By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Now that multiple Avengers: Doomsday teaser trailers have been officially released (and not, you know, simply leaked online), fans have had a chance to scrutinize them for every possible clue about what will happen in the upcoming ensemble blockbuster. Recently, some Marvel super sleuths have discovered something very surprising: some confusing numbers that may be a secret code.
Unsurprisingly, many in the fandom have decided that these codes (which appear slightly different across multiple trailers) may be the Russo Brothers’ weird way of teasing some major revelations about Avengers: Doomsday, a film whose exact plot still remains shrouded in mystery.
Codes That Would Confuse Even Tony Stark
The first code is found in the first Doomsday trailer, which featured Captain America leaving his idyllic life and getting ready to join the fight against Doctor Doom. Towards the end, this teaser revealed the confusing code 1e24ber02020. This may just be cryptic gibberish (more on that in a bit), but the second trailer (featuring Thor praying to Odin for the strength to both fight his newest foe and be a good father to his daughter) featured its own code: 1e17ber02020.
So, what do these weird codes mean? A subset of devoted fans has generated a number of theories, none of which seems particularly likelier than the other. The simplest explanation is that these codes may correspond to two dates (October 17th, 2020, and October 24, 2020, respectively), which are exactly a week apart; while this implies some kind of connection, nobody has been able to connect these exact dates to any major events in the MCU.
Doomsday Clues Hidden In A Comic Book?
Other fans have interpreted these two Avengers: Doomsday codes as two different dates: January 17th and January 24th. While these don’t correspond with any MCU events, the Marvel comic Doctor Doom #4 came out on the 17th; in this issue, the title character is trying to clear his name (he predicted the dangers of a black hole experiment and then gets blamed when the experiment kills thousands), and he ends up breaking into an A.I.M. facility and fighting both Taskmaster and M.O.D.O.K. While Doomsday is unlikely to recreate any of these specific events, the comic does have Doctor Doom thinking he might be destined to save humanity, which could point to the character’s motivation (namely, protecting the entire multiverse, just as Tony Stark wanted to protect the Earth) in the upcoming Avengers film.
There are some less elaborate theories. Of course, considering that the code in the Captain America teaser is a higher number than in the Thor teaser, some think the trailers are somehow counting down to something, possibly the release of the full trailer for Avengers: Doomsday. Other fans think the codes have no real meaning at all; because the code appears only for a half-second before the countdown to the film’s official release, some believe that it is just meant to be a cool “glitch” style effect before the official countdown (dubbed by some the “Doomsday clock”) is revealed.
Are Fans Falling For Fake Hype?
Some cynical fans think that there is no real meaning to the codes but that Marvel simply wants to generate hype for Avengers: Doomsday. This would be analogous to the fandom trying to puzzle out complex clues about the multiverse and time travel that may have been hidden in Reed Richards’ chalkboard scribbles in The Fantastic Four: First Steps. Eventually, multiple real-world physicists chimed in and confirmed that he was writing actual gibberish on the board, so some think these Doomsday codes may be similar nonsense that everyone is just reading too much into.
On a more positive note, some MCU diehards have pointed out that all of this wild speculation over what might be an absolute nothingburger is a sign that the fandom is well and truly hyped for Avengers: Doomsday. Since Endgame, Marvel has experienced a slow decline thanks to the onset of superhero fatigue…in other words, most audiences just aren’t as excited about tights-and-flights movies as they once were. The fact that so many fans are spending so much time and brainpower trying to predict what will happen in the upcoming film may prove that Doomsday will finally put the most ambitious cinematic universe ever created back on track.
Now comes the hard part: delivering a movie that actually meets everyone’s wildest expectations!
