Ironheart’s big twist means that Marvel fans should be setting themselves up for disappointment when it comes to Avengers: Doomsday.
Ironheart’s twist might mean fewer surprises for Avengers: Doomsday
For over a year, it’s been speculated that Sacha Baron Cohen’s Mephisto may finally make his MCU debut in Ironheart. Granted, there was similar speculation around the WandaVision and Agatha All Along series; however, there was some added weight to the conspiracy this time around as a Marvel copyright filing included him as part of the cast all the way back in October 2023.
Marvel hasn’t exactly done a great job of keeping Cohen’s appearance a secret since then, especially over the course of the past two weeks. The first three strongly hinted at Mephisto’s arrival, while a recent interview with Dominique Thorne and Anthony Ramos threw more fuel on the fire.
I’m a strong believer that having a twist in a movie or television show doesn’t ruin the entire thing — I knew the ending to The Sixth Sense long before I actually watched the movie (thanks, The Office Diwali episode), and I still think that movie is great. It becomes a problem, though, when the entire project is built around the twist. The Sixth Sense still works perfectly even if you know what’s coming because it’s a really tight, well-written script. Ironheart, on the other hand, keeps hinting and hinting at Mephisto’s arrival, but he doesn’t actually show up until the final episode, at which point it’s treated like a grand reveal we’re not supposed to see coming.
What does this mean for Avengers: Doomsday? Nothing good. If MCU fans were so easily able to figure out the big twist of Ironheart — a Marvel Television show that was hardly promoted until about a month ago — then there’s a real chance that all of Doomsday is going to be spoiled for people before it even hits theaters.
The MCU has lost its touch when it comes to big reveals and secrets
This isn’t the first instance of this happening in a Marvel Studios project in recent years, either. The company did a terrible job at hiding Taskmaster’s death in Thunderbolts*, to the point where the scene is actually pretty laughable in the movie. Harrison Ford’s Red Hulk transformation, similarly, is treated like a big reveal even though it was shown in all of the trailers. Or point to the Joe Locke is actually Wiccan ordeal.
While casual movie-goers might be spared from some Doomsday secrets, these movies are supposed to be made for the fans, are they not? That’s what Thorne and Ramos alluded to in the aforementioned interview — that they knew how long people had been waiting for Mephisto’s debut. If Marvel is now at the point where they can’t hide any major secrets or plot twists, does that mean people are going to check out?
The real key, here, is that the studio has to learn not to lean so heavily on these big reveals and secrets. Knowing Mephisto is in the show shouldn’t ruin the whole thing, but it kind of does when there are five episodes of teasing some mysterious, potentially demonic figure who doesn’t show up until the finale. Good writing is good writing, regardless of whether it’s been spoiled on Twitter or not.
And if all the big Avengers: Doomsday moments are going to be easily predicted ahead of time, there better be more interesting elements in the movie beyond that.
