From Loki’s Void to Multiversal Incursions: Signs Avengers: Doomsday is setting up 'Battleworld'

The climactic chapter Marvel Cinematic Universe's (MCU) The Multiverse Saga is upon us. With a Special Look trailer for Avengers: Doomsday recently released by Marvel Studios, we got a deeper look into what we can expect from the film.

A large part of the specultion (supported by hesitant indications from the makers across various interviews) for Avengers: Doomsday and Secret Wars, the confirmed sequel to the upcoming magnum opus, is the inclusion of Battleworld in the plot. This element of the story is the resulting planet formed with fragments of the planets from the different universes that collide during the incursions.

With the reference source material of 2015 Secret Wars comic-book run by Jonathan Hickman confirmed to be the inspiration for both of these upcoming films, here are a few signs from the trailers, interview/reports, cast appearances and fan zones at events like D23 and Comic Con that point towards the live-action adaptation of the mind-bending concept.

'Incursions' is going to be most important word while discussing what threats the heroes will be facing in both the Avengers films. With the concept already established in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness this can be the first, most obvious and imperative sign pointing towards Battleworld. As discussed between characters of an alternate Mr Fantastic/Reed Richards played by John Krasinski and Doctor Strange (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) interferening across timelines and realities has previously caused the destruction of one or both as they begin to converge onto themselves. They key plot for Avengers: Doomsday is set to this premise further by making it the central conflict between characters of different realities.

The ending of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania established that messing with the timeline jumps and interfering with different realities reveal the true fragile nature of the multiverse. With Doctor Doom's personal goal to build his own utopia among this chaos reflected in the comics, it seems more likely that Battleworld will indeed serve as Doom's next step to take advantage of the Multiverse's true nature — resulting in the conflict with the Avengers, X-Men, and Fantastic Four hinted at during the Doomsday trailer.

Tom Hiddleston's Loki has become a central figure in the Multiversal conflict that began from the moment a variant that he plays in Avengers: Endgame escapes from the clutches of the Avengers and rather immediately falls into the radar of the Time Variance Authority (TVA), thus kicking off his true multiversal quest in the Loki series. With both Seasons 1 & 2 using the Void, a purgatory-like dumping ground exploited by the TVA, as an essential narrative device. Even the Deadpool & Wolverine film uses this realm to further its story. With many believing the Void to be the foundational grounds for the MCU's version of Battlegrounds, where fragments of the universe's we'll get to see in Doomsday, converging, it seems all the more likely that the story is headed towards this nightmarish storyline.

While many Marvel heroes in its history have been famously been deatached in their narratives across various films released by Disney, Sony and the erstwhile independednt 20th Century Fox, this film is bringing back most of these characters, categorised in their respective groups under one streamlined narrative. This is convergence is but the natural step towards the formation Battleground for the writers where the Doomsday can be considered as the set-up for this planet and Secret Wars can divulge the events that take place after.