The familiar Baxter Building featured in The Fantastic Four: First Steps will be seen again in Avengers: Doomsday, Marvel boss Kevin Feige has said, sparking speculation over what this means for the fate of the Fantastic Four’s version of Earth.
Discussing the ongoing filming for Avengers: Doomsday, Feige told Comic Book that the production was curently shooting on sets “built for Fantastic Four”, including the team’s living quarters seen in previous trailers.
But how will this version of Earth appear? And what brings the action back there, after the Fantastic Four leave their universe to cross over to the main MCU reality, as seen in the post-credits scene for Thunderbolts*/The New Avengers? Let’s take a look at eactly what Feige has said.
“Only speaking to the one we’re working on now, shooting now, for people who know the comics and know the word incursions, those are universes coming together,” Feige began. Here, the Marvel boss is making clear that he’s discussing Avengers: Doomsday, rather than the subsequent Avengers: Secret Wars, and referencing ‘incursions’ — the destructive smashing together of multiverse realities seen at the end of Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness.
“We will see this world that we’ve introduced (in First Steps),” Feige continued. “We’re shooting on all the same sets that we built for Fantastic Four, and it is very fun. I would say the now-iconic Baxter Building living room and kitchen where we saw the Four get to know each other in this movie, let’s say there are a lot more people in that kitchen in Avengers, and it’s fun to literally see people coming into each other’s homes, which is pretty awesome.”
It certainly sounds like Feige is suggesting we’ll see Avengers characters travelling over to the Fantastic Four universe — which perhaps because of an incursion is linked to the main MCU reality. Perhaps the Fantastic Four’s multiversal journey to the main MCU is what causes this incursion? Or maybe the Four are aware it’s coming, and are rushing over to get ahead of it?
Regardless, fans are taking Feige’s comments as confirmation the Fantastic Four reality is very much still standing at the end of First Steps — which would be something of a spoiler. Threatened by the planet-chomping Galactus, the Four’s retro-futuristic version of Earth was looking decidedly ropey in a recent trailer — but seemingly it survives, or at least the Baxter Building does, if the kitchen is still ready for a hangout sesh.
“He basically confirmed the Fantastic Four universe won’t be destroyed,” wrote redditor Significant_Silver99. But not everyone is so sure.
“Unless, the theory that the Baxter Building is the second ship as seen in Thunderbolts,” replied theknyte. “The rocket next to the building has 3 pylons, but the one in Thunderbolts has 4, and some think the Baxter Building may be a 2nd rocket they use to escape Galactus.”
Maybe the Fantastic Four reality is gone — but then why would Feige mention incursions? And surely at the end of the MCU’s Multiverse Saga, and with the need to set up the events of Secret Wars, having a handy alternate universe to explain the concepts of different realities and incursions would be useful.
Earlier this week, Feige revealed that Secret Wars would act as a “reset” for the MCU, after which the X-Men would be recast. It’s interesting to consider this in light of the fact that Doomsday also features numerous members of the original Fox universe X-Men cast. Surely with the Fantastic Four, and at least one incarnation of the X-Men not from our universe in play, Doomsday will feature some of these realities colliding.
Perhaps suggesting as much, Feige has now concluded with the following tease that points to the state of the MCU beyond Secret Wars — when those new X-Men will feature.
“Unlike Endgame, which really wasn’t ended, and then we go, where do we go from here? What do we do with this level of success and this level of finality? And we used it to experiment and we used it to evolve and we used it to expand, too much,” Feige noted. “Secret Wars, as in the comics, is as much about bringing certain storylines to a close as it is launching a new one. And that’s what’s very exciting, is already being well into development of the next saga.”
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
