The Road to Doomsday Part 6 — Avengers: Endgame Encore (2019, 2026)

After a demoralizing defeat in Avengers: Infinity War, we see half the team struggle to move past the damage caused by Thanos and resort to a “time heist” to collect the Infinity Stones from their past and bring everyone back. With that said, half of Endgame’s epicness is reliant on the nostalgia for the past MCU films — it takes us back to 2012 New York, 2014 Asgard and 2014 Morag and we get to see all the characters that made up a decade-long saga. Some of the dialogue lines are perfectly written and can be used as set-ups for the future of the MCU, including Tony Stark’s “When you mess with time, it tends to mess back” and Thanos’s “You couldn’t live with your own failure. Where did that bring you? Back to me”. 

It goes without saying that the final battle scene will go down in history as arguably the best thing one can see in a packed movie theatre. The film also establishes the future of the MCU onwards, with Natasha Romanoff and Tony Stark sacrificing themselves, Steve Rogers passing on the Captain America shield to Sam Wilson and Thor joining the Guardians of the Galaxy. 

MCU: The Road To Doomsday:

• The AVENGERS: DOOMSDAY Trailer is Out, and It’s Everything We Could Hope For!
• Avengers: Doomsday Trailer, X-Men Cast Announcement, VisionQuest Trailer and more! — Everything that happened for Marvel during D23
• The Road to Doomsday Part 1 — X-Men (2000)
• The Road to Doomsday Part 2 — X2 (2003)
• The Road to Doomsday Part 3 — Avengers (2012)
• The Road to Doomsday Part 6 — Avengers: Endgame Encore (2019, 2026)

(Encore spoilers ahead!)

As for the new scenes, released in theatres through Avengers: Endgame Encore, they reveal some crucial facts for Doomsday:

1. Loki (2022) is the single most important must-watch for the December megaevent, as revealed by two of the four new scenes — one of them features Loki interrupting Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter’s romantic ending, when he says that he “can help” both of them, and the other shows us the Time Variance Authority’s reaction to the multiversal destruction;
2. Apart from his rather insignificant role in the promotional material released so far, Loki is one of the most important characters for this film, possibly acting as one of its main heroes against Doom;
3. Doom is collecting Avengers as Thanos collected Infinity Stones — in one of the new scenes, Dr. Bruce Banner is recording himself to study his returning “incidents” as the Hulk, which are featured in Spiderman: Brand New Day. However, Doctor Doom interrupts him and says that he is here to collect Mr. Banner;
4. There is some correlation between Victor Von Doom and Tony Stark, apart from sharing Robert Downey Junior’s face — the original version of Avengers: Endgame remarkably ends with the sound of the Iron Man mask being forged. In this version, the 2008 recording is played over three fast flashes of Doctor Doom forging his own mask;
5. The old version of Steve Rogers we see in the end of Endgame has likely lived through the events of both Doomsday and 2027’s Secret Wars — the 2019 version hints that the Steve we see return in the end and pass on the shield is the same that lived his life with Peggy and that, now, has been in contact with Loki.

Moreover, in the Countdown to Doomsday podcast, Iman Vellani asks Robert Downey Junior what made him want to return to the MCU after a full-cycle ending with Avengers: Endgame. In a recorded note, he said it was “the opportunity to redefine the genre of superhero movies”. His statement raises the stakes for Avengers: Doomsday, especially after revisiting his career-defining performance as Tony Stark.