Marvel Studios is shining a spotlight on the evil group behind the MCU's next great adversary in Avengers: Doomsday. Doctor Doom (Robert Downey Jr.) isn't just the lead villain of the upcoming Avengers event. He's also been the centerpiece of nearly the entire marketing campaign ahead of the film's December 18 release. Disney and Marvel have leaned heavily on different shots, moments, and lines from the ruler, all without showing Downey's actual face in a single trailer or poster so far. But much like Thanos before him, Doom may be the one calling the shots, but he isn't doing it alone.
Doom and his team are taking center stage, with Cinema projection company Barco sharing five new villain posters on Instagram to promote its HDR format.
The poster highlights what's become an iconic pose from Doom, with this moment capturing when he will raise the sentinels from the perceived dead. Look out for the impact these mutant-killers have in the film, with large-scale action set pieces in play for the Avengers to take down these robotic giants.
Premium theater format ScreenX dropped its own poster on X, placing all three of the Latverian witches beside Doom in front of the popular green stained-glass window seen in much of Doomsday's marketing materials.
In this image, the purple and green witches are hidden under their hoods, while the third, the copper-orange-robed witch, is looming next to Doom's left shoulder.
Another piece of promo art surfaced last week on X, showing glowing-eyed silhouettes of the sentinels around Doom and his throne under a cracked "DOOM" logo. It also features Doom's throne room, which has been heavily teased over the past few months of promo.
The ScreenX art reunites the trio with Doom after another throne room ad became the first in MCU history to spotlight characters who haven't been officially cast.
So who's under those hoods? That's been a question of every fan's mind for months. One of the two Russo brothers, Anthony, previously made the witches' importance clear, calling them "an elemental part" of everything Doom is.
Fans have been matching their robe colors to familiar faces since the costumes first debuted on the San Diego Comic-Con show floor in July.
In purple, most spectators suspect Clea (Charlize Theron), who pulled Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) through a portal to fix an incursion in the post-credits scene of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
Incursions, of course, are the event of universes colliding and just so happen to be Doomsday's central threat. This was teased heavily in the TVA post-credits scene of Avengers: Endgame Encore.
The copper-robed witch, whose outfit has shifted from gold at SDCC to red on the throne room poster and back again, has fans betting on Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen).
Wanda has been presumed dead since Multiverse of Madness, but a return under Doom's control would pull from the comics' "The Children's Crusade," where Doom manipulated the Scarlet Witch while plotting to steal her powers.
It seems like now, because of how much the MCU has gone out of the way to talk about Wanda's death in projects like Agatha All Along and VisionQuest, that Marvel Studios is trying to set up a shocking return. Though Wanda's MCU death being permanent never seemed likely.
Then there's the green witch, whose costume is the most decorated of the trio, potentially signifying elevated importance to Doom.
Just based on her color, it points to Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino), the Loki Variant from Disney+'s Loki. This could make a lot of sense, given the huge role Tom Hiddleston's Loki will have in Doomsday, and this could be the type of connection Doom needs in order to create Battleworld and rule over the multiverse.
Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) and Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza), aka Death, are other popular picks; then there's also a chance that brand-new characters from Doom's home nation of Latveria. For instance, Sandra Hüller was just announced to be joining the Doomsday cast in a mysterious role.
It's unlikely that Marvel will unveil who the witches are before the Doomsday release, but it's safe to assume their prominent role in the marketing points to some twists and turns.
The Sentinels, on the other hand, are pure, mindless muscle for Doom it seems. The giant mutant-hunting robots look set to clash with the X-Men and possibly the other Avengers visiting from an alternate reality.
A new Hot Toys collectible reveals Doom resurrects them on the battlefield to bring "devastation," with its description even teasing "hero-crushing scenes."
The trailers back up what's not being described, with the shot of Cyclops (James Marsden) kneeling down, shooting a blast from his eyes in front of the Sentinels, to Doom sending Thor (Chris Hemsworth) flying across what looks like the ruins of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters.
In the trailers, it's shown that, moments after taking down Thor, Doom takes control of the Sentinels and raises them from the ground. Who knows if this is trailer trickery, or if that's actually the sequence of events in Doomsday.
Magically enlisting brainless giants to take some of the physical attacks heading his way tracks with how Joe Russo has described this Doom: "meticulous," and never one to act "off the cuff."
Expect Doom to keep the Sentinels on the front lines while the witches serve as his mystical inner circle. The villain mentions how the heroes are living "stolen lives," and it remains to be seen how he plays to fix this. Hint: it will not be just through brute strength.
Funny enough, the heroes Doom will be fending off include a dozen reformed villains of their own, from Loki and Magneto (Ian McKellen) to Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejía) and the whole Thunderbolts* team, for that matter.
Given the extra help Doom clearly will have next month, it begs the question of how (and if) the Avengers will come out victorious ahead of Avengers: Secret Wars.
Will the Avengers Win in Doomsday?
If MCU history repeats itself, December 18 could be a dark day for the Avengers. In 2018's Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos won, and it took Avengers: Endgame's time heist to reverse his snap.
Doomsday could leave the heroes in a similar situation when the credits begin to roll. Fans believe a trailer shot of a battle-worn Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) clutching his nephew Franklin Richards in front of a blinding wall of light could be one of the movie's final moments, possibly showing an Incursion.
That would pave the way for Battleworld, the patchwork planet Doom builds from scraps of dying universes and rules as the God Emperor in Jonathan Hickman's 2015 Secret Wars comic.
Even Thor's newly seen Odinforce upgrade, which taps into the near-limitless power his father Odin once wielded, may not be enough, since Doom likely needs to win for Battleworld to happen.
Even with a dour ending possible, that doesn't mean Secret Wars will be another do-over. The Russo Brothers have called it "a new beginning," and Marvel's casting of a grown-up T'Challa II (David Jonsson) hints at a reshaped reality.
Instead of turning back the clock, literally, the Avengers will probably have to find a new path forward through Doom's world, not a way to put everything back together. This will lead to the soft reboot of the MCU in 2028, with a single cohesive timeline and the multiverse a thing of the past.
