{"id":93815,"date":"2025-07-26T10:11:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T10:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/93815\/"},"modified":"2025-07-26T10:11:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T10:11:13","slug":"doctor-doom-meets-franklin-richards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/93815\/","title":{"rendered":"Doctor Doom Meets Franklin Richards"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSPOILER ALERT: <\/strong>This story discusses major plot developments, including the ending and post-credits scenes, in \u201cThe Fantastic Four: First Steps<\/a>,\u201d currently playing in theaters.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrom the very first scene, the question of what will become of the child of Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal) and Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) looms over \u201cThe Fantastic Four: First Steps.\u201d When Sue tells Reed she\u2019s pregnant, his thoughts immediately turn to what it means for two people with superhuman DNA to procreate. Reed puts the fetus through every possible test he can, and nothing indicates anything is abnormal, so it comes as a shock when the massive, primordial, world-eating Galactus (Ralph Ineson) announces that Reed and Sue\u2019s child does, in fact, possess \u201cthe power cosmic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tReed, Sue, Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) and Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) are too busy keeping Galactus from taking Reed and Sue\u2019s child once he\u2019s born \u2014\u00a0oh, and also consuming the entire planet Earth \u2014\u00a0to find out what it means for wee Franklin Richards to have the power cosmic. But they get a pretty strong idea after Sue dies using all of her power to push Galactus into a giant teleportation portal. As Reed, Johnny and Ben weep over Sue\u2019s body, baby Franklin reaches out to her, places his hands on her shoulders, and, after a few moments, Sue\u2019s eyes become filled with stars as she gasps back to life.<\/p>\n

\n\tComic books being comic books, the boundaries of the power cosmic haven\u2019t been rigidly defined, but it is essentially the power of a god, with the ability to manipulate just about anything at will \u2014 including time itself. As a storytelling device, this level of almighty omnipotence can be dangerous: How can anything matter if your character can fix it all in a blink of an eye? To repeat: In \u201cThe Fantastic Four,\u201d Franklin saves his mother from death as an infant. Imagine what he\u2019d be able to do as a toddler, or a teenager.<\/p>\n

\n\tMarvel comics have dealt with this problem by taking Franklin\u2019s powers away from him \u2014 sometimes he does it voluntarily, sometimes it happens with external restraints (often placed by Reed). But while the power cosmic itself can be deadly for drama, the fact that a child possesses this power has also proved to be a fertile creative engine in Marvel comics, attracting all manner of villains bent on manipulating Franklin into their own nefarious machinations.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhich brings us to the mid-credits scene of \u201cThe Fantastic Four.\u201d Four years after the events of the film, Sue and Franklin finish reading the classic children\u2019s book \u201cThe Very Hungry Caterpillar\u201d (which was first published in our reality in 1969). She gets up to find another book \u2014\u00a0H.E.R.B.I.E. the robot suggests Franklin\u2019s favorite, Charles Darwin\u2019s \u201cThe Origin of the Species,\u201d but Sue wants \u201cto go for something a little bit more fun today\u201d \u2014\u00a0and as she walks back from the kitchen, she hears something\u2026off. She walks slowly into the living room, activating her forcefield powers, and sees a man in a green, hooded cloak, kneeling in front of Franklin, as he brandishes a silver mask.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlthough we don\u2019t see the figure\u2019s face or hear him speak, this is obviously Doctor Doom, who will be played by Robert Downey Jr. in 2026\u2019s \u201cAvengers: Doomsday<\/a>.\u201d In the comics, Doom is an integral figure in the lives of both Franklin and his younger sister Valeria, as kids and adults \u2014 occasionally at the same time, through the magic of time travel and the multiverse. Given that \u201cThe Fantastic Four\u201d takes place on Earth-828, and we see their ship appear on Earth-616 in the post-credits scene in \u201cThunderbolts*,\u201d<\/a> it\u2019s clear that \u201cDoomsday\u201d will freely traipse the lines between time and space within the MCU. And now it appears that Franklin will play a critical role how that all comes to pass.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn the one hand, this is a terrific way to bring the Fantastic Four into the larger MCU: It isn\u2019t about some abstract metaphysical danger, it\u2019s about their son, creating an emotional hook into a story that \u2014 with at least 27 major speaking roles<\/a> \u2014\u00a0could otherwise become unwieldy. And unlike 2018\u2019s \u201cAvengers: Infinity War,\u201d \u201cDoomsday\u201d isn\u2019t benefitting from years of earlier blockbuster movies establishing the central villain and defining what\u2019s at stake for the characters. Audiences just aren\u2019t as invested in the Multiverse Saga as they were in the Infinity Saga, but a family desperate to save their child is an easy story to connect to.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn the other hand, while Franklin\u2019s abilities seemingly outstrip everyone else in the MCU, he hasn\u2019t been established yet as an actual character beyond being a cute, towheaded preschooler. Hinging \u201cDoomsday\u201d on our investment in an all-powerful cypher is doubly dangerous for a blockbuster movie \u2014 which is another reason to wonder whether an older version of Franklin from the future may show up in \u201cDoomsday,\u201d as he does in the comics. (It is\u2026curious\u2026that Sue is reading a Franklin story about metamorphosis into a butterfly, followed by a reference to the man to discovered the theory of evolution. Most curious, indeed.)<\/p>\n

\n\tIf the first post-credits scene in \u201cThe Fantastic Four\u201d is a portent for Marvel\u2019s future, the second was an homage to its past. After the final credits roll, a quote from \u201cFantastic Four\u201d co-creator Jack Kirby (no relation to Vanessa) appears on the screen: \u201cIf you look at my characters, you will find me. No matter what kind of character you create or assume, a little of yourself must remain there.\u201d Kirby\u2019s birthdate of August 28, 1917 appears next to his name, revealing that it corresponds to the Fantastic Four universe of Earth-828 (i.e. 8\/28\/1917). Then the opening credits of the in-universe Fantastic Four animated series plays, with a peppy theme song that evokes the Saturday morning cartoons of Marvel characters from the 1970s that inspired<\/a> \u201cThe Fantastic Four\u201d director Matt Shakman as a kid<\/a>. It\u2019s such a blast of nostalgic fun, perhaps Marvel should consider making that show for real.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot developments, including the ending and post-credits scenes, in \u201cThe Fantastic Four:…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":93816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[37189,51,10953,50,14020,52],"class_list":{"0":"post-93815","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-avengers-doomsday","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-marvel-studios","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-the-fantastic-four-first-steps","13":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114919000161674157","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}