Discover how Marvel's First Family and Doctor Doom go from uneasy allies to bitter enemies in Marvel First Family & Doctor Doom Are Friends Until Doomsday.
Nobody expects that Doctor Doom, about to threaten every universe in the multiverse in Avengers: Doomsday, isn’t a stranger to the Fantastic Four. He’s family friend material. Reed Richards and Victor von Doom go back decades in the comics, and it’s confirmed after official comments from insiders reveal that it’s the emotional spine of the entire movie.
This isn’t the origin story where Doom shows up as a masked menace on day one. This is a slower, sadder kind of villain arc, and it’s exactly why Robert Downey Jr. signing on to play him made so much sense once you stopped picturing Iron Man and started picturing a man who lost everything and blames the people who once called him a friend.
Long before he was ruling Latveria and building doombots by the thousand, Victor von Doom shared a dorm with Reed Richards at State University. They were rivals in the lab, not enemies in the field.
The accident that scarred Doom’s face and pushed him toward sorcery and tyranny is tangled up with Reed’s own guilt — Reed warned Victor his calculations were flawed, Victor ignored him, and the explosion that followed set both of their lives on separate, colliding paths.
What makes their relationship genuinely unusual in Avengers: Doomsday is that it never fully curdled into simple hatred. Doctor Doom has, at various points, called a truce with the Fantastic Four to fight bigger cosmic threats.
He’s shown up for moments on with Marvel’s first family. Most strikingly, in the comics, Doom personally delivered Reed and Sue’s daughter, Valeria, when a pregnancy complication threatened both mother and child and he later became her godfather. That’s not a footnote. That’s a writer deliberately keeping the door open between a hero and his greatest enemy, generation after generation.
Why this matters for the movie: If the MCU is borrowing this dynamic, Doom isn’t being introduced as a stranger the Fantastic Four have to figure out. He’s someone Marvel’s first family already trusted. That’s a much heavier betrayal to write and a much heavier one to watch.
According to a widely circulated from industry leaker Daniel Richtman, the Fantastic Four’s Reed Richard and Doctor Doom are described as being on friendly terms heading into the film as people who have known each other for years rather than adversaries meeting for the first time.
The same rumor claims the fallout that turns them into enemies is essentially the plot of the movie itself, with Doctor Doom reportedly seen playing with Franklin Richards in a post-credits scene of Fantastic Four: First Steps. Vanessa Kirby’s Sue Storm saw them and tried to prepare to use her power to protect her son but the scene ended.
However, the scene made fans mind that Doom was an enemy, if he’s friendly then Sue may not see Doom as a threat and calm down.
“Doctor Doom is just playing with Franklin, he mean no harm to the kid” — Ritchman Says
Marvel Studios hasn’t laid out the Reed-Doom relationship on record. But it lines up too neatly with six decades of comics history to dismiss, and directors Joe and Anthony Russo have publicly described Doom as one of the most complex characters in Marvel’s library — someone they wanted to explore with “complexities and vulnerabilities” rather than write as a straightforward conqueror.
“He’s not simply a villain; he’s one of the most complex Marvel characters. He’s always three moves ahead.” — Joe Russo, co-director, on Doctor Doom
If there’s one thread connecting the comics history to the reported MCU plot, it’s Franklin Richards. In the comics, Franklin is regarded as one of the most powerful beings to ever exist — capable of warping reality, creating pocket universes, and reading minds before he can properly walk. The Fantastic Four: First Steps already introduced him as a baby who ages into a young child by the film’s end, and multiple reports suggest Doom’s interest in Franklin is central to why he moves against the family at all.
A godfather turning on the family he swore to protect, driven by what a child could become, that’s not comic book villainy for its own sake. That’s a tragedy with body count.
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| Title | Details |
| Title / Event | Avengers: Secret Wars (follow-up: Avengers: Secret Wars — Part II noted as Dec 17, 2027) |
| Release date | December 18, 2026 |
| Follow-up installment | Avengers: Secret Wars follows (sequel/next major MCU event) on December 17, 2027 |
| Main villain | Doctor Doom — played by Robert Downey Jr.; full costume unveiled at CinemaCon 2026 |
| Returning lead cast | Chris Evans (Steve Rogers), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Pedro Pascal (Reed Richards), Vanessa Kirby (Sue Richards) |
| Fantastic Four presence | Seven characters from First Steps confirmed to appear, including HERBIE (the robot) |
| Directors | Anthony Russo and Joe Russo (returning to MCU since Avengers: Endgame) |
| Setting / premise | Heroes from three separate universes — Earth-616, Earth-828 (Fantastic Four’s world), and Fox X-Men universe — converge to face Doctor Doom |
The trailer shown at CinemaCon and in teasers has already leaned into Doom’s overwhelming power — a scene where he stops Thor’s Stormbreaker with one hand has become the moment fans keep replaying.
But the same trailer reportedly closes on a much quieter, more devastating line from Doom: “One day you will forgive me.” That’s not the sentence of a conqueror talking to strangers. That’s the sentence of someone talking to people he actually cares whether they forgive.
The MCU has struggled with villain motivation before — plenty of Phase Four and Five antagonists existed mainly to be defeated. Doom being a person the Fantastic Four actually liked, trusted, and maybe even loved solves that problem before it starts. They also don’t have to start from scratch in making us feel sympathetic for Doom; they get that from sixty years of history between Reed and Victor, and they get to spend their running time dismantling it on-screen rather than explaining it in exposition.
It also raises the stakes for everyone standing next to the Fantastic Four when Doctor Doom turns. If he’s willing to burn a friendship this old to get what he wants, nobody in Avengers: Doomsday is safe because they’re powerful. They’re at risk because they’re close to him.
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Doctor Doom isn’t a fascinating Avengers: Doomsday antagonist simply because he’s the most powerful person present. He’s compelling because he’s introduced as someone Fantastic Four already know, trust, and consider part of their lives. That background makes every encounter not just a fight to save the multiverse, but the shattering of a friendship that once felt unshakable.
If Marvel follows the emotional roadmap it set forth in the comics, “Avengers: Doomsday” won’t just establish Doom as the MCU’s next major villain. It’ll show how pride, grief, and unthinkable choices can turn a trusted friend into the deadliest enemy Marvel heroes have ever encountered. And now, with the multiverse at stake and Reed Richards facing the friend he couldn’t save, the conflict is far more tragic than your standard-oh-hero-versus-villain story.
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Deadpool & Punisher Big Guns Crossover brings Marvel’s deadliest heroes together in an explosive action-packed collectible adventure.
This September, Deadpool & Punisher Big Guns Crossover bring two superheroes together. This one comic event offers an action-packed performance of two heroes with completely different natures. Dark humour of Wade Wilson who thrives on making his fans laugh, whereas the Punisher barely cracks a smile. A combo of epic collide promises explosive brutal fights and humour that deliver unforgettable moments that marvel fans don’t wanna miss.
Big Guns arrives at a time when both Deadpool and Punisher solo series have trended toward grittier, more grounded narratives, and that’s likely why this collision seems less like a stunt and more like something bigger.
Mark your calendars, because Marvel isn’t dragging this one out. The carnage kicks off September 2, 2026 with Wade Wilson: Deadpool #8, drawn by Geoff Shaw. A week later, on September 9, Punisher #8 hits shelves with art from José Luis Soares, picking up right where Wade left things burning. The story wraps in October with Wade Wilson: Deadpool #9 and Punisher #9, though Marvel hasn’t locked in exact dates for those yet.
Marvel decided to reveal all of this on June 16th — “616 Day,” the publisher’s annual tribute to Earth-616, the main Marvel universe. It’s a small thing but it’s a sign of how much Marvel is playing this as a flagship-style street-level event and not a side story.
Geoff Shaw handles the main cover for issue #8 of Deadpool, while David Marquez takes the art duties on Punisher #8’s cover. Josemaria Casanovas is also doing a four-part connecting variant set across all four issues, so anyone hunting that full picture across covers will want to track down each part as it drops.
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This isn’t just a brief cameo of the Punisher or Deadpool. It’s a massive four-part event that weaves directly through the current ongoing series of both characters. The chaos kicks off in Wade Wilson: Deadpool and bleeds over into Punisher.
The story has a classic and exciting setup. Deadpool makes a massive mess because things get out of control on one of the biggest mercenary jobs of his life. It attracts The Punisher’s attention who is brutal and known for his serious behaviour. Both are caught up in a single path that sets the stage for a relentless clash where neither man is walking away without a few extra holes in them.
Benjamin Percy is currently writing for both the Deadpool and Punisher solo series. He perfectly balances the crazy humor with high-stake action in Deadpool & Punisher Big Guns Crossover.
Percy recently noted that putting these two together was simple math. They are two heavily armed, street-level characters with completely opposite personalities. To bring this violent vision to life, Marvel tapped artists Geoff Shaw (handling the Deadpool issues) and José Luis Soares (drawing the Punisher chapters). According to Percy, they are “the best pens drawing the biggest guns.”
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If watching Frank Castle get increasingly frustrated by Wade Wilson’s endless talking isn’t enough to sell you, Marvel has promised some massive additions to the 616 universe in Deadpool & Punisher Big Guns Crossover run.
Whether you are here for the intricate plot or just want to see two of Marvel’s most lethal anti-heroes tear each other apart, the Deadpool and Punisher: Big Guns Crossover is shaping up to be the spectacle of the fall.
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Deadpool & Punisher Big Guns Crossover has all the ingredients for a classic Marvel team-up – high-octane action, violent slugfests, black comedy, and a mystery with implications that could reverberate throughout the Marvel Universe for years to come.
With Benjamin Percy writing and some of the best artists in the business illustrating the chaos, this four-part event will be about more than your run-of-the-mill hero vs hero skirmish. If you’ve been laughing along at Deadpool’s unpredictable brand of humor, or wondering how things got so dark with the Punisher’s brutal version of justice, Big Guns is lining up to be one of the biggest comics events for Marvel in 2026 and a must-read for anyone who enjoyed explosive superhero storytelling.
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Explore Marvel's potential X-Men lineup in the MCU, from Wolverine and Cyclops to Storm and Jean Grey, and what it means for the future.
After years of confusing cameo appearances from Patrick Stewart, finally it’s time, X-Men are joining Marvel Cinematic Universe. What fans are really excited about is how Marvel will introduce the entire team of mutants into a universe. Whether it’s powerful Logan or Jean Grey, those characters need something new which makes a surprise for fans. Let’s look into what Marvel’s X-Men line up could look like in the MCU.
X-Men films generated its fanbase for years and Logan deserves all the praise it gets for that. But the franchise doesn’t keep the films continuity, whether it’s Days of Future Past which tried to reset the timeline or Dark Phoenix that tried to close it out, both films didn’t do any favor to the franchise.
Now Marvel got their rights back on the franchise, they will take a fresh start or honor what Fox built is a big question. It looks like they’re doing a carefully managed fresh start according to the confirmed report. The 2024 announcement of the X-Men film, along with the tease of mutant characters filtering into other MCU properties first, suggests Marvel wants to seed the ground before the big harvest.
They are going to introduce mutants one-by-one in Disney+ shows, in other films, in post-credits scenes and then bring them all together in one X-Men movie. Marvel always cared about the character, they make you love the character just like they did with Avengers. It worked because fans cared about each character individually, now that same treatment X-Men deserve.
There are a lot of characters for Marvel to bring out at first, they probably won’t bring all of them. What’s more likely is a focused core team — six to eight members — built around characters who can carry emotional weight and generate interesting dynamics. Think less ensemble chaos, more deliberate character work. Here’s who feels most essential to a first MCU X-Men outing:
(Field Leader)
Cyclops is a more interesting, serious, and infuriating leader in the comics but Fox films are never able to bring that full personality of Scott Summers’s Cyclopes on the screen.
Marvel knows Cyclops deserves a chance to be the one who cares so deeply about the mission and is willing to take hard decisions. He’s the necessary one. A complex antihero-adjacent leader is exactly what the MCU’s X-Men need to feel different from the Avengers.
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(Omega-Level Telepath)
Jean Grey is one of Marvel’s greatest cosmic stories with an emotional heart which Scott loves. The character has a long-term storytelling potential as the host of the Phoenix Force.
Fox films didn’t introduce her as a fully grown character who gets over her fear of her own power, relationship with Charles Xavier, and her bond with the rest of the team. Everything all together suffocates the character, it needs some space before the Phoenix saga even comes into play.
(Weather Manipulation)
Halle Berry’s Storm is one of the great what-ifs of the Fox era, a character which has so much potential if they write it well. The MCU version needs to be a queen.
She should feel like the most powerful person in any room she walks into, as her backstory shows she inherited royalty from a goddess in Kenya. So she deserved a personality which carries a respect of authority and command.
(Berserker / Loner)
Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine became the most successful and loved character of X-Men. He gave outstanding superhero performances for seventeen years and ended it perfectly in Logan. Then appear again for Deadpool & Wolverine in 2025 because MCU needs new Wolverine but recasting it would be a huge challenge in Hollywood history.
Whoever steps into the role needs to own the character like Hugh Jackman who brings the character to life through intense rage, tragic past, and surprising kindness towards the innocents whom he protects.
(Scientist / Strategist)
In the MCU, Bruce Banner and Shuri are the giant scientists who can solve any problem with their genius scientist mind. Beast is also a science-forward character but needs a distinct identity, his tragedy is that he created the very mutation that made him a monster in the eyes of the world while trying to cure it. He is the reminder and team’s conscience that intelligence doesn’t protect you from prejudice and that should be front and center of the series.
(Power Absorption)
Rogue’s MCU version should lean into what makes her uniquely compelling — she cannot be touched. She absorbs life force and powers through any physical contact, to avoid that she always lives in permanent isolation. The character is performing like a device which is used as a weapon more than a superhero character. So, the MCU should play it seriously. Her relationship with Gambit — which the Fox films flirted with but never fully explored — would be one of the great slow-burn love stories the MCU has never really attempted.
Beyond the core team, there are a handful of characters whose MCU introductions could completely change the energy of whatever X-Men project they appear in. These aren’t safe picks — they’re the ones that would make fans stand up in theaters.
If Marvel wants someone who can provide levity without undercutting the drama then Gambit is the character who has a complicated past with the Sinister and romantic relationship with Rogue.
The character never made it to the Fox movies, even Channing Tatum was trying for many years. a Cajun thief with the ability to charge objects with kinetic energy fits MCU’s tone.
Kurt Wagner is one of the most visually striking X-Men and one of the most emotionally interesting. A blue-skinned, teleporting, deeply religious man who looks like a demon and acts like a saint — the irony is built in. There’s so much more into the story of Alan Cunning’s Nightclawler version in X2 which Fox never really brings it but still remains one of the valuable characters. Nightcrawler works as a combination of comic relief and genuine pathos.
A time-traveling cop from a dystopian future where mutants are hunted to near-extinction, Bishop is an X-Man who could function as the MCU’s entry point into some very dark storytelling.
If he is here then it suggests that things can go wrong, at that point when someone from the future needs to come and fix it. And it’s the most exciting character who absorbing and redirecting energy is flashy enough for MCU action sequences while being thematically interesting.
The comics version of Psylocke is the double energy character – a British telepath whose mind ended up in the body of a Japanese assassin that could have more potential in a large narrative story. The Fox version in Apocalypse was essentially wasted. An MCU Psylocke with actual screen time and character development could be one of the franchise’s great sleeper hits.
X-Men is incomplete without these two men — Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr. The philosophical conflict between them brings films a thematic engine that drives the entire franchise. Those characters were played well by Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen with their core performances. Those acclaimed actors of their generations defined these characters for millions of people.
James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender gave them new dimensions in the prequel films. Whoever the MCU casts will carry enormous expectations. What Marvel should avoid is casting for nostalgia.
Don’t look for actors who resemble Stewart or McKellen, or who can do an impression of McAvoy’s intensity. The intensity of these characters are hard to understand and finding actors who could understand is more difficult. Their conflict to save the world with different patterns are the fundamental humanity of these two men — one who loves the world so much he can’t stop trying to save it from itself, and one who has been so brutalized by the world that protecting his people justifies any means necessary.
“The irony is Magneto doesn’t think he’s the villain. He survived things that justify every dark impulse he has, and the tragedy is that Xavier knows this, loves him anyway, and still cannot follow him there.”
The MCU must be careful and make the relationship more intense and painful. Two old friends spent decades with their superpowers and chose different paths — that story is devastating and timeless if it’s done right.
Avengers and X-Men, both have superpowers to fight but the motive is very distinctive from each other. Avengers fight alien invasions and time-traveling robots, but X-Men fight oppressions, prejudice, and fear of power which can destroy without understanding it fully.
X-Men stories are more focused on surviving being different in a world which has decided you don’t belong. It shows how the same character has both hope and rage and chosen family and that’s what Fox films captured at their best.
The opening of the first X-Men film, with a young Erik Lehnsherr being separated from his parents at a Nazi concentration camp, which was horrified and treated terribly by the officer to use his powers that told audiences immediately that this wasn’t a typical superhero story. The MCU needs its own version of that opening. Something that establishes, before a single fight scene, that these stories are about something real.
The MCU’s X-Men have to be different from what Fox built, different from the Avengers, and different from anything audiences think they’ve already seen. Because repeating the same origin stories or character depths would be time wasting. MCU must take the character work seriously, resisting the urge to cram everyone in at once, and trusting that the philosophical weight of these stories is just as exciting as the action sequences.
The mutants have always represented something larger than themselves. They’ve always been fighting for their own identity, they’ve survived from the world’s cruelest treatments, whether a world worth saving is worth fighting for. If the MCU can hold onto that truth while also delivering the spectacle fans love, we might be looking at the greatest era in X-Men history.
After everything we’ve been through with the Fox films — the highs of Logan and X2, the lows of Dark Phoenix and Apocalypse — these characters deserve to finally get it completely right. They’ve earned it. So have we.
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