How Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man death sets up Doomsday collapse — and what it costs the Avengers to face him
Avengers face Doom wearing Tony Stark’s face, turning grief into a weapon
Fighting a version of Victor Von Doom who happens to share Robert Downey Jr.'s face is a tactical problem. Doom is being built up as arguably the most dangerous antagonist the MCU has thrown at its heroes, and unlike Thanos, he isn't hunting stones. He's hunting control of the multiverse itself. Here's what's known and rumored about how the fight actually shakes out.
Grief doesn't just disappear
Every hero standing in that final battle lived through Tony Stark's funeral. They watched him snap the Stones. They said goodbye. That's the trauma the film seems to be actively weaponising. The Russo brothers have confirmed that Stark's death in Endgame is directly tied into Doom's story this time around, not just recycled as a nostalgia beat. Whatever the actual explanation for the resemblance turns out to be, Marvel is clearly banking on the fact that Downey Jr.'s face doesn't read as "generic new villain" to this cast. It's an open wound.
That's a very different kind of villain problem than Thanos ever was. Thanos was a stranger with an ideology. This is, visually, someone the Avengers loved.
What Joe Russo has said
Talking about what makes Doomsday different from Infinity War and Endgame, Joe Russo has been blunt that spectacle alone won't carry the film. He's argued that emotional complexity is what elevates stakes rather than raw scale, and has gone so far as to call this the most emotionally complex and most mature, film he and his brother have made in the franchise. That's a notable thing to say about a movie built around a wall-to-wall multiversal war.
So, what's Doom's purpose really?
What hesitation costs a fighter
This is where the emotional angle stops being just sentimental and starts being tactically real. In a straight fight, a half-second of doubt is the difference between landing a killing blow and eating one. If Thor, Steve, or anyone else pulls a punch because some part of them is still asking "is that him," Doom doesn't need extra armor. Their own history does the work for him.
Trailer footage backs this up in small but telling ways, Thor's confrontation with Doom is more like something heavier is happening beneath the surface, with Thor reportedly reflecting on how many people he's already lost before the blow even lands.
So can they actually do it?
Probably, eventually. These are still the Avengers, and the films will need them to win, or at least survive to Secret Wars. But everything coming out of the Russos' interviews and the footage so far suggests the victory won't come cleanly or immediately. Expect hesitation before conviction, characters who freeze or falter when they shouldn't, and a fight that costs the team something beyond bruises before anyone lands a hit that actually counts.
And what about Doom himself? What do we know?
Doom isn't fighting alone
Trailers have shown Vanessa Kirby's Sue Storm warning the assembled heroes that Doom isn't just lost, according to her line in the second trailer, he's fully broken. That trailer also shows Pedro Pascal's Reed Richards confronting Doom directly, and Thor attempting to strike him with Stormbreaker, only to have the blow blocked and answered with a blast of green energy.
Leaks suggest Doom commands a genuine army by the film's climax, including multiple Doom variants pulled from across the multiverse, which means the final battle is closer to a siege.
The cannon plan
According to widely circulated plot leaks, the actual strategy for stopping the collapse of the multiverse doesn't come from brute force at all. Reed Richards and Doom, despite being adversaries, reportedly share a piece of the solution: building massive cannons on multiple parallel Earths capable of firing a force that permanently separates the universes from one another, closing off the incursions causing everything to collapse.
To pull this off, the heroes are said to split into teams, the Fantastic Four, a New Avengers lineup, the X-Men, and Captain America's group, each dispatched to a different Earth to construct and defend a cannon while Doom and his forces try to stop them.
Who's strong enough to actually fight him?
Speculation and character-stat comparisons pulled from trailers and merchandise have fans building rosters of who could plausibly go toe-to-toe with Doom:
Thor — Hemsworth has teased a more hardened, battle-ready version of the character, and early trailer footage shows him squaring off against Doom directly with Stormbreaker.
Shang-Chi — Leaked toy packaging descriptions have floated the idea that the power of the Ten Rings may be uniquely suited to challenge Doom, feeding theories that Shang-Chi becomes a late-film wildcard.
The X-Men — Reportedly bring their own devastating losses to the fight; some leaks describe Doom decimating their ranks early on, leaving only a handful of survivors to regroup with the Avengers.
The twist, who will join Doom?
One of the stranger threads in the leaks is the suggestion that not everyone stays on the same side. Rumors point to the possibility that certain major heroes, including some associated with magic, end up aligned with Doom rather than against him, whether through manipulation, ideology, or simple self-interest. If true, that would mean part of the "fight" isn't Avengers versus Doom, but Avengers versus each other, with Doom orchestrating the chaos from a distance.
Take all of this with real caution, most of it comes from set leaks, toy packaging, and scoopers rather than confirmed Marvel messaging, and Marvel is known for rewriting plots late into production. But the shape that's emerging is consistent: this isn't a single climactic slugfest. It's a multi-front war where the win condition is a piece of science-fiction engineering (the cannons) as much as it is anyone landing a knockout punch, because a knockout punch against a face that used to belong to Tony Stark may not be a punch anyone can actually bring themselves to throw at full strength.
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