The additional scenes featured in Avengers: Endgame Encore only make the rerelease about four minutes longer than the original cut of the Marvel Cinematic Universe epic. But as brief as they are, the new scenes are certainly effective at their main task of setting up December’s Avengers: Doomsday. Encore’s second mid-credits scene in particular does a great job of teasing the catastrophic threat to the multiverse Marvel’s heroes face in the next crossover. The scene starts out with a little warmth as it reintroduces some popular agents of the Time Variance Authority/TVA from the Loki TV show and 2024 movie Deadpool & Wolverine, but quickly moves on to establishing a tone of intense dread similar to that found in the comics Doomsday and its sequel, Avengers: Secret Wars, are based on.
The scene begins with Mobius M. Mobius (Owen Wilson) back at work at the TVA after taking a leave of absence at the end of Loki Season 2. Following Loki’s (Tom Hiddleston) heroic decision to maintain all the various timelines of the multiverse, the TVA was repurposed to help do the same, rather than its old mission of erasing all but one “Sacred Timeline.” Mobius’ coworkers, including Ouroboros “O.B.” (Ke Huy Quan) and Casey (Eugene Cordero) are alarmed when their equipment indicates that numerous incursions are in progress. Incursions are collisions between two different universes that often result in the destruction of both. As the increasingly panicked TVA agents note that as many as 3000 universes have been destroyed in quick succession, O.B. declares that “The multiverse is collapsing.”
There are two famous Marvel Comics storylines titled Secret Wars, but it’s long been obvious that Doomsday and the Secret Wars film would be more heavily influenced by the later one, an elaborate crossover released in 2015. Written by Jonathan Hickman, the 2015 Secret Wars was the culmination of several years’ worth of stories in various comics, several of which Hickman also wrote. This complex arc began with Earth-616’s superheroes (and some villains) learning about incursions. The comics focused on the moral ambiguities the heroes are confronted with as they attempt to prevent the end of all life. The covert team of manipulative heroes known as the Illuminati discovers that incursions occur when both universe’s respective versions of Earth collide. They also learn that an incursion can be stopped if one of the effected Earths is destroyed completely, and construct weapons that can do so, but the question of whether or not to use them tears the 616 heroes apart. It’s later revealed that the incursions were deliberately caused by the nearly omnipotent beings known as the Beyonders.
When the 2015 version of Secret Wars itself begins, the only universes remaining are 616, the world of Marvel’s main comics continuity, and 1610, the original Ultimate Universe. As the final incursion between these Earths begins, their respective superhero communities fight to ensure their own worlds survive, while both universe’s versions of Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic work to evacuate however many of their peers they can onto a ship dubbed the life raft which can supposedly survive the multiverse’s complete destruction. Meanwhile, Victor von Doom/Doctor Doom confronts the Beyonders directly, with Stephen Strange as his reluctant ally. As the incursion ends, both realities are reduced to nothing but white light, in which an image of Doom’s mask briefly appears. As the series continues, Reed and the other survivors on the life raft discover themselves on a planet dubbed “Battleworld,” which includes multiple versions of many recognizable characters and parts of Earth, all of which are under the rule of Doom, who is worshipped as “God Emperor.”
Most fans have assumed that Doomsday will be based largely on the early portions of Secret Wars and the “Time Runs Out” storyline that immediately preceded it, and the Encore scene supports this prediction. Though the TVA agents’ attention is mostly focused on the incursions themselves, which become widespread quicker than they did in the comics, one monitor does show that Earths 10005 and 1127 have gone to war in the midst of their incursion, firing missiles of some kind at one another. Universe 1127 isn’t currently known as the setting of any specific onscreen Marvel projects but Deadpool & Wolverine established that 10005 is the world containing the versions of the X-Men mythology and characters shown throughout the Deadpool trilogy and 2017 film Logan. Their aggressive attempt to stop the incursion supports the theory that most of the X-Men characters featured in Doomsday will be from Earth-10005 and that their world will play a role similar to that of the Ultimate Universe in a possible conflict with the MCU’s version of 616 (which was previously known as Universe-199999). Universe-828, the setting of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, will also surely be important, with Doomsday’s trailers strongly implying that Robert Downey Jr.’s Doom will hail from Earth-828 and have a personal history with its version of the Fantastic Four.
The Encore scene also sets the stage for Downey’s Doom to have a similar role to his comics counterpart. Doomsday’s promotional materials and comments from the cast and crew have all pointed to Doom initially being seen as a kind of ally by the Fantastic Four and some of the other heroes, similar to the comic dynamic between Doom and Strange. Given how dire the threat of incursions already is, it’s understandable why this could be the case if Doom initially presents stopping them as his only goal, before his ulterior motives are inevitably revealed. That said, one assumes that at least one of the MCU’s witty heroes will question the wisdom of trusting someone named “Doom.”
What did you think of the Doomsday teases in Avengers: Endgame Encore? Discuss in the comments.
