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Marvel Is Ruining Doctor Doom to Prove a Point (and It’s Kind of Stupid)
Marvel has been pushing Doctor Doom to the moon since last summer’s announcement that RDJ would return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He’s the main villain of Marvel Rivals and is currently the main villain of 2025’s big event, One World Under Doom. Doctor Doom became the Sorcerer Supreme in 2024’s Blood Hunt and used that power to get the leaders of the world to give him control of everything. One World Under Doom has been an interesting ride; on the one hand, it was fun to see his ideas for the world and the way he would run things, but on the other hand, he’s a villain in a Marvel event comic, so he also has to be a monster. However, One World Under Doom is ruining the best part about him.
Doctor Doom is a great villain and one of the most interesting characters in the Marvel Universe. He is undeniably evil, but there’s also something honorable and regal to him. This has made readers love him, and it’s gotten to the extent that many look at him as almost heroic at times. The view of the Latverian monarch online is overall positive, and that’s the problem with One World Under Doom‘s big reveal (that Doom was sucking the energy of the people of Latveria to power his magic). It feels like it’s meant to teach readers that they’ve been looking at Doom all wrong.
Doctor Doom Is Better as a Multi-Faceted Villain Than an Evil Monster
Marvel has created many beloved villains, but Doom has hit another level in the last 20 to 25 years. One of the best parts of Doom is that he’s more than just an evil genius who wants to rule the world and destroy Reed Richards. Doom is a revenant from another time, an old-school monarch in a world where that kind of leader doesn’t really exist. He definitely believes in his own greatness and that his land exists to aggrandize him, but he also feels like he owes his people the best life he can give them.
This has caused a lot of fans to see Doom very differently than he’s been presented in prior years. He is popular because there is so much to him. Sure, there’s honor, but there’s also hypocrisy. There’s regal bearing, but there’s also vanity and ego. This is why so many fans love him so much; a lot of the time, he’s a villain you can root for because he’s often right. Just look at something like Hickman’s New Avengers, where Doom was a major supporting character, working behind the scenes to solve the problem his own way. You could root for him because you knew he did care enough about the universe to save it. That’s what we love about him.
One World Under Doom kicked off by showing what Doom wanted for the world, and it was honestly pretty awesome. Fans were used to rooting for the Latverian monarch, and his giving people universal healthcare, education, and things of that nature made a lot of fans like him even more. We all expected Doom to do something evil, but honestly, most of us just thought he would be a garden-variety totalitarian, like he usually is, and that’s why people would rebel. One World Under Doom #6 dropped a bomb on that idea by making him do something completely out of character.
For whatever reason, Marvel wanted to break this idea of Doom as a good yet pragmatic man. They wanted to remind readers that he’s a monster who would do anything for victory, even sacrifice the people whom he used to love the most. The more I think about it, the more I think Marvel did this because they were tired of people liking Doom. They wanted to make him an evil monster again in the eyes of fans, to show fans that they were wrong about the villain. It’s honestly kind of petty because Doom works much better when there’s that core of goodness and heroism. They chose to go this far, and it ruins a key part of Doom: his love of Latveria.
One World Under Doom Broke Doctor Doom To Show the Fans They Were Wrong
One World Under Doom follows a pretty standard Doom story — him doing something good and then the world realizing he’s a monster — but it goes much further than usual. It takes away a key aspect of what fans like about Doom — the way he treats the people of Latveria compared to everyone else — and torpedoed it. It fits the overall tenor of Doom stories of the past, but it goes too far. Taking this away from Doom makes him an entirely different villain, one who’s a lot less interesting because he’s just a monster.
Doom has become so popular not because he does cool stuff — and he does do cool villainous stuff — but because he’s a multi-faceted villain. He’s evil, but he’s also someone who wants to do the most good. For entirely selfish reasons, sure, but good nonetheless. Marvel doesn’t seem to want people to think that about him, so they’ve gone in the darkest direction possible with the whole thing. They’ve ruined one of their best villains (and honestly made One World Under Doom a lot less interesting than it could have been) all to prove a point, and it’s a point that didn’t need to be made.
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