After the first trailer for Avengers: Doomsday arrived, Marvel dropped a poster for the film that might give away more information about Doom's mysterious motivation.
In the poster, which you can see below, Doom climbs some stairs below a mural that shows a woman and a child embracing, surrounded by what appear to be angels. Naturally, Marvel fans have a lot of ideas about what it might mean.
marvelstudiosfrom r/marvelstudios/comments/1v1kxur/official_poster_for_avengers_doomsday
"My theory is Doom loses his family & universe due to an incursion, thanks to Steve Rogers creating an alternate timeline by living in the past," suggests one fan – Steve is back in Doomsday after returning to the past to live the rest of his life with Peggy Carter in the Avengers: Endgame ending.
"Could it be Doom as a boy with his mother? In the comics he loves his mother more than anything but she died and her soul is trapped in hell. Every year Doom goes to hell to battle Mephisto for her soul but fails," theorizes another fan.
"Looks suspiciously like Franklin + Sue or am I reaching?" is someone else's idea. "I'm assuming these are his wife and son," guesses someone else.
"My guess, either Doom and his mother or Doom's wife and son. Rumors have suggested that the Avengers may have accidentally killed said loved ones with their time travel shenanigans in Endgame," says someone else, who adds: "EDIT: The Earth coming out of the clouds also looks like Incursion imagery, there's a guy who looks like Molecule Man in the bottom left corner, there's a big battle underneath which is probably the fighting between Earths as Incursions happen"
"I'm guessing that's Doom and his mother, and a reference to Battleworld in the center. Shot in the dark... something created an incursion that destroyed Doom's world and killed his mother. Could have been Steve choosing to stay in the past, but I'm putting my money on Loki taking over the timeline as the cause," is another person's theory. "Thematically, going after the god that controls the fate of your world is absolutely something that Doom would do. And it would technically still be the Avengers' fault because they (accidentally) allowed that variant to escape with the Tesseract."
"Why is Tony doing the snap from Endgame in the tapestry?" questions another person – in the bottom right, it certainly looks like Tony Stark snapping his fingers.
In the trailer, Doom's voiceover at the beginning – which reveals Robert Downey Jr.'s Doom accent, too – seems to tease that Doom is actually trying to stop something. What that might be remains a mystery for now.
Avengers: Doomsday arrives this December 18. In the meantime, check out our guide to all the upcoming Marvel movies and shows for everything the MCU has in store, or see our Avengers: Doomsday trailer breakdown for everything you might have missed.
