For starters, Doctor Doom has always been able to take over other people’s bodies, going all the way back to his third ever appearance in 1963.
Fantastic Four #10 showed Doom learning the power of body transference from a very easily-led group of aliens called the Ovoids. He used this power to swap bodies with his arch-enemy Reed Richards and go on a wilful rampage of chaos that involved tiny space dinosaurs and a visit to the real-life offices of Marvel Comics.
In a grand finale surely worthy of a being turned into a blockbuster, he was bonked on the head with a vase by the Invisible Woman, spooked by a stick of “flame dynamite” and shrunk to microscopic size and sent into the Microverse.
Doom has used this talent sparingly ever since, notably in 1983’s Fantastic Four #259, where he escaped death by switching bodies with a luckless bystander who’d popped out to do some shopping. Eerily, the name of this story was “Three to Doomsday” – could this be a clue to the plotline of the similarly titled Avengers: Doomsday?
Obviously, if Doom wanted to swap bodies with the original Tony Stark, he’d need to travel backwards in time to before he died fighting Thanos. Luckily, Doom has his very own time machine which has been used on various adventures, including a couple of trips to Camelot with none other than Tony Stark.
This time machine has already been seen, briefly, in the MCU in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, so it’s possible that Marvel could use it for a time travel/body swapping story through the history of the MCU… except that that was sort of the plot for Avengers: Endgame.
That brings us to the most likely solution – the multiverse, where different “variants” of the same character exist in different dimensions. There have been literally hundreds of comics variants introduced over the years, including an elderly Reed Richards, a LEGO figurine, and a Dutch tech bro descended from Dracula.
However, my choice for the movie version would be a Doctor Doom introduced last year who is exactly the same as the usual version – except that he’s a Tyrannosaurus rex. This Doom, from Earth-TRN1101, even wears the usual cape and armour while stomping around and roaring, and while this would be a bold direction for Marvel to go in, it is one I would definitely pay to see.
There have been so many multiversal versions of Doom that when they get together across dimensions they call themselves “The Parliament of Doom”. Despite this, there has never been a Prime Minister Doom, although he has managed to become president several times – and even once tricked the United Nations into making him King of the World.
In all of these stories, he eventually gave the job up because the admin was too much, something which would surely make for a relatable lead character in the forthcoming movies.
Doom has also created back-up versions of himself using other people’s bodies. In the 1980s, he adopted a young boy, Kristoff, to be his heir. However, instead of training him to fight crime (like Robin) or ask people what they do for a living (like Prince Charles), Kristoff was implanted with all of Doom’s early memories so he could replace the original if he died.
Finally, there are always robots – or, in this case, Doombots. Doctor Doom loves naming things after himself (he lives in Castle Doom in Doomstadt, for example), and he has an army of Doombots that not only look like him but are also designed to believe they are him should the original be indisposed.
This led to some serious mix-ups in the beta-testing phase, but Doom has made modifications to later designs, notably a self-destruct button. He’s also given them the ability to change their appearance, such as in last year’s The Night of Doom storyline, when an army of Doombots took over the identities of an entire town in order to protect an old lady who had once been nice to a young Doctor Doom.
It’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that a Doombot could decide to look like Robert Downey Jr – given the choice, many of us would do the same.
Whatever option Marvel use for the new movies, it’s clear that there are a whole multiverse of options for explaining how Doctor Doom looks like Iron Man. They may even make up an entirely new storyline, although personally I’m holding out my hopes for the T-rex in a cape!
Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars will release in May 2026 and May 2027 respectively.
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