WARNING: Contains spoilers for the Encore re-release of Avengers: Endgame
It’s hard to believe that it’s been over seven years now since Avengers: Endgame first arrived in cinemas, bringing the MCU’s Infinity Saga to an emotional, euphoric conclusion with a snap of Tony Stark’s fingers. And yet here we are, fifteen films and about a bajillion streaming series later, preparing for the beginning of the end of the Multiverse Saga with the Russo Brothers’ upcoming Avengers: Doomsday.
Ahead of Doomsday’s newly confirmed December 16 UK release, Avengers: Endgame Encore is now in cinemas, with special Infinity Vision and IMAX screenings packing four new scenes and credits stings that help set the stage for Doctor Doom’s MCU debut proper.
Whether you’re fresh from a screening and still processing what you’ve just seen, or simply can’t wait to know what’s new with Endgame Encore, your friendly neighbourhood Empire’s got you covered. Read on as we run through all the juicy new stuff in Avengers: Endgame Encore and unpack what it might mean for Doomsday. Empirians… assemble!
Loki’s knocking at Steve’s door
What’s new: Endgame originally ends with Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers heading back in time to be with his sweetheart, Peggy Carter. The lovebirds dance, credits roll, and Cap gets his happily ever, right? Well, not any more. Encore’s final moments see Steve and Peggy’s two-step interrupted by a knock at the door from none other than Tom Hiddleston’s God of Mischief God of Stories Loki, who arrives in full TVA get-up offering his help to the couple.
What it might mean: “But why would Peggy and Steve need Loki’s help?” we hear you cry. Well, what if Steve staying in the past somehow broke the multiverse? What if his happy ending created an unauthorised branch timeline, the repercussions of which destroyed one Victor Von Doom’s world and started the incursions? What if Steve and Peggy and their wee bairn were never meant to be? What then, huh? While we’ve learned to never fully trust an Avengers trailer, Doomsday’s teasers suggest Doom believes our heroes are living “stolen lives”. Perhaps Loki’s “help” is getting Steve and Peggy the hell out of dodge and tucking them away in some other timeline before Doom comes to steal his life back.
Doctor Doom is having a Banner year — literally
What’s new: A new mid-credits sequence turns our attention to Dr. Bruce Banner, seemingly confirming Mark Ruffalo’s Doomsday return in the process. Vlogging from a military complex two miles beneath the Earth following his destructive Spider-Man: Brand New Day Hulk-out, Banner — who’s been spending his time in confinement experimenting with a new gamma radiation suppressor — assures us the big green guy’s safely in check where nobody can reach him. Clearly Doctor Doom didn’t get that memo. Arriving off-screen amid flickering lights and camera glitchery, Doom, er, doomfully intones, “Dr. Banner, I’ve come to collect you,” Cue Bruce seeing — and sounding — green as Doom does a disappearing act with his irradiated quarry, leaving some sinister glowing Latverian symbols on the floor as they go.
What it might mean: With Doom having seemingly come to abduct Reed Richards and Sue Storm’s superkid Franklin Richards in The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ post-credits, and now nabbed himself a Hulk, too, it remains to be seen what the Latverian baddie’s, er, endgame is. Is he siphoning superbeings’ powers for his own use? Is he building an army? Is he recruiting big brains to build something even bigger? One thing’s for sure: it’ll be fascinating to see what battles — or Battleworlds, even — Victor has in mind for Franklin and Bruce come Doomsday.
New mask, same task
What’s new: The final thing we heard in the original Endgame was the poignant sound of Tony Stark forging his first Iron Man suit (in a cave, with a box of scraps, natch.) Well, all that clanging has taken on a whole new meaning post-Endgame Encore as every hammer strike is now timed to shots of Robert Downey Jr.’s Victor Von Doom forging his Doctor Doom mask (in, it must be said, distinctly Tony Starkian fashion.)
What it might mean: Well, we all remember RDJ’s words in Hall H at Comic Con, don’t we? “New mask, same task.” And while that’s probably just a cool line to say, and the recontextualising of the Endgame credit clanks is probably just a neat-o way to pretend Doom was always coming, and we know Downey is definitely playing Victor Von Doom, the Russos know what they’re doing drawing parallels between Stark and Doom, two maverick minds with massive egos and a love of metalwear. Could this still somehow be some kind of Stark-gone-wrong variant situation? Or is this a classic Marvel Cinematic Universe bait-and-switch? Robert Downey Jr. is a great actor, obviously, but surely — surely — there’s more to his Doomsday casting.
TVA excursion teases incursions… and the collapse of the Multiverse
What’s new: Loki, Bruce, and Doomsmithing are all well and good, but Endgame Encore’s post-credit scene — an intense trip to the TVA — that really turns the Doomsday hype up to eleven. As Tara Strong’s ever-chipper Miss Minutes reminds her colleagues at the Time Variance Authority how important it is that everyone stays in their own universes (oops!), TVA employee Casey informs Owen Wilson’s Mobius — clearly pulled out of “just letting time pass” mode following Loki’s Season 2 finale — that Earth-10005 (Fox’s X-Men’s Universe) and Earth-1127 are about to collide. Initially shrugged off as an anomaly, things get more serious when the two Earths start launching missiles at each other. Suddenly, reports start flooding in of more universes beginning to collide — three, then a hundred, a thousand, three thousand — as Eric Bana’s Hulk universe (Earth-400083), the 2015 Fantastic Four universe (Earth-15886), Captain Carter’s What If? Universe (Earth-82111) and more are marked as destroyed.
What it might mean: Well, Ke Huy Quan’s Ouroboros probably puts it best: “The multiverse is collapsing.” But to extrapolate a little, the imminent destruction of Fox’s X-Men universe might explain how they come to be in the MCU’s core universe. Maybe they’re just doing what mutantkind has always had to do: adapt and survive. And with trailers and promo material teasing Doctor Doom using anti-mutant tech (hello Sentinels!) and some potential hostility between the Avengers and X-Men, perhaps the seeds are being sown for Doom to pit the teams against each other, framing them as one other’s greatest existential threats to distract from his own sordid schemes. We wouldn’t put it past him — his name’s not exactly Dr. Doesnicethings, is it?
With worlds colliding, the multiverse collapsing, and the Avengers preparing to assemble once again, if Endgame Encore has taught us anything for certain then it is this. Dread it. Run from it. Doomsday arrives all the same. Roll on December 16…
