Fantastic Four 2015 Ending Explained

2015’s Fantastic Four ends on a confusing and underwhelming note, despite featuring a classic confrontation between the titular Fantastic Four following their origins and Doctor Doom, their biggest nemesis from the original Marvel Comics. Styled as Fan4stic, the controversial movie directed by Joshua Trank was an attempt by 20th Century Fox to revive the Marvel property focused on Marvel’s First Family. However, Fan4stic was both a critical and commercial flop, and the ending played a big part in the negative reception.

Fan4stic stars Miles Teller as Reed Richards (Mister Fantastic), Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm (Human Torch), Kate Mara as Susan Storm (The Invisible Woman), and Jaime Bell as Ben Grimm aka The Thing. The movie also stars Toby Kebbell as Victor von Doom, the movie’s primary antagonist. Featuring a darker tone and a more grounded take on the Fantastic Four’s origins compared to past iterations of the team in live-action, 2015’s Fan4stic ends with a mystifying final battle as well as some challenging set up for a franchise future that wasn’t meant to be.

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How Did Doctor Doom Return From Planet Zero?

Using The Second Quantum Gate

Having been stranded during the first Quantum Gate incident that gave Fan4stic’s heroes their powers and abilities, Victor von Doom was “rescued” when the government finally captured Reed Richards a year later and had him fix a new gate they’d built. Although Reed initially escaped “Area 57” and had been on the run from the government in the hopes of building his own gate to try and restore Ben Grimm’s rock-covered state, Grimm himself had been turned into a government weapon who helped bring Reed in. As such, Reed was able to provide the second Quantum Gate with the final pieces needed to begin a new exploratory mission.

Thanks to the government sending a squad of soldiers to continue exploring Planet Zero (the movie’s version of the comics’ Negative Zone), Doom was brought back with his suit having fused over his entire face and body. However, Doom wakes up with a much darker agenda, completely transformed by Planet Zero’s primordial energies he’d fallen into a year prior during the first incident. As such, he immediately began attacking the Area 57 facility, murdering several agents as he sought to return to Planet Zero.

Doctor Doom’s Powers And Plan Explained

A Form Of Brutal Telekinesis

Toby Kebbell as Doctor Doom in Fantastic Four 2015

Thanks to the energies Doom has absorbed on Planet Zero, Victor gained the seemingly limitless power of telekinesis, allowing him to move objects and people with his mind while also imploding his enemies’ brains with a mere thought. This was one of the most controversial elements of Fan4stic’s ending as this version of Doctor Doom should have been far too overpowered to ever be defeated by the rival Fantastic Four. It certainly seems as though the only reason he was defeated was because Victor forgot he could have exploded their brains any time he wanted.

Seeking to create a new world on Planet Zero, Doom sought to use the remaining resources on Earth, creating an ongoing link between dimensions using the Quantum Gate to pull in materials and resources from Earth. They’d then fall into an energy converter which Doom had somehow made using his powers alone and a collection of floating rocks (no real explanation is ever given). It’s also never explained how the Fantastic Four were able to follow Doom back to Planet Zero without getting inside the Quantum Gate, the implication being that their new powers were enough to protect them during the journey and upon their arrival to Planet Zero itself.

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How The Fantastic Four Defeated Doctor Doom

Destroying The Energy Converter

While Doom easily handled each member of the Fantastic Four, it was only once Reed said they all had to work together that they started gaining an advantage (which isn’t exactly a groundbreaking strategy). Furthermore, nothing really changed once they did start working together, and this telekinetically-powered version of Doom should still have been able to take them all on. Again, there was nothing to imply that he couldn’t have just blown up their brains, killing them right then and there.

Instead, The Thing punches Doctor Doom into his own energy converter following a very short battle once the heroes rallied together. As such, the classic Marvel Comics villain is unceremoniously disintegrated mere hours after his debut in this franchise. This was also a massively controversial and inexplicable decision given Doom’s status not only as one of the biggest and most powerful villains in Marvel Comics, but also the fact that he’s the Fantastic Four’s arch-nemesis. Unless the plan was for Victor to somehow reconstitute himself in future films, Doctor Doom’s permanent defeat in Fan4stick was largely seen as way too easy and not worth his reputation on the page.

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How Fantastic Four’s Ending Set Up A Sequel

Fantastic Four’s New Headquarters And Mission Explained

Given its poor performance at the box office and the overwhelming wave of negative reception for both critics and audiences alike, 20th Century Fox did not move forward with its plans for a Fan4stic sequel. However, the movie’s final scenes were undoubtedly setting up a future for the team, giving The Fantastic Four their official team name as well as a new headquarters devoid of government oversight known as “Central City”. The implication was that their adventures had only just begun following their origins.

Likewise, there had even been talks before the movie’s release that Fan4stic would have eventually been revealed as being a part of Fox’s X-Men universe of films with crossover potential. The heroes themselves were also considered for cameos in 2018’s Deadpool 2. Prior to the film’s reshoots where his character was killed by Doom, Tim Blake Nelson’s Dr. Allen was going to be set up as a future Fantastic Four villain Mole Man. However, the Fan4stic franchise is definitely over now that Disney owns the rights to the franchise with plans for their own Fantastic Four movie set in the MCU.