People are talking about how much setup Infinity War had in comparison to how much Doomsday is getting, but they fail to realize that we barely saw Thanos before that.

We saw Thanos three times before Infinity War, two of which were post credit scenes where he had 1-2 lines, and the other was Guardians Of The Galaxy. When it comes to the concept at the center of the movie, we saw the Infinity Stones (including retconned stones but not appearances of characters with the stones/fake ones like Vision) eight times in these projects (before Infinity War):

1. Thor
2. Captain America: The First Avenger
3. The Avengers
4. Thor: The Dark World
5. Guardians Of The Galaxy
6. Avengers: Age Of Ultron
7. Doctor Strange
8. Thor: Ragnarok

As for the Multiverse, we've seen it in (Not counting non-canon projects like YFNSM and Marvel Zombies):

1. Loki Seasons 1-2
2. What If...? Seasons 1-3
3. Spider-Man: No Way Home
4. Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness
5. Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania
6. The Marvels
7. Deadpool & Wolverine
8. The Fantastic Four: First Steps

That's the same amount of projects, and while we've only seen Doom once, in First Steps, it's nearly the same amount of set up for the movie.

Commentaires

mattsmithreddit2025-10-06 13:18

Marvel Zombies isn't canon but What If is? Isn't one a spin off of the other?

marvelcomics222025-10-06 13:49

Counting What If...? because it deals with the Multiverse, while Marvel Zombies is an alternate universe, it doesn't do anything with the Multiverse.

ChattenTimeee2025-10-06 13:58

Marvel Zombies is canon, I think OP is just mistaken. It's just another universe within the vast multiverse, which means every universe we've been introduced to since the end of Loki S1 is canon.

eBICgamer20102025-10-06 13:23

Is Thanos the POV character of the entire saga though? Or was it Iron Man?

Thanos is only a lead of the two-parter. A saga needs a leading character and without one the entire saga fails, no matter how good the final villain is or how good the setup is.

FerrusManlyManus2025-10-06 13:24

Both post credits scenes also make no sense with what they ultimately decided for Infimity War / Endgame.

The first one he’s courting Death. But nope, he actually isn’t.

The second one he’s putting on the gauntlet and saying fine I will do it myself. But nope, he actually isn’t. He doesn’t make his move until 3 years later.

Guardians 1 also made him look bad - Ronan walked all over him.

It wasn’t until they were writing Infinity War did they figure out his character and his story.

Dave_Eddie2025-10-06 13:28

When did he court death in the mcu?

FerrusManlyManus2025-10-06 13:30

The first cut scene dawg, try to keep up. And he didn’t, that’s the point. The cut scene made it sound like he did, but that was before they figured his character out.

2dal3atcave2025-10-06 13:33

He doesn't, his minion implies that what he needs to do to win.

FerrusManlyManus2025-10-06 13:37

It’s literally a purposeful reference to comics Thanos courting Death that they ended up not going with in the MCU when they actually figured out his character years later.

Edit - read this:
https://www.slashfilm.com/520761/exclusive-joss-whedon-kevin-feige-explain-origin-the-avengers-post-script/

JoshTHX2025-10-06 14:15

His minion gave Thanos a warning for trying to go up against the Avengers. That challenging them would “court death” meaning the risk is they could kill Thanos. It has absolutely nothing to do with Death the character. Thanos smiled at the camera because he is a character that enjoys killing.

FerrusManlyManus2025-10-06 14:43

Yes that is the retcon. At the time it was a reference to Death.

Edit - y’all need to read this. https://www.slashfilm.com/520761/exclusive-joss-whedon-kevin-feige-explain-origin-the-avengers-post-script/

JoshTHX2025-10-06 14:45

It was never a reference to Death the character, you dope. The minion of Thanos talks about the Avengers. He never once mentions what Thanos needs to defeat them. Rewatch the scene.

FerrusManlyManus2025-10-06 14:57

Thanos, the character famously obsessed with Death, who literally courts Death in Infinity War in the comics, is told he needs to court Death/death and then he give a huge smile. Of course that was a reference to his most famous story of all time. Lol, you doofus.

JoshTHX2025-10-06 14:59

Saying “to court death” is absolutely a wink to Marvel comic fans. In the context of what the minion is telling Thanos, it has nothing to do with Death the character. He does not say Thanos needs Death to defeat the Avengers in the post credit scene.

FerrusManlyManus2025-10-06 15:04

Whedon, who is the reason Thanos is the in Avengers movie at all, disagrees with you.

https://www.slashfilm.com/520761/exclusive-joss-whedon-kevin-feige-explain-origin-the-avengers-post-script/

Your apology is accepted in advance

JoshTHX2025-10-06 15:11

😂😂😂 Maybe English isn’t your first language. You need Google Translate? That article doesn’t say anything that would makes anything you said correct

2dal3atcave2025-10-06 15:08

My god, what the hell are you arguing about then if you agree it's a reference to the comics!? Just to point out the obvious?? It's a minute-long scene, we've all seen it. It has a double meaning, and it was created at a time when Marvel wasn't sure which direction to take with Thanos.

JoshTHX2025-10-06 15:16

You don’t understand what we’re arguing

JoshTHX2025-10-06 15:21

Whedon acknowledged the most commonly known thing about Thanos in the article. That’s it. That doesn’t mean a damn thing in the context of the post credit scene and how it played out. Also, let’s not forget that the article also wrote death in lowercase letters.

AmaterasuWolf212025-10-06 14:29

It was double meaning for a reason, fans get the funny chemicals, casuals just view it ominous, writers get the chance to go either way

labbla2025-10-06 17:25

Yeah, at the time Thanos was just a fun easter egg. His real character and motivations wouldn't start coming together until Guardians of the Galaxy got the ball rolling.

Realistic_Analyst_262025-10-06 13:31

Doing it himself doesn’t mean he has to do it instantly. He still had to figure out where the soul stone was and find a way to get the space stone from Asgard.

FerrusManlyManus2025-10-06 13:33

Yes so he puts on the gauntlet three years early while talking to himself to… make sure it still fits (it was custom made for him)? To pose with it in front of the mirror? To keep it on for 3 straight years? Yeah?

Realistic_Analyst_262025-10-06 13:43

Enlighten me, why would Thanos not make his way to Nidavellir as soon as possible when he realizes that it’s guardian, Odin, is no longer watching. What if that’s the only shot? This is just logic dude.

Also, if you have a special event coming up and need to buy new clothes, you wouldn’t buy them the day of. You would do it earlier.

They also didn’t state the exact time period in that post credit scene. It could very well be right after Nebula told him Gamora knows where the soul stone is.

Thanos has a god complex and so he often takes the time to monologue. He wasn’t necessarily talking to himself but perhaps one or two of the millions he interacts with on a daily basis.

So many valid answers yet you choose to ignore every single one of them. The movie doesn’t need to spell every little detail out for you, we are all big boys here, right?

FerrusManlyManus2025-10-06 14:11

LMAO. The cope is incredible.

It’s obvious they didn’t figure out his character nor the plot of Infinity War when they put in that cut scene.

And shame on you for not even remembering the plot. He specifically doesn’t move on any stones until at most a week before Infinity War starts.

Realistic_Analyst_262025-10-06 14:14

I never said he did? I never said they knew what they were doing because it’s well known the Infinity Saga was just improvised all throughout.

I’m just not acting like it was some illogical post credits scene due to insufficient media literacy

FerrusManlyManus2025-10-06 14:34

It was an illogical post credit scene based on what they decided for Infinity War. They, rightly I may add, discarded it, just like they discarded the first post credits scenes. Thanks.

TrueLegateDamar2025-10-06 13:28

But we did see Thanos's face and even talk, once not even in a post-credit scene as in GotG1, so his presence was established. Doom hasn't shown his face in the First Steps teaser, even his mask wasn't clearly shown.

If Doomsday was an origin movie just about Doom that would been fine, but how they can do an origin story while there's like 30-40 characters including those from other franchises like the Fox-verse X-Men who also need time and attention?

FerrusManlyManus2025-10-06 13:34

All of Thanos’ character development was negative character development though, that they had to retcon / overcome in IW. Besides that he has two adoptive daughters. Everything else whoo boo, they pivoted, obviously.

dawne_breaker2025-10-06 13:29

It's not just Thanos and the stones. It's all of the knowing that he got the glove and that he snapped it. We all knew he was going to get the stones and when they were introduced it became a guessing game where they might appear. And what would happen if Thanos would snap. We knew his end goal: getting the stones.

What is Doom's goal? Multiverse? Multiverse-what? Kang at least was going to have a multiverse war that ended in the one who remains where all of the Avengers fought and died. But Doom? Nothing. We knew he wants Franklin. But, apart from that. We know nothing. And with this being RDJ we know even less, is he a variant of Tony Stark? How does that play into something? We've seen one second of his hand.

BALIHU872025-10-06 13:42

This!
Its too rushed for Doomsday
We need a least 3-4 movies before doomsday which leads to it and make it interesting.
Nobody can tell me that 2,5h will be enough for:
A conclusion Story to Mix the heroes, Show them for a good short Story, tell a Story for doom, Show how He will win, and make it combined to a fabolous Movie.

N8CCRG2025-10-06 14:16

>We all knew he was going to get the stones and when they were introduced it became a guessing game where they might appear. And what would happen if Thanos would snap.

"We all knew" here means those of us familiar with the comic story. But that's not what the saga revealed to the general audience who was new to the stories. All they knew was from Guardians that Thanos was scary and trying to acquire the stones. They knew nothing of the glove or the wish fulfillment aspect.

(Also, we didn't know about snapping as that was invented by the Avengers: Infinity War.)

Actual_Ad_66782025-10-06 14:30

This. Only people familiar with the source material knew what Thanos and his quest for the Infinity Gems was all about.

Ambitious-Ad-48312025-10-06 16:51

You are totally right! After Age of Ultron when Thanos grabed the glove and said "Fine, I'll do it myself" I had no idea what that glove meant.

But at the same time, we knew Thanos was scary, and now Thanos was going to do it himself... Also we knew about the stones.

About Doom, we know nothing.

HuckleberryUnique4462025-10-06 17:57

Infinity War is 100% just as great and enjoyed as it currently is if Thanos had never been in a single post credit scene leading up to it. Nothing about those scenes and small appearances were truly necessary to making IW awesome or make its story make sense and feel riveting.

Captain-Wilco2025-10-06 13:30

We saw Thanos 6 years in advance, with multiple other projects setting him up (including GOTG, which had him in a relatively huge, informative role that was very impactful to the plot.)

We’re seeing a glimpse of Doom through a Doomsday scene shown as a post-credits scene, and that’s it.

BetaRayPhil6162025-10-06 13:37

It's not thanos, it's the other 'through' characters.

IM appeared in 8 mcu films before IW. Cap was also in 7 films. Plenty of others hit 3 appearances.

For multiverse, we have Wong on 4, then Yelena & Bucky on 3 appearances each. Im pretty sure everyone else is on max. 2. (Sam, Strange, Wanda, Kamala, Monica, John Walker. that could be it?).

Ambitious-Ad-48312025-10-06 16:53

I'll probably get downvoted to hell. But that's my problem with the multiverse saga. People say "too many projects" but in reallity the problem is "too few projects"

BetaRayPhil6162025-10-06 17:14

Completely, it's only too many in the sense they are disjointed. Sam became falcon and then showed up in antman. Antman had his own film and showed up immediately in civil war. Strange had his own film then immediately showed up in ragnarok. These were small appearances but they helped tie things together.

End of Shang chi sort of promised that, but then nothing else has really attempted those sorts of connections.

labbla2025-10-06 18:33

Too many random projects. Not enough projects that were actually foundational to telling a saga wide story like they managed to do in phase 1-3. It's a big reason why so much of the audience has stopped paying attention.

ckal092025-10-06 13:44

Doomsday feels more like Justice League than Infinity War.

Slow_Fish26012025-10-06 13:45

The Doom thing feels shoehorned in. Even if it's RDJ returning, it feels like a last ditch effort.

androaspie2025-10-06 13:53

Wait, you think *Doom* was shoehorned in? ***RDJ*** was shoehorned in.

Slow_Fish26012025-10-06 13:54

The whole thing was shoehorned in. None of the films prior to the announcement of rdj returning has anything related to Doom.

AlphaStark082025-10-06 13:54

It is shoehorned because its rdj lmao not the other way around, they pressed the emergency button real hard

labbla2025-10-06 17:24

Doom really needed at least a scene or two in F4 to set up his general motivations and relationship with Reed & the rest. Now that's the responsibility of Avengers along with juggling 45 other characters a lot of the audience won't know.

wooptyscooppoop2025-10-06 13:48

that was the point i thought. we knew thanos was going to be a problem early on. at the end of age of Ultron, Thor mentions that the stones keep popping up as of late, and he wanted to figure out what that meant for the future. or something like that. it all felt very ominous up to the point of infinity war, And then by the end of that movie, Thanos had basically defeated The Avengers without really sweating it.

but it was also the first go and so it was all very shocking when that happened. now we know the formula is to build up to the big bad guy and that's the main event. it's less exciting in some ways.

IntrinsicGamer2025-10-06 14:05

Doom is a much more complex and much deeper character with a highly important connection to Reed Richards, a relationship that we haven’t even see a hint of yet, when going into doomsday it should’ve already been explored for several films, but instead now will have to be both set up and paid off within the context of just Doomsday and secret wars while still juggling all the other characters.

ddanuu2025-10-06 14:09

Set up doesn’t mean how much we saw the villain. We gots tons of looks and plot lines for the stones, we say thanos around 3 times and we have multiple teams having movie that relates to the infinity stones. I do agree though we didn’t get as much set up as people say

Stormik2025-10-06 14:20

We knew what Thanos' goal is since at least Age of Ultron. That's three years before IW and effectively more if you count retrospectively the movies before. Yeah that could happen with Doomsday too but as Doom is a "in case of emergency break the glass" replacement for Kang, I don't think so. Not to the same degree anyway.

We are a little over a year from Doomsday release and I have absolutely no idea what I should expect. I don't know what Doom's goal is. What's his motivation. How, why... nothing. That might be my own fault as I don't follow any development updates or whatever nor do I (eventually) watch trailers. I intentionally keep myself in dark to avoid spoilers. If that's the case and we actually have some official info about that please ignore everything I said.

zion_hiker19112025-10-06 14:22

Remember how everyone was worried about the Thanos CGI before IW came out? Even the trailer looked a little sketchy. But they nailed it. I trust Marvel to get this right.

Appropriate-Look74932025-10-06 14:24

They had all the build up planned, at least as well as for Thanos.

Unfortunately it was building towards Kang, and we all know what happened there.

Once they felt they had to drop Majors there was no way to turn back the clock. Cue the abbreviated time line.

Ranos1312025-10-06 14:30

Seeing the multiverse is not setting up Doomsday. Thats like saying every movie that involved space was setting up Infinity War. Just because it involves people from their and takes place their does not mean it is setting it up.

The setup for IW was the stones and Thanos. The setup for the end of the Multiverse Saga was supposed to be Kang and we had him in a few things. Then Feige decided to drop the Kang part and switch to Doom. And we’ve had a single cameo from him.

The Infinity Saga was about these powerful stones and a powerful being trying to collect them. That’s what someone who didn’t do research about the comics would know. Due to knowledge gained and the fact it took 10 years to get to Infinity War allowed information to get out there so people would know.

The Multiverse Saga was supposed to be about this powerful, technologically advanced human taking over and conquering the multiverse. And we started getting that build up. And then it was switched and we’ve had zero build up with the new villain.

What is Doom’s goal and how does he have the ability to do it? We know nothing.

Feige’s plan for this saga was shit from the beginning with no Avenger’s movies to cap off each phase. It went to even worse shit when they shifted from Kang to Doom with absolutely nothing to show it.

juances192025-10-06 15:15

Thanos was tied to the stones and that's what made it work IMO. Like even if he doesn't show in Doctor Strange, when the time stone is mentioned you immediately start anticipation Strange fighting him because you make the mental connection stones => Thanos.

That's the setup that Doom lacks. Yes, we saw the multiverse, but what does that have to do with Doom specifically this time? There's no build-up, he's clearly been put in Kang's place due to the IRL circumstances regarding the actor.

Then_North_63472025-10-06 15:59

It wasn't about Thanos, it's that we were invested in the characters. We knew them. They had arcs. And audiences wanted to see them together.

GarySoneji2025-10-06 17:52

This Saga not following a similar formula is confusing people. Doomsday is more like Age of Ultron. Secret Wars is the only thing that needs setup.

Grayx_28872025-10-06 18:33

The reason why we barely even see Thanos before Infinity War is because the filmmakers were slowly building him up as a major threat from 2012 to 2018. It took six years for him to finally be a force to he reckoned with. We had to stay focused on the heroes and their own individual arcs before Thanos started to have his own story. Otherwise, if we had gotten him now in Avengers 2. Then, we wouldn't have any other threats for the third and fourth films. Unless you wanted to trade in Thanos for Ultron being the big bad for the Infinity Saga. Do you prefer to see Ultron being the main threat for Avengers 3 and 4?

Now, Victor Von Doom for the MCU, he only had one appearance in Fantastic Four: First Steps during the end-credit scene, and that's it. He didn't have ten years and 20-something movies slowly building him as a main threat like Thanos did. Also, during the Infinity Saga, we had five movies introducing five different Infinity Stones and how they were going to play a key role in Avengers: Infinity War. The Soul Stone was the last one to be introduced. What exactly is the main mcguffin item for Avengers: Doomsday? Does Victor Von Doom even have a mcguffin item at all?! Did Kang have a mcguffin item setting us up for Avengers 5? I don't think so.

j821c2025-10-06 19:14

While I agree about Thanos (I was a casual marvel fan at the time and literally had not seen Thanos before because I didn't watch the after credit scenes or GOTG), the other characters are the bigger problem. We don't even know who's going to be in the official avengers team going into this movie (assuming Sam's avengers are "the" avengers)

Notoriously_So2025-10-07 08:41

Comparing the multiverse in its entirety to the infinity stones makes no sense. Even if the multiverse is featured in Doomsday, that doesn't mean anything about the multiverse is setting up Doomsday.