Avengers: Doomsday is on the way, and new details indicate the movie will change the MCU in a million ways fans can't ignore. The fifth Avengers crossover hits theaters December 18 as Marvel's most ambitious project yet, giving Doctor Doom a much more intimidating live-action presence, embodied by Robert Downey Jr. The Latverian dictator has an agenda across the multiverse, and one of the superhero groups determined to stop him is the X-Men, among the more intriguing additions to the crossover. The iconic mutant team's role is far more complex than simply fighting Doom, though, with new details revealing the impact they could have on the multiverse itself and the MCU's future.
Avengers: Endgame Encore, Marvel's rerelease of the 2019 blockbuster, arrived in theaters September 25 with extra footage tying the Infinity Saga finale into Doomsday. One of its three new post-credits scenes reveals that Earth-10005, the universe designated to the Fox X-Men, is experiencing an incursion and is on the verge of colliding with Earth-1127, an unknown reality. The Time Variance Authority's Mobius, O.B., and Casey watch as the two worlds fire missiles at each other in a bid to survive, since destroying one Earth before impact would effectively cancel the incursion. The scene also reveals that some 3,000 other realities have already collapsed the same way.
Earth-10005 finding itself in this position is fascinating, because it has already survived one apocalyptic event. That reality covers Fox's X-Men films, from the original X-Men through Dark Phoenix, along with the Deadpool movies. Deadpool & Wolverine then made it MCU canon, establishing that the world began dying after its anchor being, Wolverine, perished in Logan, with the TVA pruning its most dangerous elements to the Void as it decayed.
Deadpool refused to let his world fade away. He teamed up with a Wolverine variant, stopped Cassandra Nova from erasing the universe with the Time Ripper, and restored its future. Afterward, the TVA's Hunter B-15 told the two mutants, "Your universe is regenerating. Whatever you did here, you not only saved your world, you spared your timeline from extinction." She also warned that their work together was just getting started. With Earth-10005 now facing an incursion, that line feels like foreshadowing.
Is the Doomsday X-Men Universe Actually Earth-10005?
The chronology here is admittedly a head-scratcher. The timeline was rewritten by X-Men: Days of Future Past, and Logan was conceived as one possible future. Some of these events are even split across different designations in Marvel's own reference materials.
Deadpool & Wolverine simplified things by treating Earth-10005 as the single timeline that carried forward. Whether Doomsday honors that simplification is the big question, and the answer reshapes everything that comes next.
Avengers: Doomsday brings back Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier, Ian McKellen as Magneto, James Marsden as Cyclops, Kelsey Grammer as Beast, Rebecca Romijn as Mystique, Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler, and Channing Tatum as Gambit, and the film's trailers show them battling for their lives.
The X-Men teaser showed the X-Mansion in ruins, while the first full trailer showed Xavier seated by a window as the sky outside turned blood-red, the trademark sign of an incursion in the comics. There's a chance the incursion on the TVA's monitor is the same one bearing down on the X-Men in the trailers, which would make Earth-10005 the world the Doomsday X-Men call home.
There's a counterargument worth considering, though. The Earth-10005 of Deadpool & Wolverine ended in a very specific place. The original Wolverine stayed dead, Hugh Jackman's variant took his place, and X-23 finally came home. The Doomsday roster looks more like a greatest-hits lineup than a direct continuation of that world.
The Marvels already introduced a separate mutant universe where Grammer's Beast and Lashana Lynch's Binary appear, and that world could just as easily be the one these X-Men inhabit. That has prompted some fans to theorize that only Deadpool and Wolverine truly hail from Earth-10005, while the movie's X-Men come from a similar but distinct reality. It's a notable detail since Logan established that in this world's future, the X-Men are all dead.
The Reality the X-Men Belong to Has Major Implications for Doomsday and the MCU
If the X-Men in Doomsday actually hail from Earth-10005, then the Encore footage stands as a setup for the role the team plays in the movie. We have a fair idea of what an incursion looks like and what it does in the MCU, but we've yet to see one unfold in real time. Marvel could be using Earth-10005 to show audiences just how traumatic that event is as it plays out.
It also sets up a potential conflict between the X-Men and the other heroes. The Encore scene reveals that this Earth fired missiles at its colliding neighbor, and vice versa. The Avengers and the other heroes would likely take issue with that method of survival, leading to a clash between the teams. That would offer the perfect explanation for why the X-Men fight the Avengers and the Fantastic Four in the Doomsday trailer.
And if this is indeed their universe, it raises the question of whether Deadpool, Wolverine, X-23, Colossus, and Negasonic Teenage Warhead, who all live on that Earth, factor into the movie. Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman crashed D23 with a video pitching exactly that, with Jackman teasing, "I would love to join and I might be able to convince Ryan to appear in Avengers: Doomsday." A crisis like this would definitely demand their attention.
Alternatively, if the Doomsday X-Men come from a separate universe, the incursion serves a completely different purpose. It could be Marvel's way of killing off the Fox X-Men continuity, baggage and all, to usher in a new one.
That would also fall in line with the studio's plans for the mutants. Marvel has announced its own X-Men reboot for May 5, 2028, with Jake Schreier directing and a new cast unveiled at D23: Sadie Sink as Jean Grey, Kit Connor as Cyclops, Christopher Abbott as Charles Xavier, Samara Weaving as Emma Frost, Inde Navarrette as Rogue, Maya Boyd as Storm, and Adam Driver as the villainous Mister Sinister.
Kevin Feige has said Avengers: Secret Wars leads into "a new age of mutants and of the X-Men." Clearing the old board to make way for a new one seems like the most plausible direction here, and it would be a bittersweet farewell for fans.
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.
