Marvel Cinematic Universe fans are flipping out at the idea of the villain Doctor Doom making his movie debut in the franchise in the upcoming Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, all of which comes from a purported leak of a pre-visualization from the upcoming film that has surfaced online.
It’s important to clarify out the gate that Doom’s supposed appearance in Wakanda Forever is merely a rumor at this point, so take the speculation with a grain of salt. According to our research, the origin of the image online comes from a post by Reddit user u/Major-Concentrate-87 on the r/MarvelStudios subreddit, as well as a post on Twitter by the user @Moth_Culture.
In the Reddit post, the image contains the tag “BP: Wakanda Forever.” However, the Twitter post is more cryptic and doesn’t actually state what project the image is supposedly from,
“Full Supposed Pre-Vis Shot MCU Doctor Doom.”
Regardless of if the leak is genuine or not, fans are already getting excited about the prospect of Doctor Doom in the MCU.
“Yo MCU Doctor Doom looks pretty perfect,” one Twitter user wrote.
Now that Disney has acquired 20th Century Fox and subsequently now owns the movie rights to Fantastic Four characters, it’s only a matter of time before Doom, and the various heroes from that franchise will be folded into the greater MCU. In fact, we already got a brief taste of that with the appearance of John Krasinski’s Reed Richards in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
Arguably, it’s not a matter of “if” Doctor Doom will appear in the MCU but “when.” As to whether that time will truly be in Wakanda Forever is up for debate.
One fan was simply happy to see the Doctor Doom leak coinciding with the birthday of the late, great rapper MF Doom, who took much inspiration from the Marvel character.
Of course, speculation has already gone into overdrive as to what Doctor Doom’s role in Wakanda Forever might be. According to one MCU fan page, they believe Doom won’t be the main villain in the Black Panther sequel, but that he’ll likely “appear in the credit scene” in order for the franchise to tease “the next Thanos level character.” Even though there’s no support to back that claim up one way or another, it certainly sounds like a pretty good hypothesis regardless.
Other Twitter users were simply mocking how basic the image looked as if it were staged by action figures.
One of the things that sometimes adds authenticity to leaks is when the post is taken down by way of a copyright strike. That hasn’t happened with the apparent original posts of the image so far, but that doesn’t necessarily rule out the rumor, either.
One Twitter user pointed out how a supposed leak of Patrick Stewart’s Professor Xavier battling Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff surfaced in the fall of 2021, more than six months before the release of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
That pre-viz turned out to be totally correct in terms of nailing the look of the scenario in Multiverse of Madness between Xavier and Wanda.
In terms of what’s next for Doctor Doom in the MCU, IGN reported that there are currently rumors of a forthcoming project with the character that will be announced for Phase 5 during San Diego Comic-Con this year. SDCC is slated to kick off next week, so perhaps we’ll get more information then.
In the meantime, We Got This Covered previously reported that Howard Stern has teased that he’s currently working on a Doctor Doom project, but it could just be an epic troll. Unsurprisingly, Marvel fans can’t make heads or tails of Stern’s comments.
We’ll just have to see if the Doctor Doom concept art is the genuine article or some cleverly realized fan art. Regardless, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is slated to hit theaters on November 11.