I could spend this entire article listing all of the things we currently don’t know about Avengers: Doomsday. More than most Marvel Cinematic Universe projects, the blockbuster film has been shrouded in a unique kind of secrecy, only broken by occasional quotes from cast members and an hours-long livestream of chairs.
As we wait to see how the film not only culminates the last half-decade of the MCU’s Multiverse Saga, but folds in the first generation of Fox-verse X-Men stars, any update has naturally become a major talking point. And the latest one yet, courtesy of an Instagram post from the film’s directors, Joe and Anthony Russo, might be the funniest example of that yet. On Tuesday morning, the directors shared an image of white markings on a dark grey background… although “image” might be too strong of a word, because the post is so blurry that you can essentially count the pixels on it.
When I first saw this post, my brain immediately went to two places: the “she looks so proud of Harry” meme, and a sense of immediate worry that another chair-related livestream might be on the horizon to consume my entire day. And based on the chatter on social media this morning, other Marvel fans’ brains have gone to different places entirely: attempting to decipher helmet designs or hidden messages or logos (the Punisher’s skull symbol has, somehow, come up a lot) from the combination of pixels. While we’ll have to wait a while to see exactly what the answer is (if we ever get it at all), there is one possibility that feels likely… in part because it has a bit of comic precedent.
Solve Everything
One of the things we do know about Avengers: Doomsday is that it will feature the return of Pedro Pascal’s Reed Richards / Mister Fantastic. And among the things Reed Richards loves (in addition to his wife, his family, and the mere possibility of science itself) is writing equations on boards. Countless stories in the comics have shown him doing so, to the point of last year’s The Ultimates #4 using it to put in motion one of the most heartbreaking comic stories in recent memory. Pascal’s Reed even worked out equations on a gigantic curved blackboard while trying to stop Galactus in this summer’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
When you look at the Russos’ blurry Instagram post through that lens: as a partial glimpse at Reed’s chalkboard, either in the Earth-828 Baxter Building or elsewhere, then the confusion can start to subside. It seems incredibly likely that Reed would write something down during the events of Doomsday, between all of the information that he and the rest of the Fantastic Four are going to learn once they cross over with Earth-616, and the overarching problem of how everyone is going to stop Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom.
Doomsday could even take it a step further and give us a version of Reed’s “solve everything” mantra (which was already used on pieces of First Steps merchandise, despite not actually being in the movie). In the comics, Reed uses whatever surface is available to him to work out the logistics of how to solve all of the world’s problems — poverty, hunger, war, and the like — even as those around him think it is virtually impossible. Initially introduced during the Dwayne McDuffie-penned run of Fantastic Four, the concept flourished in some unexpected ways once Jonathan Hickman took over the title, leading to the introduction of the multiversal Council of Reeds.
Fans have wanted to see the Council of Reeds onscreen in the MCU since before Pascal was even cast in the role, and the multiversal stakes of Doomsday and 2027’s Avengers: Secret Wars would definitely be a reasonable setting for it to happen in. Let the theories about Ioan Gruffudd, Miles Teller, and John Krasinski cameos commence.
Avengers: Doomsday is currently scheduled to be released exclusively in theaters on December 18, 2026.
(featured image: Marvel Studios)
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