Fans were left scratching their heads when Marvel recently revealed that a bunch of the cast from the early aughts X-Men movies would seemingly be reprising their roles in Avengers: Doomsday. What would put them on a collision course with Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark turned Victor von Doom? Well, after seeing an alleged leak from the set of the upcoming comic book blockbuster, some of them have a theory that’s just wild enough to be not altogether unconvincing.
Alongside expected returns like Chris Hemsworth as Thor and Anthony Mackie as Captain America, Marvel also revealed more surprising appearances in the May 2026 Avengers sequel, including Patrick Stewart as Professor X, Ian McKellen as Magneto, Kelsey Grammer as Beast, Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler, Rebecca Romijn as Mystique, and James Marsden as Cyclops. It seemed like a bad Deadpool joke, but it was very, very real. It’s still anyone’s guess how all of those pieces will fit together, but after a fresh leak allegedly from the set of the upcoming blockbuster, there are some interesting ideas about what might actually be going on.
Spoiler warning: If you don’t want to read a description of footage that might be from the set of Avengers: Doomsday or read about what fans think it could mean for the movie, well, uh, you probably shouldn’t have clicked on this article but in either case you should definitely stop reading now.
Someone uploaded apparent drone footage of what appears to be a set for Avengers: Doomsday to YouTube (via IGN) and it depicts what almost definitely seems to be the courtyard of the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning, aka the X-Mansion, riddled with explosions and craters. The entire thing is surrounded by a perimeter of shipping containers stacked one on top of the other, just waiting to be CGI’d over with some hyper-expensive combat set piece. It looks very much like the type of battlefield you’d set up at your favorite Warhammer miniatures tabletop night.
So what does it mean? Well, some fans are going with the idea that rather than being a mid-movie climax or final showdown, this fight is actually how Avengers: Doomsday will begin, similar to the way Avengers: Infinity War kicks off with Thanos fighting the Hulk. “It’d be badass if the intro of this movie was Dr. Doom beating the X-Men’s ass just like the first ultimate alliance game,” user BigPaleontologist520 wrote on the Marvel spoilers subreddit.
Others took it from there. “Oh yeah! That is an easy way to establish how badass Doom is—single handily finishing off an established superhero team,” responded InnocentTailor. “And getting the geriatric cast out of the movie earlier would make it less jarring to see them as they have aged,” followed up SpiffySpacemanSpiff. It’s certainly a neat, high-impact (and no doubt expensive) way to establish some big stakes in Avengers: Doomsday, which for many already feels like a desperate cash grab after years of Marvel superhero burnout at the box office. Some might feel like it’s a waste to get the aughts X-Men cast back together again just to see them get wrecked at the start, but it would certainly stop the gimmick from descending into purely nostalgic fan service.
Of course, this might not be the case at all. Just because the X-Men are fighting at the mansion doesn’t mean it’s occurring near the beginning of the movie, or against Dr. Doom and an army of Doombot-like sentinels. With multiverse incursions seemingly at play, the writers for Avengers: Doomsday have the plot tools to basically do whatever they want and make it sorta make sense. Plus the X-Mansion is always under attack. As one Reddit user noted, “I wouldn’t read too much into it, the school blows up every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.”
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