Is Doctor Doom A Tony Stark Variant? Kevin Feige Finally Reveals The Truth
More like Doctor Doppelganger.
When Avengers: Doomsday was announced at San Diego Comic-Con in 2024, there were some immediate questions. If the franchise was changing direction, what about all those Kang the Conqueror teases? Will Doomsday tie in the X-Men? But above all, the biggest question concerned the movie’s villain, Doctor Doom, who would be played by Robert Downey, Jr. If the man who brought Iron Man to life plays a supervillain, what does it mean for the character?
More than two years later, we’re now gearing up for Doomsday in just about a month, but we still don’t have a clear answer in why Doom looks just like the late, great Tony Stark. However, we just got a major clue from Kevin Feige that could solve everything.
Kevin Feige claims that Doctor Doom isn’t a Tony Stark variant at all.
In an interview with Empire, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige finally gave some information to answer the question: is Doctor Doom a multiversal variant of Tony Stark or not? “Is Steve Rogers a Johnny Storm variant?” he said, referencing Chris Evans’ dual Marvel role. “People wondered, ‘Is Doom just a variant of another character? Is this just a shortcut to bringing back another character?’ The answer is no. He’s Victor Von Doom.”
But if that’s true, how will the characters react if they see his face? It’s possible that he keeps the mask on the whole time, but if he does show his face, will anyone acknowledge the fact he looks just like their old friend Tony? Wouldn’t making the new threat have the face of the character who led the Avengers make the fight more interesting? Is it possible he’s not a variant, just someone who looks a good deal like him?
Will Doomsday actually acknowledge that Doom and Tony Stark have the same face?
Honestly, it seems like this quote is doing more than just addressing the question. There’s no way that Doomsday could reveal the face of Doom without at least acknowledging the similarity, so it’s possible that we won’t see his face at all in this movie. That would make sense: back in August, David Harbour got himself in hot water for saying that “You... are Tony Stark” was one of his Doomsday quotes out of context. When asked about it again in at San Diego Comic-Con in October, Harbour denied it ever happened. “Did I say that I said that?” he told ScreenRant. “I think you guys make this stuff up.”
It does seem that while we gear up for this massive cinematic event, we’re getting a lot of confirmations that only serve to raise more questions. If this Doom isn’t a variant of Tony Stark, perhaps theres a more interesting — and, probably, more complicated — answer that we haven’t discovered yet.
