Doctor Doom is reportedly not the villain in Marvel’s The Hot Mic), which raises the question of whom The Fantastic Four will face in the MCU movie. Currently set to premiere in February 2025, Marvel’s Fantastic Four will mark the third live-action iteration of the superhero team (the fourth considering the unreleased 1994 Fantastic Four movie), meaning that the MCU will have to find ways of setting this new Fantastic Four apart from previous versions. Given how Doctor Doom has appeared in all of those previous Fantastic Four movies, it would not be surprising if Marvel skips Doctor Doom for now.
Curiously, Marvel’s Multiverse Saga will culminate in Avengers: The Kang Dynasty or Avengers: Secret Wars, meaning that Fantastic Four will have to feature a different villain. As iconic as Doctor Doom is, The Fantastic Four has a large enough list of villains – most of whom have never appeared in the movies.
Super Skrull
One of The Fantastic Four’s most important villains who could work as part of the larger Secret Invasion will revisit them, the MCU has all the necessary setups to bring Super Skrull into the Fantastic Four movie. In the comics, after The Fantastic Four stopped a Skrull invasion, the Skrull Emperor decided to design a supersoldier whose powers would be a copy of those of Reed, Sue, Johnny, and Ben. Thanks to its shapeshifting abilities, Kl'rt was able to replicate the powers of The Fantastic Four and become the Super Skrull, resulting in a visually unique villain who has never been adapted to live action.
Kang The Conqueror
While Kang has already appeared in Loki and will have faced Ant-Man and Wasp by the time Fantastic Four releases, having Kang the Conqueror as the villain for the Fantastic Four movie before Avengers 5 cannot be ruled out. The MCU may be replacing Doctor Doom’s role in Secret Wars with Kang, as Kang is usually not tied with the multiverse in the comics. Should that be the case, then it would make sense to establish a personal history between Kang, Reed Richards, and the rest of The Fantastic Four. The MCU has made sure to point out how there can be infinite versions of Kang, meaning that Kang's appearance in several movies would not necessarily be repetitive.
In fact, nothing guarantees that Ant-Man 3’s Kang is Kang-Prime, the one known as Kang the Conqueror. The Fantastic Four are known for dealing with time travel and the multiverse on a daily basis, and an argument could be made that Kang is a Fantastic Four villain as much as he is an Avengers villain. In the comics, Kang is a distant descendant of Reed Richards – Nathaniel Richards. That connection between Kang and Reed could be explored in Fantastic Four through time travel, which would establish the high sci-fi aspect of The Fantastic Four right away. Essentially, Kang in Fantastic Four could be the reason why The Fantastic Four s the fight in The Kang Dynasty along with the Avengers.
Silver Surfer & Galactus
While Doctor Strange movie introduced The Fantastic Four and the X-Men, and Avengers: Secret Wars will be only the second Avengers film after the end of the Infinity Saga. Not everything has to have a decade worth of build-up to work, especially for characters as recognizable as The Fantastic Four.
The Multiverse Saga is moving much faster than the Infinity Saga, which is why Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’s villain before facing the Avengers.
Reed Richards (The Thinker)
Yes, Reed Richards would be the perfect villain for the Fantastic Four movie – as strange as it may sound. In the comics, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness already suggested. One of the final movies in Marvel’s Multiverse Saga, Fantastic Four will likely deal with the multiverse in some way. The problem, however, is that Reed Richards has a worrying track when it comes to evil variants across the multiverse.
The Maker, the most notable evil version of Reed Richards, would work perfectly as a villain for the Marvel Cinematic Universe's multiverse.
Considering how Marvel’s the Fantastic Four movie is releasing so close to Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, which by itself will link to Avengers: Secret Wars, a multiversal Reed Richards based on The Maker would be the film’s perfect villain. The Maker played a significant role in the 2015 Secret Wars comics, another reason why an evil Reed Richards could appear in Fantastic Four. Doctor Strange 2 and other MCU multiverse stories already proved that not every version of a superhero is as good as their Earth-616 counterpart. If John Krasinski is not playing Eart-616 Reed Richards in Marvel’s Fantastic Four (2025), an interesting twist would be to have Krasinski playing The Thinker.
