Marvel Studios has brought Avengers: Endgame back to theatres under a new title, Avengers: Endgame Encore, with four new scenes, adding approximately four minutes of new footage. The additional material, filmed during the production of Avengers: Doomsday, feature Robert Downey Jr.’s mega-villain Doctor Doom, Tom Hiddleston’s Loki and Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner, and is designed to bridge the 2019 blockbuster directly into the upcoming team-up film arriving on December 18.

The re-release is the latest step in a promotional campaign that Marvel began building over a year ago. Four short teasers were attached to last year’s Avatar: Fire and Ash, each revealing a different piece of the Doomsday puzzle. The first confirmed that Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) and Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) have a son. The second focused on Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and his adopted daughter. The third brought Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart), Magneto (Ian McKellen) and Cyclops (James Marsden) from the Fox X-Men universe into the MCU for the first time. The fourth united Black Panther (Letitia Wright) and the Wakandans with the Fantastic Four, who had crossed over from their own universe.

The Endgame Encore scenes push the narrative further, connecting unresolved threads from the original film to the multiverse-scale conflict that Doomsday promises.

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SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for Avengers: Endgame Encore, currently playing in theatres

Scene 1: Loki visits Steve and Peggy

The first new scene is embedded within the closing moments of Endgame, during Steve and Peggy’s dance. In the original film, Steve chose to travel back in time, retire the Captain America shield (passing it to Sam Wilson, played by Anthony Mackie) and settle down with Peggy. In the new footage, the couple receives an unexpected visitor at their door: Loki, dressed in his Time Variance Authority uniform.

The last time audiences saw the reformed trickster god was in the finale of Loki Season 2, where he sacrificed his freedom to hold the entire multiverse together for eternity. This scene appears to take place before that sacrifice, with Loki seemingly visiting Steve and Peggy to discuss the implications of Steve’s time travel, which may have created an unstable branch in the multiverse.

Scene 2: The multiverse collapses at the TVA

A companion scene takes place inside the Time Variance Authority, featuring Mobius (Owen Wilson), Casey (Eugene Cordero), Ouroboros (Ke Huy Quan) and the AI character Miss Minutes (Tara Strong). The TVA team detects two Earth-like worlds on a collision course in what they identify as an incursion, with both worlds firing on each other. The situation rapidly escalates as additional alternate worlds begin colliding and being destroyed, revealing that the entire multiverse is in the process of collapsing.

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The identity of the two colliding Earths is not confirmed, but the strongest speculation points to the Fox X-Men universe and the mainline MCU Earth. This would align with existing Doomsday footage showing Professor Xavier, Magneto, Cyclops, Mystique (Rebecca Romijn), Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming) and Gambit (Channing Tatum) crossing into the MCU, and could set up the Avengers-versus-X-Men confrontation teased in the Doomsday trailer.

Scene 3: Doctor Doom confronts Bruce Banner

A third scene plays during the credits and picks up from events established in this summer’s record-breaking Spider-Man: Brand New Day. In that film, Bruce Banner lost control of his Hulk transformation after his mind was manipulated by Jean Grey (Sadie Sink). Spider-Man (Tom Holland) defeated the Hulk, and Bruce was subsequently taken into custody at a secure medical facility.

The new Endgame Encore scene finds Bruce in an underground bunker, working on a serum designed to suppress his involuntary transformations. His work is interrupted when Doctor Doom breaches the facility. Bruce immediately transforms into the Hulk to confront the intruder, but the scene cuts before the outcome is shown. The sequence raises immediate questions about whether Bruce or the Hulk will appear in Doomsday and whether either could end up under Doom’s control.

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Scene 4: Doctor Doom’s mask and the Iron Man mirror

The final addition comes at the very end of the credits. In the original Endgame, the closing moments featured a mysterious metallic clanging sound that dedicated fans eventually identified as the sound from the first Iron Man (2008), when Tony Stark, played by Downey Jr., was forging his original suit of armour in a cave.

Avengers: Doomsday arrives in theatres on December 18, the same date as Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part 3, setting up what the industry has already nicknamed “Dunesday,” one of the most significant head-to-head box office clashes in recent Hollywood history.