Doctor Doom’s Avengers Costume Just Leaked—But Not Where You’d Expect

Marvel may have just soft-launched Doctor Doom in the most Disney way possible: a splashy light show at a marketing expo. Not a trailer. Not a poster. A laser-and-projection spectacle in Shanghai. Sure.

The Shanghai reveal

At the Walt Disney Studios Marketing Expo in Shanghai on September 11, 2025, Disney ran an official Avengers: Doomsday light show that looks like our first real look at Doctor Doom in the MCU. The displays focused on Robert Downey Jr.'s version of the character, giving a close pass at the mask and armor and what look like a few cheeky MCU nods baked in. One of the big ones: the outline of Shang-Chi's Ten Rings shows up if you are looking for it.

• Event: Official Avengers: Doomsday light show at the Walt Disney Studios Marketing Expo, Shanghai (Sept 11, 2025)
• Character: Multiple displays of Robert Downey Jr.'s Doctor Doom
• Costume: Clear views of the mask and armor
• Easter eggs: Visuals that appear to reference Shang-Chi's Ten Rings
• Logos flashed: X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Avengers - which sure looks like a hint at who is piling into this thing

The Secret Wars-sized tease

Clips from the light show are one thing, but separate images doing the rounds seem to nod at a very specific moment from Jonathan Hickman's Secret Wars comics. In that story, Doom rules a stitched-together patchwork planet called Battleworld made from bits of different Marvel realities. It is an inside-baseball, capital-c Comics setup, and Marvel leaning into it this early is... bold.

One panel everyone remembers: Doom executes Thanos and, in a nasty flourish, rips the Titan's skeleton out of his body. Brutal. Whether the movie goes there is a big question mark. Josh Brolin has not been confirmed to return as Thanos in Avengers: Doomsday, so file that under 'maybe a visual homage' until we hear otherwise.

Cast signals and the Russos being the Russos

The light show also cycled through the X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Avengers logos, which feels like a neon sign reading: we are throwing the whole universe at this. Meanwhile, directors Joe and Anthony Russo recently posted what looked a lot like a Fantastic Four tease on Instagram. Make of that what you will, but the timing is not subtle.

Marvel's new leak pipeline is... a vibe

This is not the first time Marvel has let big stuff slip through weird channels lately. The Fantastic Four movie quietly debuted Galactus via a Snapple tie-in, which is a sentence I never thought I'd type. And last year, Agatha All Along had the identities of Death and Billy/Wiccan spoiled almost immediately after the premiere thanks to a pair of Funko Pops. At this point, a marketing expo laser show leaking Doom fits right in.

Release date

Avengers: Doomsday is currently set for December 18, 2026, as part of Marvel's Phase 6.