Marvel StudiosWhen directors Joe and Anthony Russo insisted that fans would have to watch Avengers: Endgame Encore — the anniversary screening of Marvel’s record-breaking team-up film, this time with more exclusive footage! — to understand what was going on in Avengers: Doomsday, it sounded very much like bluster. To any Marvel fan with at least a little ball knowledge, Endgame lived up to its namesake: it was designed to close the chapter on the franchise’s Infinity Saga, and it did so with aplomb. Marvel was meant to move on from that adventure with the films to come, and Doomsday was meant to be the end of a new saga. To watch the Russos breathlessly building a bridge between one story and the next has been a little disheartening, especially since the Multiverse Saga hasn’t been Marvel’s most coherent.Endgame Encore only adds to the franchise’s strange strategy. Its “extended” footage is actually from the filming of Doomsday; only one scene is a tactile continuation of any scene from Endgame. The rest could very likely be sequences plucked from the upcoming film and tacked onto Endgame Encore as post-credits scenes — and one in particular might not pay off until Doomsday’s sequel, Secret Wars.Spoilers ahead for Avengers: Endgame Encore.Doctor Doom vs. The HulkOne Endgame scene takes place right after Spider-Man: Brand New Day. | Marvel StudiosEndgame Encore contains a total of four additional scenes. The second — after an extended version of Endgame’s original ending featuring Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter, and Loki of Asgard — catches up with Bruce Banner after the events of Spider-Man: Brand New Day. He’s holed up in a bunker miles underground, still reeling from his encounter with Jean Grey, whose telepathic meddling unlocked the careful safeguards he’d built up to keep the Hulk at bay. In this post-credit scene, we find him working on an inhibitor that will suppress the Hulk for good (again) and recording his progress on a video log. Before long, however, he’s interrupted by Doomsday’s big villain, Doctor Doom.Doom breaks into Banner’s secure facility and says, “I’ve come to collect you.” In response, Banner transforms into the Hulk to fight him off. His camera falls to the ground before we can see the outcome of their battle, but as the room begins to glow green under the light of Doom’s Latverian runes, it’s safe to assume Hulk loses this battle and becomes Doom’s prisoner.How Endgame Encore sets up Secret WarsWhat does Doom want with Bruce Banner? | Marvel StudiosAll of the scenes in Endgame Encore are designed to stoke hype for Doomsday, but there are a few reasons to assume that this Hulk scene won’t pay off for a few more years. For one, Mark Ruffalo wasn’t among the myriad names included in Doomsday’s hours-long cast announcement in 2025. There’s a chance he could be on the same path as Chris Evans and Hayley Atwell, who were also omitted from that announcement, only to officially join the cast later. “There are characters and actors who have not been announced who are a part of Doomsday,” Anthony Russo recently told Empire. The Russos wouldn’t confirm or deny if Banner plays a role in the film, but their vague comments do leave room for the Hulk to cameo in Doomsday — most likely as one of the many heroes Doom uses as mind-controlled minions. That said, there’s more reason to believe that Banner’s role in the Doom storyline will really be explored in Secret Wars.Not unlike Infinity War and Endgame, which spread the Avengers’ conflict with Thanos across two films, Doomsday is just the beginning of Doom’s reign of terror. It will continue in Secret Wars, which will bring an end to the multiverse with a series of incursions (or collisions). The 2027 film is taking heavy inspiration from Jonathan Hickman’s comic series of the same name, which brought heroes and villains from multiple Marvel universes to a realm called Battleworld. This new planet, cobbled together from the remnants of destroyed timelines, was created by Doom. He ruled over it with an iron fist as God Emperor, with “barons” enforcing his will within each region.Secret Wars could take a major page from Planet Hulk and give Bruce Banner a much bigger story. | MarvelOne swath of Battleworld, far to the north, was Greenland. Ruled by the Red King (a variant of Red Hulk) and home to multiple Hulk variants (including Doc Green, a version of Steve Rogers transformed by gamma radiation), this region was only briefly mentioned in Secret Wars. It got much more attention in a five-issue spinoff, Planet Hulk, which followed another Steve Rogers variant — a gladiator known as The Captain — on a quest to save his version of Bucky Barnes from the Red King.Shockingly, Bruce Banner wasn’t actually a part of this storyline: the version of Hulk from Earth-616 bit the dust before Battleworld was even formed. But in adapting Secret Wars (and, most likely, its tie-in comics), the Russos could easily take a few creative liberties. If Bruce doesn’t serve as one of Doom’s lackeys in Doomsday, he could be one of the wild Hulks ruling over Greenland in Secret Wars. It’d certainly make up for the missed opportunities, few as they were, in Hickman’s story. It’d also deliver on what fans have been begging to see from Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk for years. After his sidelining in both Infinity War and Endgame, we might finally get the chance to see him at the center of a major battle. We’ll just have to wait a bit longer to see that come to fruition.Avengers: Doomsday hits theaters on December 18.