out to plant the cannons could be a logical plan. Reed brings the science and the connections to the rest of the heroes, while Doom brings the firepower and the will to actually see it through.
The bigger question is what happens once the cannons are built, though? Doom is not the type of villain to settle for saving the day and walking away, and any plan that puts a weapon of that scale on every Earth at the same time is going to look very different depending on who has their hand on the trigger. This is most likely where the cracks in the alliance start to show, and where the beef between Doom and the heroes happens.
It's also worth noting that Doom is a master manipulator who frequently repurposes advanced technology for his own gain, a recurring twist in his comic book history that could likely be what's playing out here. It wouldn’t be a surprise if Robert Downey Jr.'s version of Doom tricks Reed and the other heroes into building what they think is a tool to save everyone, but is actually a weapon for his own selfish plans.
Geraldo Amartey is a writer at The Direct. He joined the team in 2025, bringing with him four years of experience covering entertainment news, pop culture, and fan-favorite franchises for sites like YEN, Briefly and Tuko.
