The MCU's Best New Villain Is So Much Scarier Than Doctor Doom

Published Aug 30, 2026, 2:30 PM EDT

Ben Sherlock is a Tomatometer-approved film and TV critic who runs the massively underrated YouTube channel I Got Touched at the Cinema. Before working at Screen Rant, Ben wrote for Game Rant, Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop. He's also an indie filmmaker, a standup comedian, and an alumnus of the School of Rock.

On December 18, when Avengers: Doomsday hits theaters, we’ll be introduced to the MCU’s next big bad. It was supposed to be Kang the Conqueror — the movie was supposed to be called Avengers: The Kang Dynasty — but Marvel Studios had to hastily pivot away from Kang when general audiences rejected the character and Jonathan Majors, the actor they cast to play every single variant of Kang, was found guilty of two misdemeanor counts of assault and harassment.

Rather than trying to recast Kang and keep this storyline going, Marvel decided to completely overhaul the culmination of the Multiverse Saga. The TVA could quietly deal with all the pesky Kangs in the background, while Earth’s Mightiest Heroes would face a new multiversal threat: Doctor Doom. Doom will be played by Iron Man himself, Robert Downey Jr., in what is possibly the stuntiest stunt casting in recent memory.

Based on the trailers, Downey seems to be giving a pretty awesome performance as Doom — his delivery of the line, “Hell answers to me, for I am Doom,” sent chills up my spine — and if anyone can make the next Avengers movie work, it’s the guys who made the last two work, the Russo brothers. Downey’s Doom might turn out to be a great villain, but he won’t be the best villain of the Multiverse Saga.

Doom has a couple of connections within the Fantastic Four, teased by Easter eggs in First Steps and some dialogue soundbites in the Doomsday trailers, but we as an audience don’t feel a personal connection between Doom and any of the Avengers. Using magic to bring Sentinels back to life and stopping Stormbreaker with two fingers both look really cool, but that’s not what makes an iconic villain. A few months ago, Daredevil: Born Again showed us how it’s done.

Bullseye Is Less Powerful Than Doom, But The Stakes Are Much More Personal

Wilson Bethel has been a perfect Bullseye since he was introduced in Daredevil season 3 — he’s always played Dex as a dark inversion of Matt Murdock — but the character really came into his own in the Disney+ revival, Daredevil: Born Again. The first season opened with Bullseye killing Foggy and Daredevil throwing him off a roof, but the second season gave him an unexpected redemption arc.

Matt’s Catholic guilt was tested when he reluctantly teamed up with his best friend’s murderer (inspired by his best friend’s own selflessness when he was alive) to take on a common enemy: Mayor Kingpin. Bullseye has killed half of Daredevil’s supporting cast by this point. Unlike the weightless multiversal shenanigans we can expect from Doomsday and Secret Wars, whose main purpose is to streamline the MCU continuity and tighten up the overstuffed ensemble, Bullseye’s confirmed kills actually hurt us, because we were losing those characters forever: Nadeem, Father Lantom, of course Foggy, and even Vanessa Fisk.

It’s all well and good to show us an omnipotent supervillain decimating an entire city with a flick of their wrist, but it’s much more impactful if they murder one person we really care about. Foggy’s death is much more effective than the off-screen deaths of millions of nameless people on Nova at the beginning of Infinity War.

Thanos wasn’t actually built up as much as people remember. He popped up in a couple of post-credits scenes of Avengers movies and had a supporting role in Guardians of the Galaxy, but we didn’t really get to know the Mad Titan until he took over as the protagonist of Infinity War and led us down a dark path toward universe-wide genocide. If Avengers: Doomsday can do the same with Doctor Doom this holiday season, then maybe the MCU isn’t doomed after all.