Some fans have been skeptical about the return of Chris Evans' Steve Rogers in Avengers: Doomsday on December 18. Not only has Rogers been deprived of a conclusive ending in Avengers: Endgame, but many of those same fans are concerned that Rogers's role in Doomsday will take the spotlight away from other characters, such as Pedro Pascal's Reed Richards and Anthony Mackie's Captain America.
This concern grew after Good Morning America interviewed Chris Evans, Hayley Atwell, and Robert Downey Jr. to discuss Doomsday. When asked which character Downey Jr. preferred playing, Tony Stark or Doctor Doom, he said the latter; he cited the difference in perspective it offered him as an actor after playing a superhero for so long, especially when it was opposite Evans. Downey Jr. even said that "I think that in Doomsday, what happens with our, this key relationship is so exciting and unexpected and beautiful."
Again, this reinforces that one of the big conflicts in this penultimate movie of the Multiverse Saga will be between Doctor Doom and Steve Rogers, two characters with no shared history in the MCU. However, while it's true this adaptation is seemingly sidelining Doom's rivalry with Richards, it's ignoring another—the one between Steve Rogers and Tony Stark.
Marvel Comics' Time Runs Out Story Explained
While it doesn't share its name, Doomsday couldn't be a clearer adaptation of "Time Runs Out," the Avengers comics story that serves as the prelude to Jonathan Hickman's Secret Wars. Directors Joe and Anthony Russo even had the foreword in the Marvel Premier Collection release of Avengers: Time Runs Out.
The two directors perfectly encapsulated the theme of this story in that foreword, acknowledging that it was about "the slow erosion of trust among people" and "who we become when pressure shapes every choice:"
"In Time Runs Out, one of the most striking elements is how the world begins to slip. It is not a dramatic explosion. It is fear. It is compromise. It is the slow erosion of trust among people who care deeply and still cannot prevent the fall. Stories like that linger. They ask us to look at who we become when pressure shapes every choice."
However, Time Runs Out is about two people whose trust in each other was eroded by betrayal and whose paths into saving the Multiverse eventually shaped them into unrecognizable men: Steve Rogers and Tony Stark.
Over the course of both Hickman's Avengers and New Avengers, Rogers and Stark expanded the team to a cosmic scale, but while Rogers dealt with immediate threats like Ex Nihilo, the Builders, and even Thanos in Avengers, Stark had other plans in New Avengers. Working behind Rogers' back with the Illuminati, they tried to stop the incursions, cataclysmic events in which parallel Earths collided, erasing both universes. The only short-term solution was the destruction of one of the Earths in the impending collision.
When Rogers was confronted with the plan to destroy other Earths to save their own, he harshly objected to it, forcing the Illuminati to wipe his memory and remove him from the group. But it all came to a head when Rogers' memories were restored, and he realized Stark's betrayal, prompting him to assemble his own team of Avengers to arrest Stark and the rest of the Illuminati.
Doom's One-Sided Grudge With Steve Rogers
A problem with properly adapting Time Runs Out in the MCU is that Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark died sacrificing himself to stop Thanos and his army at the climax of Endgame. However, that doesn't mean engineering a scenario in which another character takes his place couldn't work, or even two different characters butting heads before the end of the Multiverse.
It's arguably a bizarre choice to replace Tony Stark with Doctor Doom in what is intended to be an interpersonal conflict while also bringing back Steve Rogers, despite his being inactive up to this point in the Multiverse Saga. It creates an investment issue that this conflict lacks, aside from Doom seeking revenge against Rogers.
As previously mentioned, neither character has any prior connection to the other in the MCU, aside from potential leaks suggesting that Rogers was indirectly responsible for the death of Victor's family by causing an incursion in Earth-828 when he decided to live out the rest of his life with a variant of Peggy Carter. At least with Pascal's Mister Fantastic, there is an implied history between him and Victor, but there's likely no chance of that being the case with Rogers in Doomsday.
Even in the comics, they're no deeper than run-of-the-mill enemies, despite Marvel Comics' recent attempts to manufacture a deeper relationship between the two in the lead-up to Doomsday.
What Happens to Steve Rogers in Secret Wars?
Despite what Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige said in the foreword of the Marvel Premier Collection release of Secret Wars, Steve Rogers had zero involvement in Hickman's magnum opus for Marvel, nor did Tony. Both of them died before the Multiverse ended.
Rather than setting their differences aside for the sake of everyone in existence, they end up killing each other as the world ends around them. Both were compromised by fear and bitterness to the end.
However, Secret Wars is unabashedly a story about the decades-long rivalry between Doctor Doom and Reed Richards. Doom even stole Richards' wife and children when he created Battleworld, a move likely to recur in next year's theatrical adaptation. While it's a small relief that their rivalry won't be forgotten, it's unlikely that Rogers will be absent like his comic book counterpart was.
On top of the classic rivalry, Secret Wars will also have to further develop and conclude the one they've written between Doctor Doom and Steve Rogers in Doomsday. It's hard to ignore that this would distract from the rivalry between Doom and Richards, especially when it's inevitably going to end with Rogers having a second swan song in the MCU after the Fox X-Men's comical third.
It feels more and more like this rivalry will be propped up on the premise of Robert Downey Jr. playing Doctor Doom opposite a returning Chris Evans as Steve Rogers, making it potentially feel like a gimmick rather than anything else. Hopefully, Doomsday will prove concerned fans wrong.
