The third teaser for Avengers: Doomsday opens with an image that should terrify anyone who’s been paying attention to the pattern Marvel’s been building.
Cyclops—James Marsden’s Cyclops, in a comic-accurate blue and yellow suit we’ve waited two decades to see—on his knees in front of a burning X-Mansion. Behind him, a Sentinel looms. And Scott Summers is screaming. Not the controlled, tactical leader from the Fox films. This is a man who’s lost everything.
Now, compare that to the first two teasers. The first one showed Steve Rogers holding a newborn baby, looking down at the child with the kind of devastation that only comes from knowing you can’t protect them. The second showed Thor on his knees, praying to the memory of Odin for the strength to save Love—the cosmically-powered daughter he adopted in Love and Thunder.
See the pattern?
Three teasers. Three heroes. Three fathers. And every single one of them is watching Doctor Doom come for their children.
But here’s what makes this more than just another Infinity War-style “the villain threatens our heroes” setup: these aren’t just random kids. They’re children who shouldn’t exist. Children born from timeline manipulation, cosmic intervention, and reality-warping decisions that heroes made when they thought the rules didn’t apply to them. Steve Rogers got his baby by living in an alternate timeline with Peggy Carter. Thor brought Love back from the dead using the power of Eternity. And Cyclops—well, Cyclops is alive right now because Wolverine went back in time and changed history.
Which means their children exist because someone broke time. And now Doctor Doom is targeting them.
Because if Doctor Doom is coming for children who were born from cracks in the timeline, we need to understand why these children exist in the first place.
The Scene That Broke Cyclops
Let’s start with what we’re seeing in that third teaser.
Cyclops is in full costume—not the black leather from the Fox films, but the blue and yellow suit with the distinctive X-belt that comic fans have wanted since 2000. He’s battle-damaged. His visor is cracked. And he’s standing in front of what looks like the ruins of the X-Mansion, with fires burning in the background and debris everywhere.
Behind him, partially obscured by smoke, there’s the unmistakable silhouette of a Sentinel—one of the mutant-hunting robots that defined some of the darkest X-Men storylines in both the comics and Days of Future Past.
Then Cyclops does something we’ve never seen him do in any of the Fox films: he removes his visor entirely, opens his eyes, and unleashes an optic blast with everything he has left. The raw, uncontrolled kind that only happens when Scott Summers has been pushed past his breaking point.
And he’s screaming while he does it.
Not the focused, strategic blast we saw in the original trilogy. This is desperation. This is a father who’s already lost what he was trying to protect, and all he has left is rage.
And this is where James Marsden’s twenty-year wait finally becomes the emotional center of the MCU’s next saga.
The Mad Daddies Pattern: Doom is Coming for Their Kids
Let’s talk about the pattern, because once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
The first Avengers: Doomsday teaser showed Steve Rogers holding a newborn baby with the kind of devastation that comes from knowing you can’t protect them. Based on the fact that Steve lived out his life with Peggy Carter in an alternate timeline, this is almost certainly his child—born from Steve’s decision to break time and get his happy ending.
The second teaser focused on Thor praying to Odin’s memory, begging for strength to protect Love—the girl he adopted in Love and Thunder. Love isn’t just Thor’s adopted daughter; she’s the child of Eternity itself, brought back from the Shadow Realm by Thor’s wish. She’s potentially the MCU’s Captain Universe, with powers that could rival a Celestial.
Now we’ve got Cyclops screaming as the X-Mansion burns. Following the pattern, this is about his daughter—most likely Rachel Summers, one of the most powerful Phoenix Force hosts in Marvel Comics.
And there’s one more: Franklin Richards.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps post-credits scene showed Reed and Sue Storm’s son displaying the Power Cosmic. In the comics, Franklin is an Omega-level mutant with reality-warping abilities, considered one of the most powerful beings in existence. His parents are confirmed for Avengers: Doomsday.
Four children. Four fathers. And now here’s where Doom’s plan gets terrifying.
These aren’t just powerful kids. They’re children born from or empowered by events that shouldn’t have happened:
• Steve’s child: Born in a timeline Steve created by breaking the “sacred timeline”
• Love: Brought back from death using Eternity’s cosmic power
• Rachel: Exists because Wolverine rewrote history in Days of Future Past
• Franklin: Possesses universe-level reality-warping from birth
Every single one has powers that operate on a cosmic scale—the kind of power you’d need to reshape reality. Or create a Battleworld.
In the 2015 Secret Wars comic, Doctor Doom steals the Beyonders’ power and creates Battleworld: a patchwork planet made from fragments of destroyed universes, with Doom ruling as God Emperor. If the MCU is adapting this—and all signs point to yes—Doom doesn’t need to find the Beyonders.
He just needs to collect children who already have that level of power.
The Phoenix Force, which can create and destroy universes. The Power Cosmic, which Galactus uses to consume worlds. The powers of Eternity, a cosmic entity that is the universe itself. These kids are walking arsenals of reality-warping ability.
And they exist because heroes broke the rules.
Why would Doom target these specific children? Because they’re not just powerful—they’re born from the cracks in reality that heroes created when they decided consequences didn’t apply to them. They’re the evidence that the multiverse is already broken. And Doom is going to use them to put it back together in his image.
Why Cyclops and Jean’s Daughter Makes Perfect Sense
But wait—wasn’t Cyclops dead?
Yes. And that’s exactly the point.
If Rachel Summers exists in the MCU, she’s the daughter of Cyclops and Jean Grey from the Fox X-Men timeline. In the comics, Rachel is one of the most important X-Men characters ever created. She debuted in 1981’s Uncanny X-Men #141-142—the original “Days of Future Past” storyline—as a survivor from a dark future where Sentinels had hunted mutants to near-extinction.
In that timeline, Rachel was taken as a child and turned into a “Hound”—a mutant tracker used to hunt down other mutants. She eventually escaped, traveled back in time, and became one of the Phoenix Force’s most powerful hosts. She’s an Omega-level mutant with her mother’s telepathic and telekinetic abilities, and she inherited the cosmic firebird that has defined the Grey family for decades.
If the MCU is using Rachel, she makes perfect sense as a target for Doctor Doom. She’s not just another mutant with strong powers—she’s someone who could potentially access the full power of the Phoenix Force, the same cosmic entity that Jean Grey wielded in Dark Phoenix. The Phoenix can create life, destroy entire star systems, and remake reality on a universal scale.
That’s exactly the kind of power Doom would want if he’s trying to reshape the multiverse into Battleworld. And if Rachel inherited the Phoenix Force from her mother—or if she’s destined to become its host—she’s not just powerful. She’s a cosmic-level threat in the body of a child who exists because time got rewritten.
But here’s the real kicker: if Rachel exists in the MCU, it’s because Cyclops and Jean got their happy ending. Which brings us to the question of how that’s even possible, given that Scott Summers died in 2006.
The Fox X-Men Timeline: From Death to Resurrection
If you’re wondering how Cyclops went from dead to alive to potentially losing his daughter to Doctor Doom, we need to talk about the Fox X-Men timeline—and about James Marsden’s twenty-year wait for this moment.
Here’s the short version: Cyclops died in 2006’s The Last Stand. Jean Grey, consumed by the Phoenix Force, vaporized him in the first act. It was unceremonious, anticlimactic, and happened largely because Marsden had a scheduling conflict with Superman Returns. Fox needed him out of the way so Wolverine could be the emotional center of Jean’s arc. For a character who was supposed to be the team’s leader, it was a brutal dismissal.
But Days of Future Past changed everything.
When Wolverine traveled back to 1973 and prevented the Sentinel program, he created a new future. The dark timeline—Sentinels hunting mutants to extinction—never happened. Which means The Last Stand never happened either. The film’s 2023 ending showed us the result: Cyclops alive, teaching at the X-Mansion alongside Jean Grey. Together. Happy. Finally getting to exist without being killed off or pushed aside for Wolverine’s story.
In interviews during the Avengers: Doomsday press tour, Marsden called his return “a homecoming.” For twenty years, fans had been asking when Cyclops would get another shot. “It feels like we’re finally giving Scott the story he deserved,” Marsden told Deadline in August 2025. “This isn’t just a cameo. This is his moment.”
And here’s the tragic irony: that moment is built entirely on time travel.
Wolverine changed history. Xavier’s school thrived. Scott and Jean lived, taught, and presumably had Rachel. Everything worked out. The heroes won. They saved the future by rewriting the past.
And twenty-three years later, that victory is exactly what dooms them.
Doctor Doom isn’t targeting random powerful children. He’s collecting the kids who exist because heroes broke time to get happy endings. The children born from temporal paradoxes. The ones whose very existence proves the multiverse is already fracturing at the points where heroes decided the rules didn’t apply to them.
Cyclops got his second chance—the one Fox’s creative decisions denied him for years. He got to live, to love Jean, to build a family. And now he’s on his knees in front of a burning X-Mansion, screaming because Doom is taking the daughter who represents everything that second chance gave him.
The scream isn’t just grief. It’s rage at the cosmic injustice of finally getting what you deserved, only to have it weaponized against you.
Universe, Timelines, and Why These Kids “Shouldn’t Exist”
Okay, this is where it gets technical—but stay with me, because this is the key to understanding why Doom wants these specific children.
The MCU makes a distinction between universes and timelines. Think of it like this:
A universe is the trunk of a tree. The MCU is Earth-616. The Fox X-Men films are Earth-10005—a completely separate tree. But within each universe, you can have branches: alternate timelines. When Steve Rogers went back to live with Peggy in Endgame, he didn’t jump to a different universe. He created a branch timeline within Earth-616. Same tree, different branch.
Got it? Good. Now here’s where it gets complicated.
An incursion is something else entirely. You’re not talking about branches anymore—you’re talking about two separate universe-trees colliding with each other. When that happens, one or both universes get destroyed. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness introduced this when Earth-838’s Doctor Strange triggered an incursion that wiped out an entire universe. The boundaries between realities corroded, the universes smashed together, and billions died.
In the comics—specifically the 2015 Secret Wars storyline—incursions nearly destroy everything. The Beyonders, godlike entities beyond the multiverse, engineer these collisions as part of a plan to end all reality. Doctor Doom eventually steals their power and creates Battleworld: a patchwork planet built from fragments of dead universes, with Doom ruling as god.
Now here’s where this connects to the children Doom is targeting.
Steve’s baby, Love, Franklin Richards, Rachel Summers—they’re not just powerful kids with cosmic abilities. They’re nexus points. Living contradictions. Children who exist because someone rewrote time to get a happy ending.
Steve Rogers shouldn’t have lived with Peggy—that’s a temporal paradox. Wolverine shouldn’t have changed 1973—that rewrites decades of history. Thor shouldn’t have brought Love back from the Shadow Realm using Eternity’s power—that’s cosmic-level interference. Each of these children represents a crack in reality, a point where a hero said “the rules don’t apply to me” and broke time or space to save someone they loved.
And here’s the terrifying part: these kids have universe-level powers. The Phoenix Force. The Power Cosmic. Powers inherited from Eternity itself. They’re walking, talking proof that the multiverse is already fracturing—and they’re powerful enough to reshape reality.
If Doom is following the Secret Wars playbook, he’s not randomly collecting powerful beings. He’s targeting the exact spots where heroes already weakened the barriers between universes. Every time someone “fixed” things by time traveling or making deals with cosmic entities, they created vulnerability. Every happy ending came with a price tag.
And Doctor Doom is coming to collect.
He’s not creating the crisis. He’s weaponizing the one the heroes already caused.
How Deadpool & Wolverine Connects to All This
Here’s where things get even more interesting: Deadpool & Wolverine already showed us this exact dynamic playing out.
The film officially designated the Fox X-Men universe as Earth-10005—a completely separate universe from the MCU’s Earth-616. But more importantly, it introduced the concept of “anchor beings”: specific individuals who are vital to a universe’s continued existence. When Wolverine died in 2017’s Logan, he was Earth-10005’s anchor being. His death caused that entire universe to start decaying.
The Time Variance Authority explained that without an anchor being, a universe essentially dies. It doesn’t collapse all at once—it slowly rots, with timelines fragmenting and reality becoming unstable. By the time Deadpool got involved, Earth-10005 was dying because Logan was gone.
But Deadpool and a variant Wolverine saved it. They found a new anchor—another Wolverine from a different branch of Earth-10005—and essentially gave the universe a transplant. The Fox X-Men timeline, the one where Cyclops and Jean are alive and teaching in 2023, is now a thriving universe again.
Except here’s the problem: if there’s going to be an incursion in Avengers: Doomsday, one of the universes that collides might be Earth-10005. And Doctor Doom might be engineering that collision specifically because he knows that universe contains children born from timeline manipulation—including Rachel Summers, if she exists.
Think about it. Wolverine changed time in 1973. That change created a branching timeline where Cyclops survived, Jean survived, and the Phoenix saga presumably never happened the same way. If Rachel was born in that timeline, she exists because of Wolverine’s intervention. She’s a living crack in reality, born from the same kind of temporal paradox that defines Steve’s baby and Thor’s daughter.
Doom doesn’t need to hunt down the Beyonders or steal their power. He just needs to find the points where the multiverse is already broken and exploit them. And the children of heroes who rewrote time? They’re not just powerful. They’re proof that reality is already compromised.
It’s not just that Doom is targeting the most powerful kids in the multiverse. It’s that he’s exploiting the consequences of heroes trying to save everyone.
Cyclops Finally Gets His Moment
So let’s circle back to that scream. The one that opens our third look at Avengers: Doomsday, the one where Cyclops falls to his knees and unleashes everything he has left while the X-Mansion burns behind him.
Now you know what it means.
It’s not just another superhero losing another battle. It’s a father who got a second chance at life—a chance that came from Wolverine and Xavier traveling through time to rewrite history—watching Doctor Doom rip away the daughter who was only possible because of that intervention. It’s Scott Summers finally getting the emotional weight that James Marsden deserved to carry twenty years ago, when Fox decided Wolverine should be the center of every X-Men story.
The irony is brutal and perfect. The heroes won in Days of Future Past. They saved their friends, created a better timeline, built families that shouldn’t exist. And now those victories are exactly what Doctor Doom is using to tear everything apart.
But here’s what makes this work: we’re not just getting a nostalgia trip. We’re getting Steve Rogers, Thor, Reed Richards, and Cyclops—four fathers whose happy endings came at a cosmic price—assembling to take on a villain who understands that the greatest weapon isn’t an Infinity Gauntlet. It’s exploiting the fact that heroes will do anything, break any rule, shatter any timeline, to save the people they love.
Cyclops in a comic-accurate suit, finally center stage, fighting for his daughter against impossible odds? That’s not fan service.
That’s justice. Twenty years late, but worth the wait.