I Think I’ve Figured Out Why Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man Has to Die in Avengers: Doomsday

For months, there have been rumors that Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man will die in Avengers: Doomsday. The Multiverse Saga’s ending feels like a love letter to over two decades’ worth of Marvel movies, which means we’re expecting far more than the X-Men in Doomsday. Since January, there have been pretty much nonstop rumors that Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man will die at the beginning of the film, apparently in battle with the Fox X-Men. If true, Doomsday begins with a versus match for the ages. Naturally, if this is true, we shouldn’t really expect confirmation till the movie’s release.

But why would the heroes be trying to kill one another? Doomsday is expected to draw from the build-up to Jonathan Hickman’s 2015 Secret Wars comic book event, which saw countless universes collide in “incursions” – destroying them both. Earth was the point of collision, and there was only one way to prevent the incursion; destroy one or both versions of the Earth. It’s safe to assume something like that is going on at the beginning of Doomsday, but why would this focus in on the specific heroes we know and love?

Marvel Just Dropped a Major Clue to Avengers: Doomsday – in the Last Place We Expected

Marvel has just published What If… the Multiverse Was Doomed? by author DaVaun Sanders (available now from retailers like Amazon). Loosely set in the comic book continuity, this wraps up an ongoing plot that’s run through several previous novels; a variant of Doctor Doom is traveling the multiverse acquiring the powers of “nexus beings,” a term well-established in comic book lore. In this story, a nexus being is integral to the existence of their timeline, and removing them from it leads to the gradual destruction – or, rather, the “fraying” of that entire universe. Doom has killed several nexus beings, stealing their powers, and thereby destroying one universe after another.

If this idea sounds familiar, there’s a good reason for it. Deadpool & Wolverine introduced what it called an “anchor being,” defined as “an entity of such vital importance that when they die, their whole world slowly withers out of existence.” Reading What If… the Multiverse Was Doomed?, I suddenly realized the true implications of anchor beings; if you need to destroy an entire universe, all you need to do is find and kill that timeline’s anchor being. Suddenly we have a reason to target characters like Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man, who could be the anchor being of his timeline.

And here’s where things get particularly interesting; speaking to Inverse back in 2024, Kevin Feige hinted the MCU’s anchor beings and the comics’ “nexus beings” may be the same thing. “I do think in the Marvel comics and in the MCU, there are beings of great importance,” he said. “There are nexus beings that have been discussed, and in comic books there are omega-level mutants that have been discussed. “I think a lot of that, it depends on where you are within the universe of what terminology you use. The TVA uses the terminology of ‘anchor beings’ and ‘a being of great importance.’ Is that different than those other beings I’ve mentioned, or is it just a different terminology for the same thing? Remains to be seen.”

How Does a Person Become an Anchor Being?

Marvel established the basic rules of its multiverse back in Loki Season 1, and I think this secretly reveals how to identify an anchor being. According to Loki, almost any decision point could lead to the creation of a new timeline; “Maybe you started an uprising, or were just late for work.” But I’d suggest that the person whose decision created the branched timeline is probably the anchor being. This would explain why, in Loki, the Time Variance Authority first weakened a timeline by removing a specific being from it, so they could then destroy it; in that case, Loki himself, who had deviated from the path they wanted him on.

Notice there are two ways to “remove” an anchor being, not just one. The most obvious is to kill them, but – as in Sanders’ books – simply removing them from their own timeline will begin the fraying process. At a stroke, we have a simple way to stave off an incursion – albeit in the most horrific way possible. To save their own timeline, the heroes of one Earth must simply identify and kill the anchor being of another. If timelines are as easy to create as Miss Minutes suggests, then many of these anchor beings will simply be everyday heroes, while few will possess cosmic power. Maguire’s Spider-Man could easily be the anchor being for his timeline.

Assuming this is accurate, what is Doom’s goal, and how does it lead to Secret Wars? That much remains unclear, but one possibility is that he’s seeking to retrieve anchor beings – perhaps to take them to a place in the multiverse where he can use their presence to save a last vestige of their reality and timeline. This is pretty similar to the comics themselves, where Doom crated “Battleworld,” a patchwork quilt planet created from the multiverse’s last surviving fragments. The mechanism would be different, but the end destination would be the same; Avengers: Secret Wars.

This could even be what kickstarts Doomsday. Fantastic Four: First Steps‘ post-credits scene ended with Doctor Doom appearing to Franklin Richards. It’s possible this boy, not one of the Fantastic Four, is the anchor being of Earth-828. If Doom removes Franklin, rather than killing him, it would result in the gradual destruction of that entire timeline. That could easily be enough to send the Fantastic Four on a multiversal adventure as they seek out their son, hoping to save their entire universe.