When it comes to Avengers: Doomsday, Marvel’s curtain of secrecy is as strong as ever. But, as always, we can usually count on the actors to let slip some intriguing new details. Ian McKellen is the latest to commit a Tom Holland-style faux pas. McKellen recently teased a major set piece in the new film when he spoke to the YouTube channel Jake’s Takes.
“Two police cars in front of me were raised up by cranes,” McKellen reminisced about a sequence in 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand. “These were not special effects. Nowadays, I think things will become a little bit easier — though I did destroy New Jersey the other day. Oooh, I perhaps shouldn’t have said that…”
This tells us that McKellen’s Magneto will be a very dangerous adversary in Doomsday, on a level we never saw in the older X-Men movies. But why would Magneto destroy New Jersey? And does this mean Marvel Studios is adapting perhaps the most infamous Magneto storyline of all time? Let’s break it down.
Beware of potential spoilers for Avengers: Doomsday ahead!
Will Avengers: Doomsday Adapt Ultimatum?
McKellen’s comments immediately bring to mind 2009’s Ultimatum, a series that pits the Ultimate Universe versions of the X-Men, Avengers, and Fantastic Four against a very angry Magneto. As the story opens, Magneto has gone off the deep end after being confronted with the deaths of his children, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. In retaliation, he attempts to destroy human civilization by reversing Earth’s magnetic poles and causing a series of global disasters.
One of those disasters includes a massive tidal wave that hits Manhattan and drowns thousands. Even a great many superheroes like Daredevil, Beast, and Nightcrawler are killed in the deluge. It’s not New Jersey – though it is just on the other side of the Hudson River – but this story remains the most notable example of one where Magneto destroys a major American metropolis.
Art by David Finch. (Image Credit: Marvel)
How does Magneto accomplish an act as terrible as this? It’s all thanks to Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir. Magneto captures the hammer in the prelude story, 2008’s The Ultimates 3. Using his magnetic powers, Magneto is effectively able to cancel out Mjolnir’s enchantment and manipulate the hammer to his will.
Drowning Manhattan is just the opening salvo in Magneto’s war of destruction. By the end of Ultimatum, numerous heroes are dead, including Wolverine and the majority of the X-Men. Even Cyclops is assassinated, but not before he vaporizes Magneto’s head. Ultimatum even ends with Doctor Doom himself getting his head crushed by The Thing, proving that no one was wearing plot armor in the Ultimate Universe anymore.
Ultimatum is not a well-regarded comic, to put it mildly. It’s not just the shoddy characterization and the number of major deaths featured in this story, but the bizarre, faux-edgy tone in which those deaths are presented. One particularly reviled scene shows Magneto’s henchman, the Blob, devouring the corpse of the Wasp like a ravenous zombie. Though Marvel’s Ultimate line continued for several years after, some would argue Ultimatum marked the beginning of the end for this universe.
In short, Ultimatum is not the first X-Men/Avengers crossover story we’d think of for Marvel to adapt in Doomsday. But is there a kernel of a good idea here? Certainly, the basic concept of Magneto singlehandedly annihilating a major city has some merit to it. Could it be reworked to fit the MCU? Let’s take a closer look at how Doomsday could loosely adapt Ultimatum for its own benefit.
Magneto’s Role in Doomsday
For a while now, we’ve been speculating that Avengers: Doomsday is basically an Avengers vs. X-Men movie. The casting announcements made in 2025 and the recent X-Men-themed Doomsday teaser both seem to bear out that theory. We know that the majority of the original Fox X-Men cast are turning to reprise their roles (though, oddly, Hugh Jackman’s name isn’t among them). Doomsday is a multiverse story, and it’s going to bring together the MCU’s Earth-616 and the X-Men universe’s Earth-10005 (and The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ Earth-828).
It appears that Doomsday is going to borrow a fair amount from Avengers: Time Runs Out and the first issue of 2015’s Secret Wars. Time Runs Out deals with the mounting crisis that arises as more and more universes are destroyed by the phenomenon known as Incursions. By the time Secret Wars opens, only the core Marvel Universe (Earth-616) and the Ultimate Universe (Earth-1610) are left. The heroes of both worlds are drawn into a desperate final battle that ultimately proves pointless.
Doomsday will likely follow a similar premise, except that the final two universes in the Marvel movie multiverse will be the MCU and Fox’s X-Men universe. The Avengers are fighting the X-Men. And based on McKellen’s comments, we suspect that Magneto is really going to bring his A-game for this fight.
This is where Doomsday may borrow a page from Ultimatum. What if, during the course of the fight, Magneto intercepts Mjolnir and turns its magic against the Avengers? Just like in the comic, he could use its power to reverse Earth’s polarity and cause a devastating tidal wave. He wouldn’t be attacking his own Earth, but rather the planet threatening the survival of the entire mutant race.
Who Will Be the New Avengers in the MCU?
McKellen and Michael Fassbender’s Magneto is a character of constantly evolving morals and loyalties. But if there’s one consistent truth about the character, it’s that he’d do anything to ensure the salvation of mutantkind. And based on the X-Men-centric Doomsday teaser, we know the Sentinels are in play for some reason. Perhaps Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom is using them to stoke conflict between the Avengers and X-Men? In any case, drowning one world’s New Jersey under a tsunami seems like the kind of thing Magneto would do when push comes to shove.
The question is whether the fallout of that act will be similar to the comic. Will we see Magneto actually kill iconic MCU heroes when he destroys New Jersey? It’s possible. When Doomsday is dealing with the literal fate of existence, we can’t assume any character is truly safe. That’s especially true since the premise of Avengers: Secret Wars makes it easy enough for Doom to resurrect any characters he chooses as part of his new Battleworld.
The world will eventually be restored to some semblance of normality at the end of Secret Wars, but that doesn’t mean things won’t get pretty hairy along the way. Just don’t expect Doomsday to adapt that grotesque Blob/Wasp scene. Some things are better left to the comics.
For more on Avengers: Doomsday, find out why the Steve Rogers teaser has us so disappointed, and learn why the Thor teaser is a great reminder that Thor can and should be serious.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.
