OPINION -- Robert Downey Jr. is cast as DOCTOR Doom in the MCU: What is going on??

What about Jonathan Majors and Kang the Conqueror (And his Variants)?

It doesn't matter what you felt about Majors' portrayal as the titular villain of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania followed by his appearances as both He Who Remains and Victor Timely in both of seasons of Loki, but his time in the role as any of those characters are done and over with even before this casting news. The kicker was that shortly following that appearance in that film and in Loki, Jonathan Majors was arrested and then convicted on domestic violence charges. I won't go into the messy details concerning that situation, but it's no surprise that Disney immediately fired him following that conviction. 

Following Majors' removal, the talk of the town was the question of whether or not Marvel Studios were going to recast the role. At this point, I didn't care either way as he was already unceremoniously killed off (by giant ants no less...) in Quantumania, so it was already not a strong introduction for the lead villain that many (myself included) was safely assuming to be the "big bad" for this Multiverse Saga - at least early on. The damage was already done on multiple fronts and these problems definitely weren't doing Marvel Studios any favors in terms of maintaining nor attracting interest in any of these new upcoming projects. If we don't kid ourselves, but interest has waned on the superhero genre as a whole following Avengers: Endgame anyway. Then on top of that, the COVID-19 pandemic and the oversaturation of new Marvel Studios projects on Disney+ and in theaters didn't help sway audiences to continue being interested either. The only thing those poor decisions do was provide more fuel to feed the flames from the naysayers that love shouting that the "MCU IS DEAD" at every opportunity. 

Depending on what continuity that you're familiar with in terms of the source material and whether or not you're a younger or older, well-versed/seasoned comic book reader, Kang the Conqueror and Doctor Doom are two characters with intertwined histories. In the original 1984 Secret Wars comic book event, Doctor Doom stated himself that Kang was his counterpart in a far off future timeline (see the image above). In Jonathan Hickman's highly acclaimed 2015 Secret Wars comic book event, Doctor Doom is once again essentially the focal point of that story, where he not only saved all of the Multiverse from the pending threat of destruction by incursions (a concept the MCU already introduced into live-action in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness).

Sure, we saw a million Kang variants in the post-credits teaser of Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania, but that was treated as nothing to worry about in Loki Season Two when the TVA said that they were "monitoring" them after Scott Lang dealt with the one from that film after the events of that season. 

A part of me feels like they could easily recast Kang if they need the Council of Kangs (Rama-Tut, Immortus, and Scarlet Centurion) to appear in anything else too. It would be the same as their recasting of the Red Skull and James Rhodes in previous titles; just recast them with new actor(s) and pretend like nothing happened. 

I hate to break it to people, but it was apparent from the start that Doctor Doom was going to be the endgame of this Multiverse Saga the second when they revealed the roadmap and the last film in this line of films was going to be Avengers: Secret Wars. No matter what iteration of that storyline that you would want to adapt or draw inspiration from, you NEED Doctor Doom as a pivotal player on the chess board. It would be like trying to do the Infinity Saga or any resemblance of the Infinity Gauntlet storyline WITHOUT Thanos. The question is how big was Kang's role was going to be if the domestic abuse charges didn't come up for Jonathan Majors to force Marvel Studios and Disney to part ways with him? It's no secret that Avengers 5 was originally titled Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, but that doesn't mean that the plan was for Doctor Doom to show up and pull the rug out from underneath him from the start. 

I think as far back to when Marvel Studios revealed the road map for Phase 5 and 6 a few years ago. The introduction of the Fantastic Four was ALWAYS going to be right there before The Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars, so I refuse to believe that there weren't already plans in place to introduce their arch-enemy, Doctor Doom, in that film for he could be a component in their plans for those two Avengers films. Let's not forget that the Infinity Saga did a similar thing with introducing and debuting Spider-Man, Black Panther, and Captain Marvel all within the short window before Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. So let's not pretend like they haven't done this before in terms of adding key major players in the zero hour to garner interest. 

Where could Marvel Studios go with this pivot to Doctor Doom as the "big bad" going forward?

It may be over for Johnathan Majors but I don't see this casting spelling the end of the Kang storyline in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I don't think they are throwing in the towel in terms of Kang and his variants - at least not quite yet. Loki Season Two helped in terms of what was done with the God of Stories (Loki's current position in terms of maintaining and stabilizing the Multiverse by using his powers to hold it together) and pretty much closing the door on the need of more usage out of He Who Remains and/or Victor Timely. Let's not forget that Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness and Spider-Man: No Way Home established that variants don't all have to look alike either.

Infamous Ironman

Written by comic veteran Brian Michael Bendis, and drawn by Alex Maleev, the series began publication in October 2016. Infamous Iron Man follows Von Doom as he takes on the persona of Iron Man after "Civil War II" as he looks to make amends for his villainous crimes. 

I bring this up as I was initially going to dismiss this story applying to the direction where the MCU might go with this, but then I realized that Ironheart/Riri Williams - another character who is set to have her own Disney+ series following her appearance in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever - was part of this story. 

Here me out, but I have a pitch for this, so bare with me:

Instead of Riri Williams' armor's A.I. being a back-up/copy of the late Tony Stark's brain patterns like in the comics, what if she somehow stumbled onto a means into communicating with Doctor Doom through the Multiverse and has mistaken him for Stark as her "mentor" of sorts? It could echo the relationship between Barry Allen/The Flash and Eobard Thawn/Harrison Wells until he is exposed as the Reverse Flash in that CW television series. Doctor Doom takes her under his wing to educate the young protegy about the armor and advanced technology, while she educates him about the late Tony Stark and their universe as a whole. So when he finally arrives to Earth-616, Ironheart vouches for him (along with Spider-Man for obvious reasons...) in terms of gaining the other heroes' trust. It's not until the Fantastic Four arrive to Earth-616 that they expose this Doom to everyone as the villain he really is. 

Obviously, this Doctor Doom isn't going to have any redeeming qualities, so I can't see them using any other points of Bendis' narrative but I can easily see them going with that costume for his live-action debut in this continuity with a few minor alterations. 

Doctor Doom Becomes Ironman! Ironman Becomes Doctor Doom!

What If? Iron Man: Demon in an Armor is a 2010 Marvel Comics story, co-plotted and written by David Michelinie, penciled by Graham Nolan, and co-plotted and inked by Bob Layton. 

The synopsis is as follows:

Would Tony Stark still be Iron Man...if he wasn't Tony Stark? Twenty years ago, in a college experiment gone bad, the young Stark's mind is transferred to the body of impoverished but brilliant fellow student, Victor von Doom! Blamed for the unsanctioned research, his memory wiped clean, Tony is deported and forced to face life as a disgraced Latverian commoner. Meanwhile, von Doom grows and flourishes in the wealth and privilege of being sole heir to Stark Industries. Thus, in separate cauldrons on different sides of the world, both Iron Man and Dr. Doom are forged anew. But who are the men inside the armors...really? 

I bring up this storyline as we could easily see something like this where in the Multiverse there exists this Doctor Doom who swapped bodies with Tony Stark. We are pretty deep within the Multiverse Saga - for better or worse - and it wouldn't be that much of a stretch to believe that this is a possibility. Let's not forget that Marvel's What If...? is already a thing in this continuity too, so it wouldn't be hard to adapt this story down the road for that animated series either if it's not used in live-action first. There's so many unexplored realities that the MCU has barely scratched the surface of and this is only one of countless possibilities. 

My only knock on a possible adaptation of this storyline is that is almost demands that RDJ has to reprise the role of Ironman to face off against this evil doppelganger, alternate reality version or not. Unlike most people, I'm not opposed to the whole mirror match thing, especially after the MCU has pretty much made that their go-to for a lot of these "final boss" fights in a lot of their films to date, but I just hope that's not the "safe" bet they are going to go with. My most desired outcome is seeing this new generation of Avengers following Tony Stark's sacrifice and inspiration are served their "graduation papers" by working together to defeat this new foe with the face of their beloved hero. 

Iron Monarch & Iron Maniac

The Iron Man of Exiles #23 (created by Judd Winick and Kev Walker) shows why it's somewhat difficult to name the first story where Tony becomes Doctor Doom. In this story, readers meet an alternate version of Tony Stark with no empathy. Still a genius, Tony hides his psychopathic nature until adulthood, when a war breaks out between mutantkind and humanity. Tony masterfully plays both sides, ending by arranging an attack on New York by Victor von Voom, aka Doctor Doom, the leader of Latveria.

Tony uses Doom's attack to justify his ascension to planetary rule, betraying and killing Doom as part of his plan. While Tony is successful, Doom manages to grievously injure Tony, leaving him (like Doom) to never again remove his mask in public. Tony also claims Doctor Doom's iconic green cloak, wearing it over his Iron Man armor to complete his rise from supposed hero to unquestioned conqueror. However, Tony does stop short of actually calling himself 'Doctor Doom.' Instead, he goes by the nickname Iron Monarch, right up until the moment when Invisible Woman assassinates him, setting the world free.

The Iron Maniac is often celebrated by some (including Deadpool co-creator Rob Liefeld) as the first official time where Tony Stark became Doctor Doom. The Iron Maniac first appeared in Marvel Team-Up #2 (by Robert Kickman and Scott Kolins). This version of Tony is from a world where the Skrull supervillain Titannus kidnapped the Avengers to the planet Trellion, slaughtering many of them. Under such harsh conditions, Tony's moral compass eventually broke, and he became a far more extremist figure, battling Reed Richards (who he viewed as a major threat to what remained of humanity.) He eventually traveled from his home dimension to the mainstream Earth-616, where he fought a variety of heroes while also warning them of the coming of Titannus.

The Iron Maniac's armor looks very similar to Doctor Doom's - to the extent that the mainstream Reed mistakes him for Doom when he arrives - however he doesn't claim that identity, still seeing himself as Iron Man. Once the case of mistaken identity was resolved, Iron Maniac switched to a purple and gray Iron Man suit which he created out of a robotic Life Model Decoy of the supervillain Diamondback (a former love interest of Steve Rogers.) He was eventually defeated using a fragment of cosmic cube.

Source: Screenrant

I bring up these two instances of Ironman/Tony Stark going to the "dark side" as these are the least favorable options in terms of how Doctor Doom could be introduced into this continuity. I personally hope they don't go that route as it would come off lazy if they simply just make him Tony's polar opposite. 

With that being said, here's a final curve ball of a pitch that I had in mind:

What if RDJ's casting is a swerve? What if that we get to the end of Avengers: Secret Wars and the Avengers have a weakened Doom cornered and "our" Doctor Strange figures out what is going on. Doom, who is well-versed in both sorcery and magic along with technology, used a spell to disguise himself all this time with the face of the beloved hero that sacrificed everything to save the 616 universe. Doctor Strange undoes the spell and reveals that Marvel Studios had already cast an actor for Doom all along, complete with the iconic scarred face. RDJ being Doctor Doom ends up the red herring, much like "The Mandarin" appearing in Ironman 3. 

I'm sure that strategy of being a bait and switch might piss off even more people for the long haul, but could work to effective results as that's one twist that you couldn't count on savvy comic book readers to spoil to non-comic book readers early on. 

Is this single casting decision going to "save" the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

I can't speak for anyone else, but I get tired of the constant talk and anticipation that whatever is in the pipeline is going to be that ONE thing that will knock everyone's socks off and save the Marvel Cinematic Universe from falling off a cliff like the DC Extended Universe did prior to James Gunn being brought in to helm DC Studios. Can we stop pretending like there weren't successful and entertaining films in Phase Four and Five? Can we stop saying that EVERYTHING following Avengers: Endgame (a film that I will continue to die on the hill on that wasn't very good in the first place but better than some of the alternatives to making it more faithful to the comics, given what resources they had at their disposal at the time) was bad?

If the MCU is so bad then why are you still watching? Sheep/herd mentality is one thing, but at some point everyone has to learn to think for their own instead of following the hive mind of negativity, searching for any and all things to nit-pick and poke holes into. 

The downfall of all of this comic book media - animated, live-action, or comics - is the sheer number of people who desperately want to see it fail, continue to invest in these projects just to make a mockery of them on a podcast or YouTube channel for content, and the studios' futile attempts to try to please EVERYONE when every single one of these fans are fickle as fuck (myself included). It's a fool's errand to satisfy every audience and cater to every niche.

I'll say it a million times. Don't like it? Don't watch and channel your energy into things you do enjoy. Instead, nerd culture and society as a whole has fostered and encouraged this circle jerk hate culture where it's trendy and cool to ridicule everything and shit on anything and everything that doesn't align with your morals, religious beliefs, and/or personal opinions.

As with any decision with adapting these beloved comics to live-action, I feel that the writing is going to be make-it-or-break-it deal breaker in terms of this casting. It's no secret that Robert Downey Jr. is mostly responsible for getting people to stick with the Marvel Cinematic Universe for 15+ years of the Infinity Saga. He's recognizable and established star in this genre and his name brings eyeballs to a project and puts butts into seats at the movie theaters. If the writing isn't there, I doubt people are going to stick around even if he's involved, especially if audiences are led to believe that he's merely there just for his name and recognition.  

Why are you so mad?

Even as person of color, I don't feel like this one of those situations to get upset that another black actor or person of color is losing their job(s) to a non-minority. Jonathan Majors got himself into some deep shit and put Disney and Marvel Studios into a hairy situation. Even if they recast Kang the Conqueror with another actor, the underlining problem was still there that they needed a new "face" of this Multiverse Saga as it's final boss like Thanos was in the background of the Infinity Saga. 

Closing Thoughts

Robert Downey Jr. kept his return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe a secret even to his former Avengers cast members that he is allegedly so close to. It came to a shock to them as well as they learned of his casting as Doctor Doom when everyone else did. There's already a rumor floating around that the original Avengers will make an appearance in Avengers: Secret Wars due to time travel shenanigens like in Avengers: Endgame, but here's my thing about that. I thought the point of the original Avengers "retiring", getting killed off, and/or stepping down/passing the torch was to pave the way to a new generation of heroes. We still have audiences who have been lukewarm at best to these changes and mostly in the camp of highly resistant or outright refusing to accept any other replacements other than those characters and/or actors as those characters. Marvel Studios is partially to blame for encouraging this behavior too when they refused to recast Black Panther/T'Challa in the wake of Chadwick Boseman's demise, despite the blessings of his family/estate to do so. It set this weird precedent where they will recast/replace some actors due to similar deaths by natural causes or not and other occurences like this, but go out of their way to recast/replace other pivotal players. They rather write off a character completely rather than finding a suitable replacement and it's just strange. 

We've had dozens of actors portray Batman and Superman in both animation and live-action to the point where no one bats an eye anymore at casting news, but when it comes to Marvel Studios, it's like pulling teeth to get someone else to play these characters. In the case of Robert Downey Jr.'s casting as Doctor Doom, I don't find a problem with it when this continuity already has a lot of overlap in terms of actors playing multiple characters - case in point with Chris Evans reprising the role of Johnny Storm/The Human Torch (a role he played before being cast as Steve Rogers/Captain America in the MCU) in Deadpool & Wolverine this year. Alfre Woodard plays the grieving mother Miriam Sharpe in Captain America: Civil War and later appears in Luke Cage as Mariah Dillard for both seasons. Before that, she was the voice of Dondi Reece, the members of the Dora Milaje, and Miss M'Buve in the Black Panther TV mini-series if you want to lump in all of her Marvel-related performances under the same umbrella. Gemma Chan played multiple roles in the MCU as well, first appearing in Captain Marvel (2019) as Minn-Erva, then in Eternals (2021) as Sersi. There's multiple actors who have played multiple roles in the MCU. 

I'm optimistic that this decision will pan out for the better. Marvel Studios had to do something to get people talking again and it's better that they are doing less projects coming up than flooding the release schedule with tons of projects that most people aren't going to care about anyway. It's not too late to turn the ship around and I don't think the ship is sinking either. I don't think the MCU is anywhere near the state where we saw the DC Extended Universe at its worst in its final years.