Days after Avengers: Doomsday’s directors issued a cryptic tease regarding the movie’s recent teasers, one fan believes they’ve “cracked the code” hidden in their countdown clocks.
The past month has seen Marvel unveil four Avengers: Doomsday teaser trailers, focusing on Steve Rogers, Thor, the X-Men and then Wakanda. Along the way we’ve seen our first look at the former Captain America and his newborn baby, an elderly Charles Xavier and Magneto, and The Fantastic Four’s The Thing meeting the new Wakandan king.
But after the last trailer released, Joe and Anthony Russo teased there was more to these clips than met the eye. “What you’ve been watching for the last four weeks… are not teasers. Or trailers,” the pair insisted. “They are stories. They are clues… Pay attention.” Just days later, a theory has arisen arounds what these clues could be — and it’s now gaining popularity among fans.
So, here’s what Marvel fans think is going on. At the end of each teaser, a countdown clock shows the remaining months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds to Avengers: Doomsday’s theatrical release (set from the moment the trailer was first available).
But each clock doesn’t start immediately — instead, the numbers appear in stages, so there’s a moment where a shorter timestamp is visible. And now, in a search for answers, fans have been cross-referencing these shorter timestamps with Avengers: Endgame — looking to see which scenes or snippets of dialogue they correspond with.
In a reddit post collating fans’ findings, Marvel aficionado Fear_Itself has listed out each timestamp and their respective moment in Endgame, beginning with the Steve Rogers trailer that features a timestamp of 1:24:20. This matches with the scene where Tilda Swinton’s Ancient One warns Hulk about removing Infinity Stones during the Time Heist, which will create branched realities — something that seems crucial if Doomsday, as is expected, explores the multiversal fallout of the Avengers’ past actions.
“This confirms that Steve’s mission to return the stones (and his subsequent decision to stay in the past) is central to the conflict,” Fear_Itself wrote. “It suggests his actions may have inadvertently triggered an incursion.”
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The timestamp in Thor’s trailer points to 1:17:20, which corresponds to the moment Loki steals the Tesseract and escapes, creating the variant seen in the Loki series. Again, this highlights a multiversal shenanigan which created a branched reality.
Next up, the X-Men trailer’s timestamp, which corresponds to 1:11:20. This is the scene in Asgard where Rocket asks Thor: “Are you crying?” Fear_Itself suggests this could be a pointer to Thor’s mental state, but I really like a second suggestion by elbatcarter, who links this line with Deadpool’s potential flashforward seen in Deadpool & Wolverine. “Why is Thor crying?” Deadpool says in that movie, looking at what appears to be an event from the future. It’s a loose plot thread that fans expect Avengers: Doomsday to wrap up.
Finally, the timestamp in the Wakanda trailer is for 1:04:20, which is the scene where the Avengers plan and test the Time Heist. Again, this could be a pointer to when the team first test out the technology that’s set to meddle with the multiverse.
“The Russo Brothers have told fans to ‘pay attention’ because these aren’t just trailers; they are ‘stories.’ The code tells us that Doomsday is the direct consequence of the Time Heist,” Fear_Itself wrote. “Every timestamp points to a moment where the Avengers meddled with time, creating the fractured multiverse that Doctor Doom (Robert Downey Jr.) will likely seek to repair or rule.”
While it’s a fine theory, it is just that — and other fans have suggested the timestamps could apply to other Marvel films, or simply point to relevant moments in Endgame out of sheer luck.
And why Endgame? It does make sense to try this movie first, as Doomsday increasingly feels like a sequel to that film’s story — picking up Steve Rogers’ life in the past, and likely exploring the ramifications of the Avengers’ dabbling in the multiverse, something which has only increased over the course of the recent MCU saga. (Also, making a movie that’s essentially an Endgame sequel also helps reintroduce the MCU to lapsed Marvel fans, who may have checked out of the franchise in the years since.)
So, what’s next? Well, this week Marvel began a live countdown clock to the release of Avengers: Doomsday that’s set to run for more than 11 months. So far, fans haven’t seen any further clues there, but hundreds are still watching at the time of writing. Fans had hoped for a fifth trailer to arrive in theaters this week, though it now looks like we’ll have to wait a little longer for that — until the Super Bowl on February 8, perhaps.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social