How the Council of Kangs Were Trying to Save the Multiverse From Dr. Doom All Along
What if everything we thought we knew about the Multiverse Saga was backwards? What if He Who Remains—the enigmatic timekeeper we watched Sylvie kill at the end of Loki Season 1—wasn’t the villain of this story at all, but rather the last line of defense against an even greater threat? And what if Loki, by taking the throne and freeing the Sacred Timeline, inadvertently created the conditions for Dr. Doom to rise to power?
This isn’t just wild speculation. When you dig into the mechanics of how the MCU’s multiverse actually works, a fascinating—and frankly disturbing—picture emerges. The answer to why the Sacred Timeline existed, why Kang was banished to the Quantum Realm, and why Universe 616 was isolated from the wider multiverse all points to one conclusion: Victor von Doom.
The Sacred Timeline’s True Purpose
Let’s start with the basics, because the MCU’s approach to multiversal mechanics can get confusing fast. Universe 616—the main MCU timeline we’ve been following since Iron Man—is a single universe. But within that universe exist multiple strands of time. Think of it like a river with many currents flowing in the same direction.
Under natural conditions, these timeline strands would branch off into the wider multiverse, creating alternate realities. We saw exactly this happen at the end of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania when the multiverse started bleeding through. But when He Who Remains controlled the Sacred Timeline, all these temporal strands flowed parallel to one another, never splintering off or breaking through the universe’s barrier.
This is the key detail everyone misses. As we learned in What If…? and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, universes have barriers—literal walls of reality. When a branching timeline passes what the TVA called “the red line,” it’s not just diverging from its prescribed path. It’s breaking through its universe’s barrier and entering another reality. The TVA’s term “incursion” wasn’t chosen randomly—it’s exactly what Jonathan Hickman’s comics called reality collisions.
So the Sacred Timeline wasn’t just about preventing variants or maintaining one “correct” timeline. It was about keeping Universe 616 completely isolated from the rest of the multiverse. He Who Remains built an impenetrable fortress around his universe, hidden away from something—or someone—that wanted it destroyed.
Universe 616’s Doom Problem
Here’s where things get interesting. According to the broader context we can piece together from Loki and Quantumania, there’s a vast multiverse beyond the Sacred Timeline—a collection of universes managed by the Council of Kangs. This multiverse includes the Fox X-Men universe, the three Spider-Man universes, and countless others. The Council works together to maintain peace across realities, stomping out existential threats before they can spread.
The Council of Kangs operates much like the Spider Society in the Spider-Verse films—allowing certain tragic “canon events” to happen to maintain the web of reality. But Kang the Conqueror, native to Universe 616, had a different philosophy. He saw the multiverse dying and believed the only solution was authoritarian control on a massive scale. His proposed solution? Destroy free will entirely, creating a strict storyline across not just one universe, but all of them.
This conflict led to Kang’s banishment to the Quantum Realm of his own universe. And here’s the crucial part: with 616’s native Kang out of the way, the Council of Kangs could have easily destroyed Universe 616 entirely. They had the power. They had the motive. So why didn’t they?
Because before they could act, the universe vanished. It blipped out of existence—or rather, out of reach.
Think back to the end of Quantumania. Kang gets sucked into his multiversal engine core after his defeat at the hands (and feet) of an ant colony. Most people assumed he died. But that’s not what happened. The engine core exists outside normal spacetime, operating in a realm where every possible choice exists simultaneously. From inside that core, Kang found what he told us about in Loki Season 1: Alioth, the reality-consuming cloud monster. He tamed it, isolated his entire universe from his brothers’ multiverse, and built the TVA at the center of existence itself.
He became He Who Remains.
But why go to such extraordinary lengths? Why separate an entire universe and manage every single timeline within it? The answer lies in what Universe 616 naturally produces without intervention: not Tony Stark, savior of the universe, but Victor von Doom, destroyer of multiverses.
The God Emperor Threat
Anyone familiar with Jonathan Hickman’s 2015 Secret Wars run knows exactly how dangerous Doom can become. In that storyline, when incursions destroyed the entire multiverse, Doom managed to steal the power of the Beyonders themselves—reality-warping entities that exist beyond all existence. With that power, he created Battleworld from the fragments of destroyed realities and ruled as God Emperor for eight years.
This wasn’t just a power grab. God Emperor Doom literally became the omnipotent ruler of all that remained of existence, controlling the remnants of different realities stitched together into domains under his absolute authority. He rewrote people’s memories, claimed Reed Richards‘ family as his own, and maintained his iron grip on reality itself through sheer force of will. The multiverse didn’t just fear Doom—it ceased to exist except as his personal playground.
Now imagine that level of threat emerging naturally from Universe 616. Not as a last-ditch effort to save something from nothing, but as the inevitable evolution of a brilliant, wounded man who masters both science and sorcery. The Council of Kangs wasn’t being cruel when they wanted to destroy Universe 616. They were being pragmatic. One universe versus the safety of the entire multiverse? The math was simple.
But Kang the Conqueror, despite his authoritarian methods, saw value in his home universe. More than that—he saw the writing on the wall. He knew that without intervention, without someone willing to make hard choices, the multiverse would fall. So he isolated Universe 616, not to preserve it as it was, but to reshape it into something that wouldn’t birth its own destruction.
How Doom Became Stark
This is where the theory gets audacious, but it makes a disturbing amount of sense. In the natural flow of time—the timeline He Who Remains had to overwrite—Tony Stark never existed. Instead, a child was born in Latveria who would grow up to become Victor von Doom.
We know Doom’s origin from decades of comics. Born to Roma people in Latveria, young Victor lost his mother to the demon Mephisto and his father to exposure after fleeing from a cruel nobleman. His brilliance in both science and magic drew attention that eventually brought him to America. But in the MCU’s Universe 616, something different happened. Something deliberate.
He Who Remains made a change—a small one, but with massive implications. In this rewritten timeline, Howard and Maria Stark suffered a miscarriage. This tragedy led them to adopt a newborn from Latveria, a child they named Anthony Edward Stark. That child carried all of Victor von Doom’s natural gifts: genius-level intellect, an ego to match, a deep-seated need for control born from childhood trauma, and an inexorable drive to protect his world at any cost.
Tony Stark and Victor von Doom share more than just brilliance. Both are defined by armor—literal metal suits they hide behind while facing the world. Both discovered time travel. Both flirted with the kind of god-like power that could reshape reality. Remember Age of Ultron? Tony’s vision of being the only one left, of needing to protect Earth no matter the cost? That wasn’t just PTSD from New York. That was Doom’s nature showing through.
But there’s one critical difference He Who Remains built into the timeline. By placing young Victor in the Stark household—a family of scientists who dismissed “magic” and the mystic arts as superstition—he neutered Doom’s greatest weapon. Victor von Doom’s mastery of sorcery rivals his scientific genius. In the comics, Doom claims one of the most thorough libraries of magic spells and artifacts on the planet and has brought sorcery to a level that rivals or exceeds his scientific knowledge. But Tony Stark, raised by Howard and Maria, never explored that path. He remained bound to science alone.
This small change prevented Universe 616 from producing its natural outcome: a God Emperor who could threaten not just one reality, but all of them. Tony became the necessary pawn in He Who Remains’ empire. After all, it was Doom—now Tony—who discovered time travel in the first place. Some things are constants across timelines. He Who Remains couldn’t erase them; he could only redirect them.
Loki’s Unintended Consequences
Now we come to the tragedy of it all. When Sylvie killed He Who Remains at the end of Loki Season 1, she didn’t just free the Sacred Timeline. She exposed Universe 616 to the Council of Kangs—a Council that had been trying to destroy it before it vanished decades earlier.
The Quantumania post-credits scene takes on new meaning in this context. When the Council discusses “the exiled one is dead,” they’re not talking about the Kang variant we saw die in the Quantum Realm. They’re talking about He Who Remains. And the moment Loki takes the throne at the end of Season 2, allowing the timelines to branch freely, Universe 616 essentially blips back into existence for the Council.
They’re beginning to touch the multiverse. And the Council is terrified.
Without He Who Remains’ carefully maintained storyline, the timeline where Doom wasn’t adopted by the Starks can now exist. The barriers are down. The branches are growing. And somewhere in the vast web of possibility that Loki now oversees, Victor von Doom—true Victor von Doom, with all his scientific brilliance AND his mastery of the mystic arts—is coming into his own.
The Council of Kangs, with their guard down after decades of believing Universe 616 was neutralized, may already be too late to stop him.
What This Means for Doomsday
The original plan for Avengers: The Kang Dynasty would have featured Universe 616 rejoining the multiverse and going to war with the Council of Kangs, possibly culminating in Kang the Conqueror reemerging from his power core as a Beyonder-level entity. We likely would have seen the Avengers caught between trusting Loki—who fought Kang before—and the possibility of a temporary alliance with Kang to defeat the Council.
Following Jonathan Majors’ legal troubles and firing in December 2023, along with Quantumania’s underperformance, Marvel pivoted hard. By July 2024 at San Diego Comic-Con, the Russo brothers were announced as directors with Robert Downey Jr. returning to the MCU not as Tony Stark, but as Victor von Doom, and the film was retitled Avengers: Doomsday.
But here’s what’s fascinating: I don’t think the core story has changed as much as people assume. Doomsday will still be about universes colliding as a result of Loki’s actions. The split between Avengers who trust Loki and those who don’t will likely remain. The difference is that Doom now occupies the role originally meant for Kang—someone claiming he can bring order to the chaos of the multiverse.
And honestly? That makes the story even more compelling. Because Doom isn’t wrong about the threat. He WHO Remains saw it coming. The Council of Kangs tried to prevent it. But now Doom himself—the very threat they all feared—is positioning himself as the solution. That’s not just irony. That’s tragedy on a cosmic scale.
Recent leaks suggest that Doomsday will end with Doom using godlike power to create Battleworld after destroying the multiverse, setting up Secret Wars as the story of heroes trying to overthrow his absolute rule. If this theory holds, it means the entire Multiverse Saga has been building to the one outcome everyone tried desperately to prevent.
The Bitter Truth
What makes this theory so compelling isn’t just how it connects disparate plot threads from Loki, Quantumania, and the broader MCU. It’s the thematic weight it adds to everything we’ve watched.
He Who Remains wasn’t a villain maintaining control for control’s sake. He was a man who’d seen the multiverse die and made the hardest choice imaginable: to imprison an entire universe to save all the others. The Council of Kangs, often portrayed as antagonists, were trying to do their job—protect reality from existential threats, even if it meant making brutal calculations about which universes deserved to survive.
And Loki? Loki thought he was freeing everyone from tyranny. He literally took the burden of holding the multiverse together onto his own shoulders because he believed people deserved free will, even if it led to chaos. But in granting that freedom, he may have signed the death warrant for every reality in existence.
The road to hell, as they say, is paved with good intentions. And in the MCU, that road leads straight to Castle Doom.
When Avengers: Doomsday hits theaters in December 2026, we’ll see if this theory holds water. But one thing seems certain: Robert Downey Jr. coming back to play Victor von Doom isn’t just a casting stunt. It’s a statement about the cyclical nature of the MCU itself. The man who started this whole universe as Tony Stark may be the one who ends it as the God Emperor who tried—and failed—to prevent his own rise to power.
Sometimes the heroes and villains aren’t who we think they are. Sometimes the person trying to save the world and the person trying to destroy it are working toward the exact same goal, just from different timelines. And sometimes, the greatest tragedy isn’t that evil wins, but that everyone was right all along—just not in the way they thought.
The multiverse is about to learn that lesson the hard way.