Stephen King Did Avengers: Doomsday's Story 44 Years Ago
No upcoming movie is generating more anticipation than Avengers: Doomsday. When it arrives this December, it will finally push the reality of incursions of phases 4, 5, and 6 to their endgame. Entire universes will collide as Doctor Doom (Robert Downey Jr.) attempts to prevent the complete destruction of reality itself. After years of buildup, Avengers: Doomsday promises to deliver the franchise's biggest multiverse story yet.
The multiverse has become one of modern sci-fi's most popular concepts since the MCU embraced it after the Infinity Saga. Both the DCU and DCEU movies have also leaned into alternate realities. What’s more, projects like The Big Bang Theory spinoff Stuart Fails To Save The Universe and the Oscar-winning movie Everything Everywhere All At Once proved audiences beyond comic book and sci-fi fans were equally fascinated by parallel realities and alternate versions of familiar worlds.
Even so, the MCU's gradual march toward a catastrophic multiversal collapse still feels distinctive. Or at least it would if Stephen King hadn't explored an even grander version of the same premise over four decades ago. While Doctor Doom may be attempting to save existence in Avengers: Doomsday, Roland Deschain began a far more dangerous journey back in 1982's The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger. Like Doomsday, the 8 The Dark Tower novels center on preventing the multiverse from collapsing, only King explored the idea decades before the MCU.
Stephen King Has An Entire Fantasy Series About The Multiverse Collapsing
Just like the MCU’s Avengers: Doomsday, Stephen King's The Dark Tower novels are about saving the multiverse from total destruction. Beginning with The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger in 1982, the 8-book fantasy series follows Roland Deschain as he journeys toward the titular Dark Tower, the pan-dimensional structure he believes holds together every reality that exists. Standing in his way is Randall Flagg (the very same from King’s The Stand), whose manipulation of events serves the Crimson King's (as seen in King’s Insomnia) wider plan to bring all creation to an end.
Stephen King's multiverse also has central anchors, just like the MCU, although his approach to the concept is totally different. Rather than a central Sacred Timeline, King’s vision of infinite realities revolves around six immense Beams that stretch across existence and converge at the Dark Tower itself. As long as the Beams stand, reality survives. Throughout the series, Roland and his companions race to stop the Beams from being destroyed, making the stakes far more tangible than the increasingly unstable incursions threatening the MCU's realities.
The Dark Tower series transforms Stephen King's entire bibliography into one interconnected multiverse, although it doesn’t rely on variants in the same way the MCU does. Instead, King draws in the exact same characters from his other works into The Dark Tower series. For example, Father Callahan from Salem's Lot is a major character in The Dark Tower novels, and a fictional version of Stephen King himself even appears. The same applies to various concepts from King’s wider mythos too.
The mysterious Thinnies, dimensional tears first explored in The Mist, have been a staple of Roland’s life since childhood, and Todash space, the terrifying void between realities in multiple King novels and short stories, is an essential part of the architecture of the Tower itself. All of these ideas converge on Roland’s quest across The Dark Tower novels, weaving together ideas from every corner of Stephen King’s extensive works into a single, cohesive multiverse-wide adventure.
Stephen King's Multiverse Is Much Deeper Than The MCU's
The MCU's multiverse is enormous, but conceptually it remains relatively straightforward. Infinite alternate realities branch from the Sacred Timeline, creating countless Variants while the TVA attempts to maintain order. Avengers: Doomsday will finally pay off years of MCU movies and TV shows teasing incursions and a complete collapse of reality, but the mechanics behind why this is happening are pretty straightforward. This isn’t the case with Stephen King’s mythos or the multiversal collapse in The Dark Tower books.
Stephen King's multiverse is considerably more complex due to it evolving over decades of organic storytelling and having a greater focus on thematic links rather than diving into multiple versions of established characters or “What If” scenarios. Everything in King's multiverse reflects larger ideas like destiny, sacrifice, obsession, memory, and the passage of time. For example, The Tower isn't simply a structure connecting universes. It represents existence itself, while Roland's endless journey explores the consequences of his choices across countless cycles.
That thematic focus gives Stephen King's multiverse a richness beyond simply presenting alternate versions of familiar characters. Entire realities exist to reinforce recurring ideas, while concepts like Todash space, the Beams, and Thinnies become metaphysical expressions of fear, chaos, and creation rather than convenient plot devices. Yes, there are several times alternate versions of the same characters appear just like the MCU's variants, but these are never the focus.
For those fascinated by the concept of the multiverse who want something more ambitious than endless Variants, Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series is the perfect go-to. Long before Avengers: Doomsday made multiversal collapse the MCU's defining conflict, Stephen King had already built an intricate mythology where the fate of every universe depended on one gunslinger's relentless march toward the Dark Tower.