The trailers for Spider-Man: No Way Home made some sneaky edits to keep Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield's respective returns under wraps. The Lizard, for example, was seemingly kicked in the face by thin air, and it wasn't until we sat down to watch the movie that we learned it was one of the Spider-Man Variants.
It probably shouldn't come as a surprise, then, that many fans are convinced the latest Avengers: Doomsday teaser trailer is also hiding some big reveals.
There are countless posts on X theorising that "[several] things [and] people" have been removed from the teaser. The prevailing theory is that Robert Downey Jr.'s Doctor Doom was supposed to be standing next to The Thing, and that the Fantastic Four's ship has also been digitally removed.
The surroundings Shuri, King M'Baku, and The Thing find themselves in are surprisingly sparse. While it's widely believed that the oceans usually surrounding Talokan have somehow been drained, this is an odd meeting spot for the Wakandans and Fantastic Four, suggesting there's much more going on here than initially meets the eye.
This comes after the Russo Brothers wrote on Instagram, "What you’ve been watching for the last four weeks are not teasers. Or trailers. They are stories. They are clues. Pay attention."
The Russo Brothers have a history of playing around with trailers; in the Avengers: Infinity War teaser, The Hulk was shown running into battle alongside the rest of The Avengers, which was a huge difference from what we saw in theaters. We're sure you'll also remember Deadpool & Wolverine hiding many of The Void's secrets in its previews.
“That conversation was had a while ago, and Robert tried to talk us into doing it and we said no," Joe Russo said last year. "We just didn’t have a story, we didn’t have a way in, so we were resistant for a while. And then one day, [Endgame writer] Steve McFeely called us and said, 'I have an idea.'"
"The only thing I’ll say about the movie is this: we love villains who think they’re the heroes of their own stories. That’s when they become three-dimensional and they become more interesting," he continued. "When you have an actor like Robert Downey, you have to create a three-dimensional, well shaped character for the audience. That’s where a lot of our focus is going."
The Russo Brothers direct Avengers: Doomsday from a screenplay by Stephen McFeely, with whom they previously collaborated on the Avengers and Captain America franchises. Loki and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness's Michael Waldron is also working on the script.
Avengers: Doomsday is set to be released on December 18, with Avengers: Secret Wars scheduled to arrive on December 17, 2027.