Avengers: Age Of Ultron May’ve Planted The Seeds For Doctor Doom

It’s positively criminal that the greatest and most iconic Marvel villain of all time hasn’t gotten the big screen treatment he so clearly deserves. I’m talking, of course, about Doctor Doom.

We saw Julian McMahon’s take on the role in 2005’s Fantastic Four and 2007’s Rise of the Silver Surfer, and Toby Kebbell’s villain in 2015 in the dreadful Fantastic Four, but all of those films were terrible and they all altered Doom in some crucial way. But things should change very soon. With Disney and Marvel Studios now controlling the rights to the Fantastic Four, expect Doom to rear his masked head in the MCU sooner rather than later. And here’s a neat way they could introduce him.

This theory comes courtesy of Adam Barnhardt at ComicBook.com, who points out that Avengers: Age of Ultron could very easily lay the groundwork for the appearance of the ‘classic’ Doctor Doom. He points out that the climactic events of the movie would have ruined the country and sent it into chaos, with Thanos’ snap a few years later only making things worse. Faced with a desperate Sokovian populace, who better to step in than Latverian dictator Von Doom? Sure, he might look a bit terrifying in his metal mask, but who could turn down stability at all costs?

Theoretically, Sokovia could be positioned in the vicinity of Latveria, and I’m sure audiences would buy a quick explanation that Latveria is generally considered a minor, isolationist country not worthy of attention until now. It’s a cool idea, and would retroactively make Age of Ultron a bit more connected to the ongoing MCU storylines.

We might find out pretty soon how MCU Doom would work, too, as Legion showrunner Noah Hawley’s Doctor Doom movie is still in development. Hawley recently explained that the project has just about survived the Disney/Fox merger, with him having recent meetings with Kevin Feige about adapting his script to fit into the MCU. If one thing’s for certain, it’s that the heroes of the franchise will think they had it easy with Thanos when Doctor Doom arrives on their doorstep.