THE ROAD TO DOOM

Thaddeus Ross is now President of the United States, played by Harrison Ford, attempting to rehabilitate his warmongering reputation and reconcile with his daughter Betty.

How he got elected isn't dwelt on: he ran on a strongman platform of protecting America from unprecedented threats, and Samuel Sterns — a gamma-enhanced supergenius — was secretly engineering the campaign as part of a decades-long revenge plan.

The plot centres on adamantium, mined from the Celestial corpse in the Indian Ocean — now "Celestial Island." Ross negotiates an international treaty to regulate its distribution. The US and Japan come to the brink of war over it.

The mastermind is Samuel Sterns — the Leader — from The Incredible Hulk, seventeen years earlier. Ross imprisoned him at a black site, publicly blamed him for the Abomination, and promised release in exchange for his help winning the presidency and treating his failing heart. Ross reneged. Sterns has spent years engineering revenge, including the gamma pills Ross has been taking.

Sterns triggers Ross's transformation into the Red Hulk — the only film in which this happens. Sam beats him and then, more importantly, talks him down.

Ross resigns, accepts imprisonment at the Raft — the same floating prison where he once locked up Team Cap — and reconciles with Betty. Isaiah Bradley is freed from prison. The adamantium treaty passes.

So the answer to whether Ross is still the villain of The Incredible Hulk: no. This is a redemption arc, and it ends with him choosing accountability.

Also here: Joaquín Torres is now flying as the new Falcon, and takes a near-fatal injury in the aerial battle over Celestial Island. He recovers, and is confirmed for Doomsday.

Sterns's parting warning to Sam is about threats from other worlds and universes.

Sam is confirmed for Doomsday and has been rebuilding the Avengers since.

Bullseye kills Foggy Nelson in the opening — on Vanessa Fisk's instruction, revealed later in a flashback. Matt abandons the mask and returns to law. Wilson Fisk runs for Mayor of New York and wins.

A serial killer called Muse forces Matt back into the suit. Fisk creates an Anti-Vigilante Task Force to hunt him.

Why does Matt take a bullet for his own nemesis? Bullseye tries to assassinate Fisk at a political gala and Matt intercepts. He does it because he is a Catholic who does not kill, and letting a man die by inaction is, to him, the same as killing. It's the most concise statement of his code the show makes — and Fisk hunting him anyway is the most concise statement of Fisk's.

Matt and Frank Castle team up in the finale; Castle is captured and caged in Fisk's Red Hook compound. Matt is driven into hiding and begins assembling a resistance of old allies. Karen Page survives.

Fisk murders Police Commissioner Gallo with his bare hands, uses the death as pretext, and declares martial law over New York.

The post-credits scene has Castle escaping — which leads into The Punisher: One Last Kill special.

Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, CIA director facing impeachment, sends four of her expendable operatives — Yelena Belova, John Walker, Ghost (Ava Starr), and Taskmaster — to a facility to unknowingly kill each other and erase evidence of Project Sentry.

Where each of them came from, and how they met her:

On Bucky being a congressman: the film shows him already in office and never dramatises the campaign.

He was pardoned after FATWS, is a public war hero with a hundred-year history, and ran on it. Treat the mechanism as unexplained.

Why don't they kill each other? They work out very fast that they've all been handed the same job — Yelena is sent to eliminate a target, and so are Walker and Ghost. They realise mid-fight that the "target" is each other and that the vault is a sealed incinerator. Self-preservation forces cooperation; what keeps them together afterwards is Yelena and Bob.

They survive. They find Bob Reynolds, a test subject with functionally unlimited power and severe depression, whose despair manifests as a reality-consuming entity called the Void. Alexei Shostakov rescues them and names them the Thunderbolts, after Yelena's childhood football team that never won a game. Bucky Barnes, now a congressman, joins the investigation.

The Void engulfs New York. The team defeats it not by fighting but by physically holding Bob and refusing to leave — the whole thematic argument of the film is that the answer to that kind of emptiness is other people. Yelena is the first person in the film to treat him as a person rather than an asset, and that's what it turns on.

Three different "Voids", none related, since the word keeps recurring: the deep space Loki falls into off the Bifröst in Thor (2011); the junkyard at the end of time where the TVA dumps pruned timelines, guarded by Alioth (Loki, Deadpool & Wolverine); and this one, the shadow manifestation of Bob's depression — a psychological entity, not a place.

Cornered, Valentina stages a press conference and rebrands them as the New Avengers, taking public credit. They play along. Yelena tells her: "We own you now." The on-screen title changes from Thunderbolts* to The New Avengers.

Post-credits, fourteen months later, they operate from the rebranded Avengers Tower — "the Watchtower" — arguing with Sam Wilson over trademark rights to the Avengers name, when a distress signal arrives from an extradimensional craft marked with a 4.

Riri Williams, expelled from MIT, builds armour with stolen resources and falls in with Parker Robbins / the Hood, whose cloak grants magic at a cost.

The finale reveals the cloak's source: Mephisto, played by Sacha Baron Cohen — a demon lord who has now entered the MCU. Riri strikes a deal with him to resurrect her dead best friend.

This is a seed for something after Doomsday, not for Doomsday itself. Optional.

Set in a separate universe with a retro-futurist 1960s aesthetic, not on Earth-616. Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm, and Ben Grimm have been public heroes for four years following a cosmic-radiation accident.

The Silver Surfer — here Shalla-Bal, who became Galactus's herald to spare her homeworld Zenn-La and then spent centuries selecting other worlds for consumption — arrives to announce Earth's consumption.

Whether a Silver Surfer exists on Earth-616 has never been addressed; this one is native to the retro universe.

Galactus is a cosmic entity who consumes planets. He isn't evil in a moral sense — he describes an insatiable hunger he cannot refuse, and he predates the current universe. He wants Franklin Richards because Franklin's cosmic potential could take on that hunger permanently: a successor who would free him.

He offers to spare Earth in exchange for the baby. They refuse. Sue gives birth to Franklin during the escape.

The team attempts to teleport Earth out of Galactus's reach; it fails. Galactus takes Franklin. Sue expends everything she has to push Galactus into a portal, and dies.

Franklin — days or weeks old — reaches out, touches her, and she revives. No explanation is offered, which is the point: he is an infant with power nobody understands, including his parents.

Mid-credits, four years later — Franklin is roughly four — Sue leaves him alone for a moment and returns to find a man in a green cloak holding a metal mask standing over him. Victor von Doom has arrived. This is Doom's first on-screen MCU appearance, silent, and it is the single most load-bearing setup for December.

How do they get to Earth-616? The film never shows the crossing.

The Thunderbolts* post-credits — an extradimensional craft marked with a 4 arriving on Earth-616 — is the arrival, and Doomsday presumably covers the mechanism.

Franklin's own reality-altering ability is the most-cited fan explanation. Marvel has said this film flows directly into Doomsday.

Eight episodes, released all at once on 27 January 2026. Created by Destin Daniel Cretton — who also directed Brand New Day — and Andrew Guest.

Simon Williams (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is a struggling second-generation Haitian-American actor auditioning for the lead in a remake of a superhero film called Wonder Man, directed by Von Kovak. He has innate superpowers he conceals, in an industry that has blacklisted superbeings and a society turning hostile to them.

He befriends Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley) — the fake Mandarin from Iron Man 3, now out after a decade imprisoned for impersonating a terrorist leader, and trying to be rediscovered. Their friendship is the show.

Reviews describe it as a Hollywood satire and a genuine Slattery redemption arc, with Slattery ultimately trading his own freedom to protect Simon's shot at the role. Simon's powers are held back until episode eight.

Self-contained and not required for Doomsday.

Six months after Season 1. Matt and Karen are fugitives; Matt has assembled a resistance and sinks Fisk's weapons freighter, the Northern Star. Jessica Jones returns as an ally. Heather Glenn, Matt's former partner, has fully joined Fisk's administration.

The finale is a public trial. Matt reveals himself as Daredevil on live broadcast to testify about the Northern Star. Karen is freed. Fisk barricades the courthouse; the city rises; protestors in Daredevil masks storm the building and overpower him. Fisk is forced out of office. Matt is arrested for vigilantism.

Karen is acquitted in the finale.

Season 3 is expected to bring Iron Fist and reunite the Defenders.

It has no confirmed release date, and

lands after Doomsday — probably 2027 or later.

A standalone Frank Castle special bridging his escape from Fisk's compound.

I don't have detail on it beyond that.

Peter Parker in a world that doesn't remember him, working street-level, watching MJ and Ned live lives he's no longer in. The Punisher (Jon Bernthal) and Hulk appear. Yelena Belova appears twice, as leader of the New Avengers, dismissing Peter's problems as "small potatoes."

Sadie Sink plays a new character, reported as Jean Grey.

If so, she is not the Famke Janssen Jean from the Fox films — different universe, different generation. Reporting suggests Sink returns in Secret Wars, which is expected to introduce a young mutant cast. Marvel has confirmed nothing. Treat this as the least certain claim in this document.

On the Punisher: I don't have scene-level detail.

Chronologically his appearance follows his escape from Fisk's compound and the One Last Kill special, and reporting states the role works without having seen any Netflix material.

On Hulk: I also don't have reliable detail on what state the character is in here. Treat any confident explanation you read as speculation unless it cites the film.

One post-credits scene, no mid-credits: Ned's Spider-Man tracking app pinpoints Spider-Man somewhere in deep space, followed by "Spider-Man Will Return" with no film named.

Tom Holland is not on the announced Doomsday cast list.

The consensus reading is that this points at Avengers: Secret Wars (2027) rather than Doomsday — in the comics, Secret Wars sees Doom compress the multiverse into a single world called Battleworld.

Paul Bettany returns as White Vision — the S.W.O.R.D.-rebuilt body that flew off at the end of WandaVision with the original's memories and none of his humanity. James Spader returns as Ultron.

Beyond that premise I have no reliable detail; it hasn't aired.

It's positioned as the final release before Doomsday.