With the re-release of Avengers: Endgame this weekend, Marvel Studios is doing two things. One, it’s reminding audiences of just how epic and awesome their movies can be. And two, it’s teasing that the next one, Avengers: Doomsday on December 18, will reach that same level. We can only hope.
The re-release, called Avengers Endgame: Encore, is basically the same one you saw in 2019 except that didn’t have any end credits scenes. This has two, plus an alternate ending, plus one extra tease. So, basically, four Doomsday teases. And while you were probably spoiled on those days ago, we figured now is the time to discuss what the heck they could mean.
The alternate ending
The first tease is in the movie itself. Steve Rogers is in the past with Peggy Carter. They’re dancing. It’s lovely and, having seen Endgame a million times, we expect the end credits to hit. Except, they don’t. Instead, there’s a knock at the door. Steve hides, Peggy answers, and it’s Loki in his Time Variance Authority jacket. She asks if she can help him, and he says no, but he can help both of them. Steve then sees Loki, and the credits roll.
First of all, it’s kind of diabolical to watch Avengers: Endgame, have it be the same movie you saw seven years ago, and then change this very last thing. It ruins the poignant moment a bit, but that’s the point. Marvel knows why the audience is there. They want some teases. So this one kicks us off in a big way.
It also raises more questions than any of the subsequent teases. First of all, I think everyone assumed Loki was stuck holding the multiverse together. If he can leave, that kind of undercuts the Loki season two ending a bit. So did this happen before? Is this another Loki variant? We aren’t sure.
More than anything that might happen in Avengers: Doomsday, though, this ending made us think back to 90 seconds earlier and what did happen in Endgame. Did old Steve, sitting on the shore waiting for Sam, already go through all the Doomsday stuff? This sure makes it seem as if he did. And that definitely makes it seem like the happy life we imagined he had with Peggy wasn’t so much. Or, he did live that happy life. He just had to go through hell one more time before he did.
Either way, Loki going to help Steve and Peggy in the past is both intriguing and confusing in the best possible ways.
Collectible Hulk
In a second scene, we see Bruce Banner on security camera footage. He’s disheveled and explains that he recently had his first incident in over a decade and decided to put himself two miles underground to protect himself and everyone else. He’s been studying gamma suppression while he’s down there, but before he can tell us more, someone else joins him off camera. They say they’re collecting him; we hear screams, including the Hulk’s, and then green lines on the ground. The green lines of Doctor Doom.
This one seems pretty straightforward. Doctor Doom kidnaps Bruce Banner. But is Banner referring to the events in Spider-Man: Brand New Day? That seems likely. In that film, he’d found a way to suppress the Hulk for a long time before Jean Grey lets him out. But what does Doctor Doom need him for? Where are they going? Is this something that pays off in Doomsday, or will it hold off until Secret Wars? We’ll have to wait and see.
Incursions begin
The third and likely more important scene is set in the TVA. All your favorites are here: Miss Minutes, Mobius, O.B., you name it. It’s early in the day, and Mobius is just getting to work when, right off the bat, they realize two universes, Earth-1127 and Earth-10005, are about to collide with each other. In fact, the worlds aren’t just about to collide, they’re firing missiles at each other, which doesn’t make sense. (Not mentioned in the movie, but Earth-10005 is the Fox X-Men universe, by the way, so we assume it wins this showdown with Earth-1127 and sets the stage for what those characters have been going through in Doomsday. The TVA screens also list many other universes that have been destroyed, potentially clipping a few Marvel loose ends, but it goes by very fast and isn’t focused on.)
As that’s happening, the same thing starts happening in other places with other dimensions. By the end, 3,000 different universes have been destroyed, and O.B. says that the multiverse is collapsing.
Two universes colliding is called an incursion, and it’s something the MCU has teased previously in both Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania as well as Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. In that film, Strange is recruited by Clea (Charlize Theron’s character, remember her?) to go off to explore incursions, which is the last time we saw either of them.
We’ve always assumed this was how Doctor Doom was going to attack the Avengers in a way Thanos never could, and how we get to see characters like the X-Men, Fantastic Four, Deadpool, and others all together. So we knew this was coming. But now it’s finally begun.
Metal on metal
While all those scenes happened before, and then during, the credits, there’s one final tease at the very, very end. In the original Avengers: Endgame, there were no end credits scenes at all. There was only the clanging of metal, a nod to the start of the MCU with the birth of Iron Man. Well, that clanging returns here, except this time it’s intercut with two quick glimpses at the creation of Doctor Doom’s mask.
In the summer of 2024, Robert Downey Jr. famously posted on his Instagram, “New mask, same task,” and that seems appropriate here. He’s now got the Doom mask and, once again, he’s back to save the MCU. Or maybe there’s no connection at all.
Whatever the case, the blending of Iron Man and Doctor Doom iconography made us think back to the end of Endgame. What, exactly, did Tony Stark do when he used the Infinity Stones? He asked for Thanos’ army to be defeated, of course. But was that it? Did he ask to be reborn in another place? Don’t forget, Tony Stark almost doesn’t help the Avengers because he’s so scared of losing his family and Doctor Doom, we think, goes crazy for that very reason. Is Doom’s creation linked, at all, to Tony Stark? Is Doom created as a yin to Stark’s yang? We’ll find out soon.
What were your thoughts on these scenes? What did we miss? Let us know below.
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