Avengers: Doomsday Establishes a Fantastic Four Connection to Doctor Doom

This article contains potential spoilers for Avengers: Doomsday.

Judging by the first trailer for Avengers: Doomsday, Doctor Doom is a multiversal threat who battles Thor and the original Avengers. Sure, some other heroes are involved, including the X-Men and the New Avengers, but they’re mostly concerned with fighting one another. Least relevant of all, according to the trailer, are the Fantastic Four, who just hang out in the background, giving each other hugs and shaking the hands of Wakandans.

Comic book fans find this infuriating, and not just because Doctor Doom first appeared in the pages of Fantastic Four. However, according to attendees at Marvel’s panel in Hall H of SDCC, a new trailer for Doomsday showcases the connection between Doom and the Fantastic Four. Reportedly, the trailer showed Sue Storm describing Victor Von Doom as a good man and a friend, who turned when he lost his family. Further, the trailer included a scene of Reed confronting Doom about what he had done. All of this is better than ignoring the connection between Dr. Doom and the Fantastic Four, but it’s not quite enough to do the character justice.

Back in his first appearance in 1962’s Fantastic Four #5 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Victor Von Doom was established as a former college classmate of Reed Richards, whose mastery of science and sorcery resulted in an accident that scarred his face. Over the years, Doom’s backstory expanded, with Reed’s role growing increasingly important. By the late 1980s, it had been established that Reed attempted to correct Doom’s calculations during the explosion that resulted in his scarring.

Unable to accept that Reed outsmarted him and horrified by the loss of his looks, Doom went insane. From there, he returned to his native Latveria to become that country’s benevolent dictator, and only further developed his scientific and magic abilities. He challenged the world time and again, often requiring all of Marvel’s heroes to repel him. He stole the power of the Beyonder, he grappled with the devil, he has become a god more than once, and he continues to long for power… all because Reed did math better than him once in college.

One of the best examples of Doom’s obsession with Reed occurs in the story that Doomsday and its successor Avengers: Secret Wars adapt. At the start of the Secret Wars series in 2015, by Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribić, Doom has stopped the Incursions from obliterating the multiverse by stealing the power of the Beyonders and recreating the Marvel Universe in his image. As God Emperor Doom, his rule is absolute, and everyone from the Thor Corps to a cabal of villains serves him. Doom could have anyone he wanted as his family, and yet he chose to make Sue his wife and to make Franklin and Valeria Richards into his children. The realization that Doom stole his family was enough to make Reed, who survived the recreation of the universe with his memories intact, take his enemy down.

For some, a math mistake might seem like a laughably banal origin for a supervillain, but it matters precisely because it’s so petty. The low stakes of the inciting incident contrast with Doom’s monumental ambitions, allowing a guy who speaks in the third person, wears a green tunic over metal armor, and surrounds himself with an army of clones to feel somehow relatable.

Given that Doom was pointedly absent until the post-credit scene of Fantastic Four: First Steps, which included a shot of an empty chair at the Latverian embassy, it’s hard to see how Doomsday could give the relationship that it deserves. Still, the very fact that Doomsday understands that he and the Fantastic Four know one another at least opens the possibility that Doctor Doom can be more than a generic Avengers antagonist.

Avengers: Doomsday arrives in theaters on December 18, 2026.