These are the three craziest Avengers: Doomsday theories out there, and they might actually be true. Starting with… Theory 1: Iron Man was always Dr. Doom. What if everything we thought we knew about the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s greatest hero was wrong? This theory flips the MCU upside down. It says the Tony Stark we followed from Iron Man 1 all the way to Endgame wasn’t actually Tony Stark.
He was a variant of Victor Von Doom. A Doom pulled from another timeline, adopted by the Starks, and planted inside the Sacred Timeline, all as part of a master plan by He Who Remains. The logic? Simple but wild.
In order to stop Doom, one of the most dangerous beings in the multiverse, He Who Remains, had to remove him from the game completely. So what does he do? So what does he do? He plucks a younger, less corrupted version of Doom from a parallel universe and drops him into Earth-616 under a new name, Tony Stark. He’s raised by the Starks, inherits their empire, becomes a genius billionaire, and eventually joins the Avengers.
In this theory, the entire Infinity Saga becomes a slow-burn character arc not of redemption, but of control. This Doom variant believes he’s Tony Stark. He becomes Iron Man.
He sacrifices himself to defeat Thanos, and in doing so, erases the one variable that would have destroyed all of time. His true identity. But here’s where it gets dark.
After his death, reality begins to fracture. Not just because Iron Man is gone, but because the real Doom legacy was never allowed to rise. With Kang defeated, the multiverse starts to unravel.
Timelines that were once pruned begin to bleed, and the truth buried deep in Tony’s past starts clawing its way back. Now this variant is waking up, either resurrected by the multiverse, revived by Kang Tek, or rewritten by time itself. And when he returns, he remembers who he really is.
And this time, he’s not here to save the world. He’s here to rebuild it in his image. This might sound insane until you look at the meta breadcrumbs Marvel’s been dropping for years.
Let’s rewind to 2005. Before RDJ ever put on the Iron Man suit, he auditioned to play Dr. Doom in the Fantastic Four movie. Kevin Feige and Jon Favreau even talked about it publicly in Marvel’s own Iron Man Anniversary video.
They said Robert had already come through for Doom before they considered him for Tony Stark. And I remember you had all met with him already for, like, Dr. Doom or something on another project. So what if Marvel is finally cashing that in? Feige loves meta storytelling.
We’ve seen it with Ralph Bohner and WandaVision, Channing Tatum’s Gambit cameo in Deadpool and Wolverine, and every multiverse tease Marvel’s done since No Way Home. They know fans remember this stuff. They want fans to scream when the puzzle pieces click.
So RDJ’s return in Avengers: Doomsday, it’s not just a nostalgia play. It’s the twist. Think about what the Russo brothers said recently.
There’s nobody else on Earth who could play this version of Doom like Robert Downey Jr. That’s a big statement. It implies Doom will feel like Iron Man, sound like him, and move like him because maybe he was him. And here’s the kicker.
This perfectly fits the infamous Iron Man storyline from the comics, where Doom tries to redeem himself after Tony’s death by becoming Iron Man. He wears the suit. He fights evil.
But people don’t trust him because, deep down, they know it’s not the same man. Now imagine that playing out in reverse. Tony Stark dies and then returns.
But he’s not really Tony. He’s Doom, finally reclaiming the legacy he was denied. So how does this all come together? It starts with the TVA, the Time Variance Authority, and the cracks forming in its control.
With Kang defeated and the sacred timeline no longer stable, the entire system begins to break down. Prune timelines are leaking, variants are escaping, and the void, the final dumping ground for reality’s mistakes, is becoming active again. And this is where Doom comes in.
Now fully awakened to his true identity, Doom realizes that his rise was stolen. The TVA didn’t just erase bad timelines; they erased him. They replaced him with a puppet.
They gave his face, his future, and his arc to another man, the Iron Man. And now that everything’s collapsing, Doom wants it back. He infiltrates the TVA.
Maybe he hacks their tech. Maybe he corrupts the remaining hunters. Or maybe he just walks straight through their broken gates, powered by a mix of Kang’s technology and his own dark sorcery.
His goal? Not revenge. Not domination. He wants to restore his place in the multiverse.
And to do that, he sets his sights on the void and the Citadel at the end of time. That’s where Loki currently sits, literally holding the multiverse together. He’s the only thing standing between total collapse and structured reality.
And Doom plans to take that throne. If Theory 1 is true and Tony Stark was secretly a Doom variant, then his death in Endgame didn’t just end a saga; it broke the multiverse. Which leads us to Theory 2. Let’s start with that 14 million futures scene again.
We’re told that Strange is just watching, that he’s scanning the outcomes trying to find the one where they win. But we never really understood what watching meant. Is he just a passive observer? Is he looking at each possible timeline like a TV show? See, in Multiverse of Madness, we learn a lot more about how timelines work.
We see that reality is fragile, that incursions, collisions between timelines, can wipe out entire universes, and that certain decisions, even small ones, can cause chain reactions that destroy worlds. So what if Strange knew that? What if he picked one path and didn’t just observe it? He nurtured it? What if he made a butterfly effect that pushed certain timelines to intertwine? What if he was choosing a reality where the final war wasn’t just against Thanos, but against the very fabric of the multiverse? And here’s the kicker. It’s not like Strange doesn’t make huge, risky choices.
He’s the same guy who risked all of reality just to get Peter Parker into college. So if the multiverse was already unstable, maybe he didn’t just want to win. Maybe he wanted to break it carefully.
So that something better, or more controlled, could rise from the ashes. Now here’s where things get real. We all love Tony Stark.
Genius, billionaire, the guy who started it all and gave his life to end it. But let’s be honest. He created Ultron.
He broke the Sokovia Accords. He invented time travel. He opened doors we still don’t know how to close.
And it all started with one moment. When he flew into the wormhole in Avengers 1. That wasn’t just a heroic sacrifice. It was a spiritual collision.
Tony saw something beyond the stars. And he was never the same. Now let’s connect the dots.
In Age of Ultron, Tony says his vision, the one Scarlet Witch gave him, wasn’t a nightmare. It was his legacy. He felt it.
And what if that vision wasn’t planted by Wanda? What if that feeling started in space when Tony touched the cosmos and something touched him back? What if Victor Von Doom touched his mind? We’ve seen plenty of multiversal leaks suggesting a connection between Doom and Stark. Some even theorize that Doom may have been watching Tony across timelines. Maybe even leaking knowledge or influence into his mind.
And Strange would have seen it. He would have seen the branching paths where Tony becomes too powerful, too reckless, and starts collapsing the timeline from within. So what does Strange do? He picks the one future where Tony dies.
Not just to stop Thanos, but to stop what’s coming after. He creates a timeline where Tony’s sacrifice opens the door for a replacement. And that replacement is Doom.
Here’s where a multiverse of madness becomes key. We learn that Strange’s actions caused an incursion, a collision between Earth-616 and Earth-838. These are timelines crashing into each other, threatening to wipe out both realities.
But what if that wasn’t an accident? What if Strange wanted that incursion? He knew the multiverse had to be unified, or reset, and the only way to do that was to break it first. Look at 838; they defeated Thanos. They had an Illuminati.
But their world wasn’t safe. They were still affected by what happened on June 1st-6, and there’s an empty seat at their council table. People say that seat was meant for Kang.
But what if it was for Dr. Doom? Maybe that world was Doom’s domain. A world where Doom was Iron Man. Or where his mind lived inside the text Stark created.
Maybe Strange pushed the incursion to that specific timeline because he knew that’s where Doom had to rise. That’s where he could draw him out or unleash him. It’s the ultimate gamble: break reality just enough to reveal who’s really behind the curtain.
Now we come to the final part of this theory. Where is Doom? Why haven’t we seen him in 838 or 616 yet? Because he’s in the Void, the place where pruned timelines go. The dumping ground of the TVA, the back door to the Citadel at the end of time, where Loki now sits, holding the multiverse together.
That’s where Doom has been hiding, and Strange knew it. He didn’t just see a future where they won. He saw a future where Doom was left behind, waiting.
Because when the time is right, Doom will escape. He’ll march on the Citadel. He’ll face Loki, and he’ll try to take his place as the anchor being of the multiverse.
And if he wins, Battleworld begins. A new reality, forged by the mind of a man who was once Tony Stark’s shadow and now the god of all timelines. This theory changes everything.
Doctor Strange didn’t just pick the path of victory; he picked the path of controlled collapse. He planted the seeds of Doom’s rise because he knew the multiverse needed to be broken to be saved. And now, we’re watching it all unfold.
If you’ve made it this far, let me know in the comments: was Strange right to do this? Or did he just cause the biggest disaster the MCU has ever seen? Hit that like button, subscribe for more Marvel Madness, and remember, there was only one way, and this was it. So if Strange built the timeline, what if Doom’s already in it, hiding in plain sight as Tony Stark? This is theory three, the Doom imposter. Let’s be clear, Robert Downey Jr. is returning in Avengers: Doomsday.
But what if he’s not just playing a Tony Stark variant? What if he’s playing Doctor Doom, pretending to be Tony Stark? Not a variant, not a copy, but the actual corpse of Tony Stark, resurrected and hijacked. Here’s how. In Multiverse of Madness, Wanda Maximoff introduced the concept of dreamwalking, projecting your consciousness into another version of yourself across the multiverse.
At the end of that film, Wanda destroyed every version of the Darkhold, the book that enabled dreamwalking. But let’s be real, that doesn’t mean dreamwalking is gone. It just means it’s harder.
Doctor Doom is not just a sorcerer. He’s a scientific genius and one of the most dangerous mystics in the Marvel Universe. In the comics, he’s literally been Sorcerer Supreme.
If anyone could find a backdoor into dreamwalking without the Darkhold, it’s Doom. So here’s the theory. Doctor Doom finds a way to dreamwalk into Tony Stark’s dead body at the moment of his death in Endgame.
He possesses it, revives it, and uses it to return to the sacred timeline as Tony Stark. This is straight out of the Reverse Flash playbook. In the Flash, Reverse Flash killed Harrison Wells and impersonated him for years, manipulating Barry from inside the team.
Doom’s pulling the same move here, except on a cosmic scale. He walks into the Avengers’ lives wearing Tony Stark’s face literally. Same voice, same personality, same memories.
And they believe it because they want to. They need to believe it. After losing Tony in Endgame, seeing him alive again would break them emotionally.
Peter Parker would be devastated. Rhodey would hesitate. Strange might suspect something.
But no one would be ready for the truth. Especially when Doom, as Tony, helps the team through a crisis. He earns their trust.
Rebuilds the team. Takes command. And then… And then, when they’re all united and vulnerable, he betrays them.
Kills someone. Reveals himself. Drops the mask.
And here’s the kicker. We might have already seen this coming. In a behind-the-scenes photo on Instagram, RDJ was spotted with mocap dots on his face again, even though Tony Stark is supposed to be dead.
But what if those dots weren’t for a clean Tony? What if it’s for a burned, damaged, half-decomposed version, the destroyed face from Endgame, under the mask? That’s why Doom wears the Iron Man suit. Not to honor Stark. To hide what’s left of the man, he used to climb back into the world.
So why go through all this effort? Because Doom has one goal. Become the anchor. Being of Earth 616.
Deadpool and Wolverine introduced anchor beings. Characters whose presence stabilizes their entire timeline. Logan was the anchor of the Foxverse.
And Tony Stark was the anchor of Earth 616. When Tony died, Earth 616 began to crack. And because 616 is the sacred timeline, every other universe began to unravel with it.
So Doom finds a loophole. He doesn’t just become a variant of Tony. He literally takes his place, steals his body, and uses his identity to reclaim the throne as anchor.
But Doom doesn’t stop there. He infiltrates the TVA, steals Kang’s tech, and merges it with his own magic. His goal is not to restore the multiverse but to reshape it in his image.
That’s where Battleworld begins. A Frankenstein reality stitched together by Doom himself from dying timelines. To pull that off, he needs one last thing.
Loki’s power. Because at this point, Loki is the one holding the multiverse together. Sitting on the throne at the Citadel at the end of time.
And Doom wants that throne. A cosmic race across the timelines begins. The multiverse collapses in real time.
Realities fold into each other. Dead worlds leak into living ones. Cities vanish mid-sentence.
Stars explode into oblivion. The Avengers reassembled in chaos. Sam Wilson, Strange, Bruce, and Captain Marvel.
The Thunderbolts were unleashed with full government backing. Red Guardian, Yelena, US Agent. The Fantastic Four racing through the wreckage of dimensions in their multiversal ship.
The X-Men of Earth 10005 are fighting. Not for redemption, but for survival. Because their world is already dying.
Each team has a reason to stop Doom. As they race through time fractures and collapsing timelines, their goal becomes clear. Reach Loki before Doom does.
Because whoever reaches the throne first decides the fate of the multiverse. And Doom? Doom isn’t racing. He’s already walking through the void.
Armor crackling with stolen Stark tech. And Kang’s temporal energy. His mind burning with sorcery forbidden by even the ancient ones.
Every step warps time. Every breath erases possibilities. He doesn’t need to run. He’s already won once. By being Tony Stark. And now the heroes must face a god who built Battleworld.
While wearing the face of the man they swore to avenge. One throne. One god. One last stand. At the end of time.
