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When Looking Back Changes the Road Forward
If you’re planning to see Marvel’s Avengers: Doomsday and you don’t want to know what Marvel added with Endgame Encore or hear about the theories surrounding them: Go back. This is your TVA red line. Your nexus event.
Everything below this point discusses the new Endgame Encore material and how it may connect directly to Avengers: Doomsday; and since Endgame Encore is no longer in theaters, and the footage is a.) not on Disney+ and b.) not in Doomsday: there’s no way to see it. However, I SAW IT FOR YOU. So, if you want to know…keep reading. If you don’t?
Close the tab.
Are they gone?
You’re still here?
Excellent.
Bring Snacks.
Loki Just Changed the Ending of Endgame
A Truly Glorious Purpose: Loki Season 2 Finale
The first new sequence isn’t technically a post-credits scene at all. It changes the ending. Entirely. How very “Marvel” of them.
We reach the moment we already know. Steve has returned the Infinity Stones. He apparently chose to remain in the past. He and Peggy are dancing just as he promised. For 7 years, that was where we left them.
Then someone knocks at the door.
Steve moves out of sight. Peggy answers. Loki stands there. She asks: “Can I help you?” He tells her “No.” “But I think I can help you. Both of you.” And he steps further in and looks to his right, looking to Steve. Loki appearing here in TVA garb doesn’t mean he has left the throne. Marvel Comics Loki has plenty of precedent for surviving and manifesting himself beyond ordinary physical limits: for example, projecting across distance (even across realms) and continuing as story. I believe this is God of Stories Loki reaching into the timeline without abandoning the multiversal tree he embodies and holds together.
So, the real question isn’t IF Loki can show up there, it’s WHY he goes there first. And I think Marvel has given us most of the information we need to figure it out.
New Beginnings Lead to Doom.
Loki’s visit reopens Steve’s ending. Steve’s life with Peggy used to feel like emotional closure – he finally got to live a life. Now Marvel is treating that missing lifetime as a consequence (or so it seems so far). Steve rewrote his life for love. Peggy lived that altered life with him. If that branch produced a child, as has been hinted in previous trailers, then Doom’s argument gets uglier. And fast. Erasing or destroying that timeline (Which may be Earth-1127 we see on a collision course with Earth-1005 in later cut scenes and has never been mentioned in Marvel lore yet) would not “fix continuity”. It would erase people who exist because love broke the rules.
Anthony Russo even pointed to the very end of the film; specifically, Steve Rodgers going back in time to live out his life with Peggy Carter, as a pivotal moment that holds a hidden dual meaning. According to Anthony, that choice is essentially “where Doomsday is born.” And after seeing that clip of Steve holding a baby? BORN is a very specific word to use. When referencing the teaser of Steve Rogers holding a baby in the Doomsday teaser during an interview with IGN at San Diego Comic Con in July of 2026, Hayley Atwell said “Whether that is reality or dream or fantasy or a warning who knows…” The Russos know what they are doing. I think we’ve seen enough time hijinks by now to know that Steve’s not the ONLY one holding the blame; but it absolutely tells us Marvel wants us looking at his decision again as the precipice of it all.
HINT FOR YOUR ENDGAME RE-WATCH:
Look closely at the Ancient One’s timeline explanation. Fans noticed a teaser timestamp on the countdown (1:24:20) that aligns perfectly with her warning that changing the past has consequences; “millions will suffer.” It is implied that by being selfish and staying in the past to raise his family, Steve created a rogue branch that collapses realities, likely Doctor Doom’s home reality, giving Victor a personal vendetta against him. Perhaps, Steves rogue branch is the previously unseen universe we see on screen in the TVA cut-scene (keep reading below!)
Borrowed Lives: Who Decides?
This is where Doom makes his argument. To Loki that life that was created, is proof worth saving. Free will manifests itself in that very life. To Doom it’s proof that the rules were broken, and he may very well blame Steve for the loss of his family because of it. Steve has only ever seen love. Loki can recognize it and protect it but Doom only sees unauthorized history that needs his correction. He’s even been heard in the trailers declaring “All of you have lived stolen lives… now you must give them back.”
This leads into why the Mjölnir callback clip in the trailer matters. Thor already knows Steve is worthy. He watched, AND celebrated Steve wielding Mjölnir in Endgame. So why does Thor react by saying “it’s not possible?” Those are the exact words he said when Hela caught Mjölnir in Thor: Ragnarök just before she shattered it. Which then raises the question: which Steve (if Steve at all), which Mjölnir and which timeline answered Thor when he was praying in the woods? The hammer that Steve used in Endgame was borrowed and then returned. The cracked and reassembled Mjölnir we see in the Doomsday trailer and promotional material is the version that was restored in Thor: Love & Thunder and previously wielded by Jane Foster as Mighty Thor before ascending to Valhalla.
Steve? Nomad? Loki? Is That You?
Some fans theorize that the person we’re seeing in that sequence isn’t Steve at all, but Loki in disguise, whose sacrifice at the End of Time could arguably make him worthy. But that almost feels too obvious, especially for Marvel. I think Hela could be involved instead. Doom has already declared that “Hel answers to me” and there’s comic book precedent for a connection between the two. In the comics, Thor (2020) during the Blood of the Fathers storyline, primarily by Torunn Gronbekk with additional writing by Donny Cates: Doom actually kidnaps Hela as part of a larger scheme involving time travel and the manipulation of free will. Hela’s comic book abilities historically include illusion casting, magical disguises, adopting mortal appearances, and astral projection: even though we haven’t seen that in the MCU…yet.
Hela’s classic character reference explicitly establishes that she can cast illusions powerful enough to disguise herself and change how observers perceive the appearance of her realm. This is strong evidence that they could use to prove that someone could see Steve Rogers while actually looking at Hela. For instance, in Thor #189 by Stan Lee and John Buscema: Hela travels to Earth while hunting Thor and she changes her appearance into that of an ordinary looking mortal woman and walks among humans in New York.
Latverian Witch? Or Sneaky Sibling?
It’s an interesting possibility, especially if Doom is manipulating a version of Steve or the timeline he created with Peggy. Now the “happy ending” isn’t simply an epilogue anymore. Encore has transformed Steve’s missing lifetime from emotional blank space into an active bridge to Doomsday and the ensuing changes to come for the multiverse and that is a huge change to a movie we’ve been watching for 7 years.
Doctor Doom Has Come to Collect Bruce Banner
Bruce is isolated underground after his first uncontrolled Hulk incident in more than a decade. He’s working on gamma suppression because his containment we saw in Spider-Man: Brand New Day failed.
He’s trying to make sure Hulk can’t get out and no one else can get in, which is why he chose a bunker 2 miles deep into the ground.
He starts recording himself explaining what happened, where he is, why, and what he’s working on. But something begins interfering with the recording. The room glitches. Banner realizes someone is there and shouts something like “Who are you?” or “Why are you here?”
Then we hear Doom off-screen say, “I am here to collect you.”
“Collect.”
Very interesting choice.
Now You See Me: Now You Don’t
The screen goes blank and we hear the Hulk roar and are left with an image of a glowing green rune on a cracked cement floor…
Doctor Doom has manipulated Hulk before. More importantly for this scene Doom has also been directly involved in separating Bruce Banner and Hulk into separate bodies. That makes Banner’s current mental state, and his work post Spider-Man: Brand New Day incredibly important. If Bruce has just learned that Hulk can be forcibly taken from him and used by someone else, his response makes sense:
Hide. Suppress him. Control him. Never let it happen again.
Maybe Doom isn’t arriving with a threat first. Maybe he arrives with exactly what Bruce thinks he wants. He already collected Franklin Richards; this is just him continuing to take specific beings with powers he needs to exact his will the only way he feels is correct.
What If…The Multiverse Was Doomed by DaVaun Sanders- Book Review
The TVA Knows The Multiverse Is Dying
Miss Minutes opens the TVA scene by delivering what might be the most Miss Minutes workplace announcement imaginable, essentially warning everyone to stay in their own timelines so the TVA doesn’t have to hunt them down. Like dogs. Charming.
Mobius comes into work. O.B. and Casey are monitoring the multiverse. We see a framed photo of Loki in his TVA gear with a caption “Employee of All Time.”
Two realities are shown on screen approaching an incursion. Earth-10005 and Earth-1127. Earth-10005 is associated with the Fox X-Men and Deadpool universe. Earth-1127 is currently the mystery.
The realities begin attacking one another as Casey asks, “Are those missiles?” Then another collision appears. Then another. Hundreds. Thousands. Mobius starts calling out orders amidst the chaos until O.B. finally realizes what the monitors are showing them and says, “The Multiverse is collapsing!”
Incursions beyond just the 3 we’ve been told about; this is the entire multiverse on a collision course.
The Big Fan Theory: “I Love You 3000”
Fans have already gravitated towards the one massive clue in this sequence towards the end that the Russos DIDN’T dismiss. In the original Endgame, Tony Stark’s most iconic line to his daughter is “I Love You 3000” after she first introduced it.
In this new TVA Epilogue scene; the moment O.B. exclaims “The Multiverse is collapsing!” the active number of timeline incursions hits exactly 3000.
When asked directly if this parallel was an intentional mechanism of foreshadowing, Joe Russo teased that it was. “Everything is pre-meditated” and didn’t shy away from the theory.
Earth-1127: Steve’s, Tobey’s Spider-man, or someone else’s?
Since they showed a never-before-seen Earth-1127 the fandom has been in an uproar about WHOSE it actually is.
One of the theories as I mentioned is that it’s the newly created Earth from Steve and Peggy’s reality where he returned to and stayed. Loki showing up makes this my leading suspicion about this being the Earth we see on collision course with the Fox X-Men/Deadpool Universe Earth-10005 (Which is where Dead & Wolverines’ stolen Logan also now resides: I think this is going to make for a remarkable re-union despite lack of casting announcements…yet).
The Wildcard Theory: The TVA Error Code
This theory plays on Earth-1127 being a TVA designation code with a hint from Loki: Season 2. And a terrifying one at that. In Season 2, Episode 4 of the Loki series, when the Temporal Loom completely overloads and melts down, the automated system announces a timestamp warning of 11:27 right before catastrophic and irreversible failure. So in this context, Earth-1127 might literally mean “The Doomsday Point”, or a classification for a universe that has completely broken past the point of TVA pruning or saving.
The Birthday Easter Egg Theory: Tributes to Marvel Artists
Marvel frequently names its multiversal Earths after the birthdays of legendary comic creators. For example, The Fantastic Four: First Steps takes place on Earth-828 referencing co-creator Jack Kirby’s August 28th birthday. Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko was born on November 2nd, 1927. This led a multitude of theorists to confidently guess that Earth-1127 is the MCU-designated Tobey Maguire Earth. While there is a previous designation of Earth-96283 for his universe, it was only ever referenced in official Marvel out-of-universe reference guidebooks. It was first officially assigned in the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A to Z (Vol.5, published in 2008). While it’s not an exact birthday match to the previous format precedent for numbering Earths, it could be in an effort to avoid confusion with Earth-1112.
Within the Raimi Trilogy, the mere concept of a multiverse wasn’t even on the radar back then. To Tobey’s Peter Parker, his world was just the only world that existed.
Because this Earth designation only exists in a 2008 reference book and has never been cemented into a live action script, it gives Marvel the opportunity to change it to something clearer like Earth-1127. There is a precedent for this with the main MCU Reality being called Earth-616 on screen despite guidebooks originally labeling it Earth-99999.
Home Sweet Doom Theory
Another popular idea is that Earth-1127 is the home reality of Victor von Doom before he conquers the Multiverse. However, there are a few reasons to question this theory.
This is exactly where the plot theories get realllll interesting. The Encore re-release and the official promos for The Fantastic Four: First Steps have established that Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom is native to Earth-828 (the Fantastic Four’s universe). They grew up together and even went to the Earth-828 version of MIT as classmates. (Which was recently further supported by Robert Downey Jr. and Pedro Pascal swapping identities for Halloween with Pedro Pascal wearing a Doom green MIT sweatshirt.) If Doom is already from 828, Earth-1127 is likely just a casualty universe he is manipulating rather than his birthplace.
If Earth-1127 is indeed Doom’s base of operations or “his reality,” theorists can then explain his connection to the Fantastic Four in one of two ways:
The “Imposter” Twist Theory
A highly discussed Doomsday plot leak suggests that there are actually TWO versions of Victor von Doom involved.
(Double Doom?!)
The setup: In this scenario, the Victor von Doom who grew up with the Fantastic Four on Earth-828 is a relatively normal, non-villainous scientist.
The switch: A variant of Doom from a highly militarized universe (Earth-1127) travels across the multiverse, kills the peaceful Earth-828 Victor, and takes his place. He approaches Reed, Sue, and little Franklin Richards pretending to be their long-time friend. This explains why Sue Storm is reportedly confused and heartbroken by Victor’s actions in the trailers—she thinks her old friend has suddenly snapped, unaware that he is a ruthless multiversal interloper. This theory is also supported by actors like Hayley Atwell (Who has been confirmed to be reprising her role as Agent Peggy Carter…we think) highlighting the plot importance of variants and identity between the characters and questioning who and what is real when discussing Doomsday in interviews. She told Colliders Steven Weintraub, in July of 2026, that “Doomsday is described as sort of an existential crisis of a movie where the whole world has been turned on its head and we don’t even know who we are anymore.”
Earth-1127 is His “Conquered” Marvel Universe, Not His Birthplace
Another explanation is that Victor DID start out on Earth-828 with the Fantastic Four, but he abandoned them to build his empire. Because Earth-828 is already a utopian, retro-futuristic world where the Fantastic Four are the premier heroes, there was no room for Victor to conquer it. Using his mastery of science and sorcery, Victor crossed over into a completely different universe—Earth-1127—and entirely took it over, establishing his absolute rule and building a massive multiversal military force there. In this view, Earth-1127 isn’t where he was born; it is simply the staging ground for his “Doomsday” army, started by “collecting” powerful forces. That would make seeing a militarized Earth-1127 on the TVA screen make a lot more sense. And if THAT’S the case, I imagine that’s where he loses his family as well.
Challenges of Doom: Mr. Fantastic #1 – Pain is For Lesser Men
New Mask. Same Task.
And then Marvel saves its smallest scene for what may be the biggest implication. After all the credits roll, the Marvel graphic goes up as we hear a familiar clanging. The clanging we all know so well from Iron Man when he was in the cave making his first suit (with a bunch of scraps). We hear it get louder before we see anything. Clang. Clang. CLANG.
Then we start to see flashes of images of Tony (or Victor?…) swinging the hammer. If you’ve been watching the MCU since the beginning there is no mistaking that clanging. Only this time, the mask being forged isn’t Iron Man’s; It’s Doctor Doom’s. That’s the last flashing vision we’re left with.
They deliberately connected the audiovisual language of Tony Stark’s origin to Victor Von Doom.
In an Interview with Empire Magazine: The Russos hinted that the connection between Iron Man and Doctor Doom runs deeper than Downey. The film poses a lingering narrative question: did the actions taken by Tony Stark and the Avengers during Endgame inadvertently create the specific temporal conditions that allowed Victor Von Doom to rise? Additional interviews seem to point to “Yes…”
Time to Re-Visit Endgame
Joe Russo issued a direct challenge to eagle-eyed fans when we were heading back into theaters: he EXPLICITLY confirmed that even the 2019 theatrical cut of Endgame contains retroactively planted clues, and specific dialogue that will directly tie into Avengers: Doomsday. So EVEN IF you didn’t catch Encore; it’s time to re-watch Endgame again anyway! He additionally noted that these hidden elements aren’t just limited to the newly added footage. Instead, things said in the base movie are going to take on completely new and unexpected meanings once Doomsday hits theaters.
And because they’re brothers, Anthony couldn’t resist fueling the chaos by hinting that the choices Tony Stark and others made in Endgame directly pave the way for Doctor Doom.
What If? Iron Man; Demon in an Armor (2010) by David Michelinie co-plotted by Bob Layton, LITERALLY plays with Tony Stark and Victor Von Doom having their identities and circumstances swapped. Infamous Iron Man (2016), by Brian Michael Bendis, goes another direction, with Doom eventually taking up the Iron Man mantle himself.
Same problem. Different answer. Tony Stark spent most of the Infinity Saga trying to solve fear with protection. After New York he wanted a suit of armor around the world. His fear helped create Ultron (who brilliantly appears on the VisionQuest series on Disney+, by incredible creator, showrunner, executive producer, and co‑director Terry Matalas concluding TONIGHT. And I think we’re going to see Loki, and a hint as to how VisionQuest leads into Doomsday. My guess? Loki is recruiting Vision. He knows where Wanda is: with Doom...) EITHER WAY: VisionQuest has a hand in how this all circles back to Tony, Doom, and the road to Doomsday, I can feel it in my soul (stone).
Age of Ultron already warned us what happens when protection becomes indistinguishable from destruction. Wanda tells Steve that Ultron can’t tell the difference between SAVING the world and DESTROYING the world. And asks where he thinks Ultron learned that.
Tony. Tony eventually learns the difference. He stops trying to control every possible outcome. And in the end, he sacrifices himself. Doom may represent the same instinct moving in the opposite direction.
New Mask. Same Task.
Heed Doom’s decree: venture to Nerd Initiative for Marvel chronicles worthy of Latveria’s archives — videos, reviews, and comic lore forged with unmatched power.
VisionQuest: Here’s What We Know
What Comes Next?
Avengers: Doomsday arrives December 18th, 2026. Between now and then, we’ll be wrapping up our Doomsday Prepping series at Nerd Initiative across all socials; summarizing the films, shows, characters, and lore leading into Marvel’s next Avengers event, so you don’t have to. We have VisionQuest’s exciting conclusion TONIGHT, November 10th, 2026, followed by our YouTube LIVE with Megan, Eric and Madison to talk finale surprises and season wrap-up. You can also expect more Doomsday theories to come out across various formats too as we draw nearer to the impending incursions:
Because after all…
ALL ROADS LEAD TO DOOM.
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