Doctor Strange didn’t just look for a future where Thanos loses — he looked for one where Doom
Here’s a theory that’s been stuck in my head for a while.
In Infinity War, Strange says he saw 14,000,605 possible futures and only one where “we win.” But he never says that’s the only one where Thanos is defeated. Just the only one where we win.
And I think that wording matters a lot.
What if Strange actually saw many futures where Thanos is stopped… but only one where something even worse doesn’t happen afterward?
That “something worse” being Doctor Doom.
Look at the Titan fight. They literally have Thanos beaten:
Mantis has him asleep
He’s restrained
They’re pulling the gauntlet off
One more second and it’s over
And then Star-Lord loses it and everything falls apart.
People always blame Quill, but here’s the thing: Strange already saw the future. He knew exactly what was about to happen. And he could have stopped it easily — freeze Quill, portal him away, rewind time, anything. But he didn’t.
Why?
Because in the futures where they take the gauntlet on Titan and beat Thanos right there, something else goes wrong later. Something worse than the Snap.
If Thanos dies on Titan:
There’s no Blip
The Avengers never break and reunite
The world never goes through that massive trauma
Tony never makes the ultimate sacrifice
The Infinity Stones never get destroyed
And that leaves the universe in a much more fragile state — perfect for someone like Doctor Doom to rise.
In the comics, Doom isn’t just a villain. He’s someone who conquers realities, steals god-level power, and literally reshapes the multiverse (Secret Wars 2015). That’s exactly the kind of threat a Sorcerer Supreme would be terrified of.
So Strange wasn’t choosing a future where Thanos loses.
He was choosing a future where Doom doesn’t win.
That’s why he gives Thanos the Time Stone. That’s why he lets Quill mess up. That’s why he tells Tony “there was no other way.” Because every other way leads to something even worse than Thanos.
Strange sacrificed half the universe… to save all of reality.
And honestly, with Doom and Secret Wars coming to the MCU, this would fit way too well to be an accident.
Let me know what do you guys think
Commentaires
OP makes a good point. The convo between Strange and Stark when they’re in Titan prepping for Thanos now looks like a massive foreshadow that, while it might’ve been about Thanos in the moment, was more than just finding the timeline where he loses. It was also about finding the one that doesn’t go too wrong after his defeat.
If Doomsday is really being set up as a “consequence” of the time travel shenanigans in Endgame, this can really help seal the deal.
‘Thanos had to be defeated this way to prepare for so-and-so.’
Wild speculation, they could have Strange say Tony sacrificing himself in Endgame was the only way to prevent him becoming Doom in their timeline- maybe in the universe where Tony is Doom the way they defeated Thanos resulted in the death of Pepper/Peter/his daughter/whoever and started him down that path.
The beauty of Strange’s look to the future scene was that it was open ended and vague. It just covered all plot holes equally because he said it’s the only way.
Analyze the MCU as a stylized story telling film first and not as a history of events.
Frankly I always hated that line, and there's reason why what ifs still hasn't show what the f he even means by only 1 timeline
It doesn’t make sense to me why Disney would do that. Majors is a good actor (I did not say “good person,”), but relatively unknown compared to the massive cast of A-listers in these movies. He doesn’t have the swing that, say, Downey or Evans would if they wanted a contract stating that nobody else would play Stark or Steve Rodgers, etc.
Hell, if RDJ wanted a clause saying that he would be the only one to play Stark in all multiverse versions of the character, I imagine Disney would bend the knee.
But I’ve seen that rumor about Majors and Kang on reddit many times since the movie was canceled.
Like, even being pedantic and saying that it doesn't have to necessarily be his likeness, just him being the one to play the character, would be the real generational fumble and I don't think Disney's lawyers are that stupid.
Marvel needed to promote him in this way from the start of the saga through various sub plots or series
But they didnt and wasted a big bad
Nature of purpose, identity and time and all that business. Too bad they never pursued it afterwards
Then they went the Ironheart route instead and fumbled it, made RiRi almost a villain with selfish motivations and blew a lot of goodwill. That series also wasted Mephisto and The Hood, who could have been much better characters/villains. They fully wasted Sacha Baron Cohen and he could have been a nice inclusion to the universe.
It's not like the Multiverse Saga starring Jonathan Majors was going particularly well.
There’s a zero percent chance they would’ve done Secret Wars without Doom, so he was always going to be the final villain
So no, it isn't true that there was zero percent chance they would've done Secret Wars without Doom.
Imagine preparing the whole multiverse saga so that we can "fear" Kang and then in the last movie of this saga they tell you "actually he isn't the big bad guy, there's also this one never mentioned before that is way stronger". It would be kinda shit and nonsense.
They still did it, but just because of what happened with Majors.
They could have made Secret Wars without Doom without batting an eye.
But leaving Doom out of Secret Wars is literally like leaving Ultron out of Age of Ultron. It does not work and it would never happen
They could play it where he didn’t actually see the end result (Tony as Doom threat) but ended up seeing the sequence of events that leads to Tony as Doom, so indirectly preventing futures/concurrent alternate timelines we see in Doomsday/Secret Wars.
I just think Strange’s timeline viewing fitting into Doomsday/Secret Wars fits pretty nicely and helps tie them into Endgame, which Disney obviously really wants to do lol
Because they’re bringing back RDJ and Chris Evans to get the MCU fans who lost interest over the years back onboard.
Edit: dozens of MILLIONS, I meant to say
Edit to add why I think this: Watch the scene. She has a shocked look on her face, almost as if she is surprised that *this* is the moment. If it was something she had foreseen and known the exact moment of I don't think she would have acted that way.
Bear with me here, need to argue this with myself out loud, haha.
You could make the argument that the snap doesn't equate to death, but if Thanos had "won" the effects of the snap would have been permanent.
So maybe the fact that he could see anything at all means they got snapped back, allowing him to see forward again to a new reality and determine if they ultimately defeated Thanos a second time.
This gets confusing when you think about it too much.
"what the hell are you doing, Strange?!"
"being present"
oh wow he's so mysterious! lmao
Tough thing about Strange's gambit is if Thanos was truly going for a random 50/50 snap, how does Strange foresee who actually gets snapped in any given reality.
Didn't the sorcerer supreme before strange say she could see her entire future?
They didn't have every detail planned in 2008. They had a general idea about phase 1, but still made alterations along the way. And after that worked, they developed a general idea about phases 2 & 3, but still made alterations along the way. And a *LOT* of what happened in Infinity War & Endgame were callbacks written after the fact, rather than preplanned connections.
A retcon would be the theory I’ve seen where Tony wasn’t *actually* dead.
What's frustrating is when writers fail at that task and entirely contradict or undermine what they wrote previously.
Marvel has planned stuff out in broad strokes, where they've been successful is their ability to callback, reference and fix previous continuity. That's a lot easier to do than meticulously plan everything out, and the result is just as satisfying.
But they could beat him in the future during a proper fight where they have more help.
Strange saw they needed everyone together. They essentially had 3 armies and everyone who we know there.
Also, the film was a success, grossing twice its budget. Just not the kind of success Marvel had been used to.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MCUTheories/s/Mq3KI3ewGS
Alternatively the could just say Doctor Strange only checked events up to Thanos’s defeat, not events that occurred years after it, thus he couldn’t predict Doomsday.
Strange says he saw 14,000,605 possible futures and only one where “we win.”
What if he purposefully let Tony die so he would become the leader…knowing he’d team up with Doom in the future. Maybe the Russo bothers told Strange that RDJ would be back as Doom and Strange was actually talking to RDJ and we all assumed he was talking to Tony Stark🫨
Edit: OP has stated that AI was only used in communicating the idea since his first language is not English, which was added after this comment was posted
More someone’s idea cleaned up through ChatGPT. Get used to all prose eventually sounding like language models because we’ve devalued writing skills to the point of extinction.
Not to mention that "AI slop" has become the last refuge of people who don't have a real rebuttal.
Kindly get in the sea.
I have nothing against his point. Merely the usage of AI.
This post is just chatgpt word salad all to say "You guys think Strange saw any doom stuff with the time stone?"
I was pointing it out because it's one of my biggest pet peeves w/ chatgp, sometimes it stretches out an idea to the point it starts to sound to me like a kid trying to hit a word or page count on an essay and I thought it did kinda that here.
I don't think they want to deal with the timestone stuff and I really think they'll just handwave it away because it was only ever meant to be a setup for Tony's sacrifice.
He saw Kang.
He saw Doom.
He saw Ultron rising again.
And that's why even in the end, when it's over, you see his sigh of relief is completely wrapped in underlying concern and worry. He was just happy enough for everyone around him to ignore it.
And then why did he keep watching after the Avengers tracked Thanos to the garden and Thor went for the head? He would know that Thanos already destroyed the stones. Did he imagine "Oh, maybe Scott and Bruce and Tony will orchestrate a time heist, so I should watch more, just in case."?
In my head canon, the sorceress supreme must've left a "bookmark" on Strange's soul, since by the time they first meet, Bruce borrowing the time stone is old news, to her.
I don't think Doom can be a factor in Strange's concerns, since that bookmark can't include anything beyond the Sorceress's own lifespan.
The Snap may inform choices that Doom makes, but his existance has to be seperate from Strange's examination of the 14,000,605 potential outcomes.
Strange should be surprised by the emergence of Doom.
I don't think so.
If thanos died on Titan ,the avengers wouldnt reunite and had would have to face all the Eternals
They didnt almost defeat thanos in Titan ,they were lucky Qill freaked out because otherwise everyone on Titan would have died
Imagine if they take The Stones from thanos ,Then what ?
They cant use them as they would likely die in the attempt ,if Strange hides them ,thanos would go bersek and Kill everyone
And either thanos Kills everyone and gets stranded on Titan or Strange folds and gives him back the gauntlet after some die
So I don’t think Doom was going to be a thing this early. Maybe after Kang? Sure. But as a replacement for Kang, I doubt that this is foreshadowed in the Infinity Saga itself.
Oh for sure they could make this theory as the baseline for why Doom is here now, but to think of this as foreshadowing of Doom is ludicrous. Still a nice theory though.
I agree that Dr Strange saying there was only one way to win felt like a bit of a stretch, and it's totally in-line with his character to go the extra step of looking farther into the future.
It doesnt make sense why Strange would look so far ahead into the future, they just need to solve the Thanos problem. How could he even know to look for a threat he doesnt even know exists or could exist
What I think people forget is that Thanos for sure had the Avengers beat. He was physically stronger than Hulk and able to go toe to toe with Captain Marvel WITHOUT any stones, and none of the people on Titan were gonna be strong enough to use the stones. Ergo, even if Quill hadn’t prevented them from removing the gauntlet Thanos was gonna get the Gauntlet back and use it; maybe Tony died in the ensuing fight.
What I think Strange saw was he looked to the future to see Thanos defeat, saw Tony sacrifice his life and started looking for another way. 14 million futures later he realised there was only one way. Tony had to survive long enough to create his own Gauntlet capable of taking the stones from Thanos and Tony HAD to survive to that moment since nobody else would have been wearing the Ironman suit in order to Nano Tech the stones off Thanos arm and snap him and his army away. Tony was not strong enough to survive doing so (and Peter wouldn’t have survived long enough against Thanos to try) but the Avengers were ultimately gonna lose twice against Thanos twice any other way.
Strange saw this and eventually had to accept losing Stark; something he couldn’t tell Stark first because Tony being Tony would have arrogantly started looking for another way and failed.
And we ended up with doom becoming an issue.
That makes no sense.
If that is the case, I wonder how many other **possible threats** that could destroy the Earth Strange saw:
* Celestial Tiamut birth potentially destroying the planet
* Celestial Arishem's Judgement of Earth
* The Dweller-in-Darkness possibly escaping its prison & devouring all the souls on Earth
* Future Incursion (Either caused by the events of No Way Home, Multiverse of Madness, or The Marvels)
* Kang the Conqueror
* Doctor Doom
I saw it like a computer telling him what could happen, considering all of reality. But that computer doesn't account for Doom or the TVA that come from outside what it has access to.
If he's seeing all these interventions, that would constitute actually creating timelines and having those realities be executed, not just seeing and evaluating possibilities.
Also for what it’s worth the post didn’t sound like AI.
I will say, there is a comic where Viktor Von Doom stands before Bast, the Wakandan panther God, to face judgement. Bast peers into Doom and sees that while he is a megalomaniacal sociopath, the only timeline where humanity is not eventually destroyed is when Doom takes over.
Bast sees that in Doom, the ends really do justify the means. So, perhaps Strange guided them down the route that would guarantee Doctor Doom would appear, rather than the opposite.
That’s my canon anyway
and that's a bit boring.
-Tiamat would’ve woken up earlier and destroyed Earth
-Tony, Vision, Gamora, Cap, Black Widow, Heimdall & Loki would all still be alive
-Cap & co would’ve stayed in hiding and no team reunion
-Wanda wouldn’t become evil
-Monica Rambeau wouldn’t have gotten powers and wouldn’t have gotten transported to another universe
-Dr. Strange would’ve become evil after Christine’s wedding like the variant he fought
-Wiccan wouldn’t exist
-No smart Hulk so no She Hulk
-Hawkeye wouldn’t have become Ronin
-Sam would remain Falcon
-Peter wouldn’t have inherited EDITH so Mysterio wouldn’t have become a huge threat
-Peter’s identity would’ve stayed a secret and no incursions would’ve happened
-Aunt May would still be alive
-No Venom symbiote in MCU
-Thor wouldn’t have gotten Stormbreaker
-Time travel wouldn’t be invented
-Loki wouldn’t become God of Stories
-TVA wouldn’t be reformed (this probably impacts the events of Deadpool & Wolverine)
-He Who Remains would still be in power
-No alternate timelines around
-No Battle of Earth so no Super Skrulls
I could keep going but this is long enough I feel, feel free to add things I missed
Thinking about it logically, how would you even make such an assertion? Let's say you start looking into 1000 futures and don't see a good outcome. So you start looking more. In each of those futures, you see yourself saying "I looked into {Previous number of outcomes+1} futures and we only won once". But that is nonsense, because you haven't seen the win yet. Do you go update the number afterwards and check to see if you still win? Do you attempt to change other things than the number, even though just changing the number might change how Stark and co. feel about the attempt?
Whedon had no idea what to do with Thanos when he introduced him. Death as a character/motive was still on the table (thus his smirk at the line about courting death).
This might work. But it’s not a theory or planned. It’s just a retcon to give meaning to a line that was probably added simply because it sounded cool and instantly made the stakes incomprehensible in a comprehensible way.
As the kids say “it ain’t that deep.”
For instance, at first I thought he was being foolish, careless, and downright stupid in NWH and MOM, manipulating reality and letting everyone at Kamar Taj die as he fled with America
But what if it was all intentional? What if he was manipulating Peter the entire time? He certainly didn’t seem all that surprised or bothered when he was trapped in the mirror dimension, and his “oh no, oh crap” after Wanda sent him to the universe with Sinister Strange was very much giving Willy Wonka “no stop, don’t” energy
He just never seemed…particularly bothered by what was happening, and Peter and Wanda got horribly screwed over despite him emerging Scott free and contributing to their demises
Something’s not right with him, is my theory anyways
Regardless of whether this was originally part of the Russo's plan or not - they can choose to retroactively say it was Strange's plan all along - it would be very interesting if this ends up being revealed in Doomsday or Secret Wars. In the 2015 Hickman run Strange was actually Doom's Sheriff and one of the few people that knew the truth behind Doom and Battleworld. It would actually dovetail really nicely if both the reason Strange let Thanos snap and also served Doom as Sheriff was because he saw far enough ahead that he decided the universe reboot was the most desirable outcome for literally everyone.
Doyleist: They certainly weren't planning for this in particular, but they probably *did* leave it vague on purpose so they could decide whatever they came up with later on fit with whatever Strange saw. Writing serial fiction is all about leaving yourself escape hatches like that.