Most of Avengers: Doomsday’s plot has been shrouded in secrecy. Apart from the fact that this will be the first feature film to bring together the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men, and that Robert Downey Jr. will menace the heroes as Doctor Doom, we won’t really know what goes down until the movie hits theaters on December 18. However, co-director Joe Russo recently shared information that adds a much-needed emotional layer to Doomsday.During an interview with Empire, Russo discussed Downey’s performance as Doom and how the lord of Latveria is a “Gothic villain” driven by an unspeakable loss: “He’s a father who’s a victim of trauma. He has lost a child. When people see the film they say it’s a very scary movie. It’s scary because he’s so profoundly damaged.” Some (including us) might feel that this is the wrong step to take, especially given that in comics canon Doom already suffered a boatload of trauma when his mother’s soul was stolen by Mephisto. Yet the Russo brothers have drawn a link to Doom and the Avengers via the shared mantle of fatherhood.cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});Most teasers for Avengers: Doomsday have shown the biggest names in the Marvel Cinematic Universe settling into fatherhood. Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is shown hanging up his Captain America suit and holding his newborn son. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is shown praying to his late father, Odin, begging for a peaceful life with his daughter Love – and showing that the Russos are following up on one of the few good parts of Thor: Love and Thunder. Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) is shown tearfully embracing his daughter, Cassie (Kathryn Newton). This raises the stakes exponentially: instead of fighting to save all of reality from crumbling, the Avengers now fight for a world in which their children can live in.Perhaps the biggest example, though, lies with the Fantastic Four. A “special look” for Doomsday revealed that Doom hails from the First Family’s world of Earth-828, while the mid-credits scene for The Fantastic Four: First Steps also shows the metal-clad monarch approaching a young Franklin Richards. This feels extremely in line with Doom’s hatred of Reed Richards in the comics, and what better way to hurt Reed than by taking his child? It also explains Reed’s sheer anger at Doom in the teasers, and an ominous line Doom says: “All of you have lived stolen lives. And now you must give them back.”Many fans have speculated that this refers to the Avengers’ actions in Avengers: Endgame, which saw them travel through time to collect the Infinity Stones and undo Thanos’s wipeout of half the universe. This more than likely is going to be the reason for the incursions in Doomsday, but it also hints at the possibility that Doom lost his child in one of those incursions – backing up Joe Russo’s words about him being profoundly damaged. It also makes sense why he took Franklin, since in his warped mind he might believe that securing his lifelong enemy’s child makes up for losing his. Avengers: Doomsday centering on the theme of fatherhood is rather fitting, given that a lot of fans who’ve been with the MCU since its beginning are probably now fathers themselves. And if Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars do wind up serving as the end of another chapter for the MCU, those fathers are probably going to wind up introducing their children to a big piece of pop culture in the same way my dad introduced me to Star Wars and Star Trek.The post Avengers: Doomsday Is Shaping Up To Be A Story About Fatherhood appeared first on Den of Geek.