Some of the greatest conflicts in history start because of someone who thinks they know best.
In the team-based PVP hero shooter Marvel Rivals, that someone is Doctor Doom. Actually, it’s two different variants of the same character: one from the present day and the other from the year 2099. Sounds confusing already? There’s a lot going on and with the game’s lore tucked away in Hero Stories, Gallery Cards and Events, it can be easy to miss what’s going on storywise.
If you’re interested in the lore, here’s a quick recap of key events from Seasons 0 to the latest release Season 8, Sins of Alchemax.
Season 0: Doom’s Rise
The story begins with Doctor Doom visiting Doctor Strange in search of the Darkhold, a book filled with dark magic spells that he believes holds the secrets of time. Strange refuses to give it to him, so Doom decides to run his own experiments. Unbeknownst to Doom, his future counterpart from 2099 is working on something similar at the same time.
These simultaneous achievements wreak havoc throughout time and space, destabilizing the multiverse. Some realities vanish, while others merge together. One timeline has a Wakanda drifting through space. Another has a version of Asgard ruled by a scheming Loki. There’s one where Earth is conquered by Hydra. The chaos and instability this event causes across the universe is called the Timestream Entanglement.
Strange is caught in the blast and finds himself trapped in the Astral Plane. Meanwhile, Doom meets with Dracula, though we won’t learn what he wants until Season 1.
A new form of cosmic energy is created as a result of the Timestream Entanglement called Chronovium, which is essentially crystallized time. It’s a volatile power source that causes major disruptions to space-time, making it a valuable resource for both heroes and villains.
Galacta, the daughter of Galactus, watches over everything. To prevent the destruction of the multiverse from the actions of both Dooms and her own hunger for Chronovium, she preserves a handful of timelines. She lets the heroes figure out a solution while she gives the universe time to heal. In fact, she’s the reason why you can switch characters mid-match; that’s her swapping heroes in and out of the conflict.
Season 1: Eternal Night Falls
Doom approaches Dracula with a shard of Chronovium and a theory. If they combine the Chronovium with vampire blood, they could freeze a city in an eternal night. What Doom really wants is for Dracula to take over New York City and keep Earth’s heroes busy while he looks for the Darkhold. Dracula, suspicious but tempted, accepts Doom’s proposition.
As New York City falls into an eternal night, vampires fill the streets. The Fantastic Four and Iron Man race to build a Timestream Reintegration Device to undo the damage. Moon Knight forms the Eternity Knights with Iron Man, Wolverine, Winter Soldier, Adam Warlock, and Psylocke to slay the vampires.
Black Panther is turned into a vampire, though he mentally resists Dracula’s control. He eventually cures his vampirism by eating the Heart-Shaped Herb, but the downside is that his blood becomes irresistible to vampires. The heroes storm Dracula’s castle, free a captive giant Asgardian squirrel named Ratatoskr, and break the eternal night.
And Doom gets exactly what he wanted. Not only does he manipulate Dracula from the start, he secretly helps the heroes win so he can harvest Dracula’s immortal essence and create Pure Blood Chronovium.
In the aftermath of the eternal night, Wilson Fisk, also known as the Kingpin, is elected Mayor of New York City. And yes, we’ll be exploring the consequences later.
Season 2: Hellfire Gala
The mutant island Krakoa is swept into the year 2099 by the Timestream Entanglement, with the chronal energy causing the living island great pain. Emma Frost decides to throw a lavish event called the Hellfire Gala to reintroduce Krakoa to the world, but also to attract someone who can help the island.
What she gets instead is Ultron, back from deep space and armed with the Ultron Virus that can turn living beings into techno-organic machines. He’s also furious that someone is trying to erase him from the timeline (that someone being Doctor Doom).
Ultron infects Magneto with the virus and hacks into Krakoa’s Resurrection Protocols, the system used to revive dead mutants, to build himself a superior new body called X-Tron.
Magneto recovers enough to strike X-Tron down with a sword forged from Cerebro itself. Doom erases what remains using Krakoa’s chronal energy. When Ultron tries to betray him, he finds he has stabbed a Doombot instead.
Unknown to everyone else, Emma Frost actually makes a deal with Doom. He is allowed to extract Krakoa’s chronal energy to save the island in exchange for his help in defeating X-Tron and reclaiming Cerebro. She knows he will betray everyone in the end, which is why she doesn’t tell Krakoa’s Quiet Council, the island’s governing body would never approve of the deal.
The season ends with Adam Warlock sensing the return of a new threat.
Season 3: The Abyss Awakens
That threat is Knull, the primordial God of Darkness, imprisoned inside the planet Klyntar for millennia.
He wakes up thanks to the Timestream Entanglement. Too weak to escape, he reaches through the symbiote hivemind, corrupting gods as his darkness spreads across the universe. One of his first targets is Bast, Wakanda’s panther god.
Hela, bitter after her schemes in Asgard and Arakko fail, hears Knull whispering her name. She pledges her allegiance to him and becomes his Queen in Black.
The Phoenix Force arrives to fight him but is overpowered. The Phoenix is forced into a protective egg that shatters by accident, scattering its power into several heroes: Wolverine, Emma Frost, Black Widow, Magik, Namor, Black Panther and Iron Fist, transforming them into the Phoenix Seven.
Meanwhile, Knull reclaims his ancient sword, All-Black the Necrosword. Venom fights Knull with Dracula’s sword infused with Phoenix energy and loses.
In the end, it’s Rocket Raccoon who saves the day. His plan is to use Nega-Energy Replicators to transport Knull to the White Hot Room, a dimension of pure light where darkness can’t survive. Jean Grey agrees to help by sacrificing herself while fighting Knull, then resurrecting herself in the White Hot Room before placing Knull there. The plan works and Knull is destroyed.
While all this is going on, Hela is defeated by Blade, who bites her to drain her of enough blood to overpower her. Hela flees to the Eighth City, a reformed prison realm secretly run by Daredevil from the Collapsing Timeline. He grants her sanctuary but keeps her imprisoned, warning that her own kin will come for her soon.
Season 4: Heart of the Dragon
Because of the Timestream Entanglement, the Seven Capital Cities of Heaven have merged into a single realm called the Heart of Heaven.
Doom moves to steal the Chronal Chi of Shou-Lao, the immortal dragon powering the Iron Fist. Blocked by the heroes, he finds a loophole: the current Iron Fist, Lin Lie, never completed the proper trial to earn his power. He was given his abilities because he was gravely injured. Doom challenges the legitimacy of his title, invoking an ancient tournament law that requires each city to send a champion to compete for the mantle of Iron Fist.
Storm, Angela, Groot, Black Widow, Wolverine, Loki, and Daredevil are all chosen to compete with their own hidden agenda for participating in the tournament.
Daredevil is after a weapon called the Sword of Fu Xi that could end all wars, but fragments of that sword are embedded in Lin Lie’s arms. Angela is hunting Hela down, who has taken her baby sister Laussa. Loki is secretly plotting to deliver the Chi of Shou-Lao to Doom in exchange for a Phoenix Feather that could rewrite his destiny.
Off the battlefield, the Grandmaster leaves a cryptic note hinting that he has been engineering events for his own purposes. He has already set his plans in motion thanks to a thief named Gambit.
Season 5: Love is a Battlefield
Right before the Timestream Entanglement, Gambit and Rogue are in the middle of their wedding when a timestorm sweeps Krakoa into 2099, leaving their rings behind in the chaos.
The Grandmaster, an Elder of the Universe, spots a contract signed “von Doom” in the Collector’s Gallery, where the Elders merged their domains after the Entanglement. Seeing it as leverage against Doom, he tasks Gambit with stealing the contract in exchange for Chronovium wedding rings and a honeymoon at the Grand Garden.
Gambit takes the job without telling Rogue and uses their honeymoon as a cover for the heist. When Rogue accidentally touches a Chronovium die he left behind, she absorbs its energy, which makes her powers dangerously unstable. Knowing that someone will try to steal the contract, the Collector swaps it for a fake one. However, Rogue knows where the real contract is hidden thanks to absorbing the Chronovium shielding the cabinet.
Doom 2099 is also searching for the contract. After the Entanglement, he sacrifices his pre-Heroic Age memories to gain power. For years, he is haunted by visions of a woman he doesn’t remember. Tracing these visions to the contract, he sees the name Cynthia, showing she’s connected to his past.
Furious that Gambit and Rogue have stolen the contract, the Collector hires two Earth-based operatives to hunt the couple down: Deadpool and Elsa Bloodstone.
Season 6: Night at the Museum
Deadpool and Elsa have been working for the Collector for some time. Elsa captures monsters while Deadpool kidnaps innocent people from collapsing timelines for the Collector’s cosmic zoo. Deadpool grows attached to Jeff the Land Shark, but when the two are attacked by symbiotes, the Collector wipes Jeff’s memories of their time together due to his trauma.
When ordered to capture Gambit and Rogue, Deadpool switches sides on the spot, smashing display cases and freeing captives. Elsa helps him after realizing that not all monsters deserve to die, causing her to question her monster-hunting career. Together they rescue Gambit and Rogue.
Back on Krakoa, Gambit and Rogue are finally married, with Emma Frost forging a new ring from the Chronovium die for Rogue.
Doom 2099 tracks the newly married couple to Krakoa and breaks into Rogue’s quarters in the middle of the night. When Doom reads the contract, he breaks down in anguished tears. His own mother Cynthia von Doom sold her soul to the devil Mephisto. Rogue takes advantage of this moment of vulnerability to touch his cheek, hoping to absorb his memories. Instead, she finds nothing, it’s as if Doom has no past at all. The power surge from absorbing such emptiness causes Rogue to lose consciousness, allowing Doom to leave with the contract.
Deadpool takes custody of the freed creatures and establishes his Monster Kingdom. During the chaos, Loki helps Mantis restore the Grand Garden, though he secretly plants something in the garden before leaving. What he planted and why hasn’t been answered yet.
Season 7: The Hunt Is On
Out of nowhere, the Alchemax HQ from 2099 materializes in present-day New York, transforming Lower Manhattan into its future counterpart. Mayor Fisk uses it as justification to implement a Super Hero Ban. Vigilantes like Captain America, Doctor Strange, Invisible Woman and Mister Fantastic are arrested and locked up in a facility called the Vault.
The Gilded Saint, a powerful Thieves Guild patron, approaches Fisk with an offer: he will use magic to undo the chronal damage in exchange for the Tablet of Life and Time. Fisk accepts and hires Black Cat to steal it from the Sanctum Santorum, not realizing she is running a double game.
Black Cat secretly coordinates with Spider-Man to use her delivery of the Tablet as a cover to break the heroes out of the Vault. She then switches the real Tablet for a replica using Rocket’s Nega-Energy Replicator before handing it to Doom. She also makes a separate deal with Doom to give him the real Tablet in exchange for freeing the Thieves Guild from the Gilded Saint’s control.
The Gilded Saint receives his fake Tablet and undoes most of the chronal damage, but Alchemax HQ remains untouched. An enraged Fisk tries to detonate explosives he has planted around the building, but Daredevil has already disabled them. Daredevil also points out that Dracula has escaped from the Vault and suggests Fisk should start cleaning up the mess he made.
During what becomes known as the Blood Hunt, Dracula uses a stolen Asgardian Norn Stone to raise a new vampire army and plunge New York into darkness again. A squad led by Blade, Thor, Punisher, Squirrel Girl, and Moon Knight hunts them down. Blade kills Dracula with his own sword, severing the Norn Stone from his body and turning him to stone. Before anyone can decide what to do with the Norn Stone, Jeff swallows it whole.
Fisk ambushes the heroes in Times Square, believing they will be too exhausted to fight back. He is wrong. His defeat leaves him humiliated in front of New York’s citizens, causing him to resign as mayor out of shame.
Sharing a quiet moment together over coffee, Jean Grey and Rogue reflect on everything that has happened. Jean admits she can still sense Scott Summers somewhere out there, even though their psychic link has been severed due to the Timestream Entanglement. Neither of them is aware of the mysterious figure watching them from across the street.
Season 8: Sins of Alchemax
Due to Krakoa being dragged into the 2099 timeline, Emma Frost’s Hellfire Trading Company is dominating the pharmaceutical market. To reclaim their spot, Alchemax’s vice president Tyler Stone has a solution: use a powerful energy crystal called Kronovium to open gateways to past timelines so they can sell their technology there.
To accomplish this, Alchemax forces a time-displaced Cyclops to use his optic blasts (which draw energy from the Punch Dimension) to power up the Kronovium. The company also uses Moon Girl’s genius to open the gateways by leveraging her desire to return home.
While experimenting with the Kronovium, Moon Girl finds a way to contact her best friend Devil Dinosaur through his collar. Working with Mister Fantastic, the two come up with a plan to redesign his time reintegration device into a smaller version powered by Kronovium. The heroes then infiltrate Alchemax Tower to connect the device to the Punch Kronovium and send the building back to 2099.
Meanwhile, Doom 2099 is revealed to have made a deal with Tyler Stone. He shuts down Emma’s company by helping to siphon the chronal energy that is poisoning Krakoa, while secretly forcing the island into a healing period that wipes out the flora used for the Hellfire Trading Company’s pharmaceuticals.
With Krakoa’s dominance coming to an end, Tyler gives Doom 2099 a crystal of Punch Kronovium. However, Doom has no interest in corporate politics. Instead, he wants to rule the entire Chronoverse itself. It is also implied that Doom is planning to use the Kronovium to rescue his mother’s soul from Mephisto.
Now that the heroes have a key resource to fix the timeline and Doom 2099 is preparing to control the universe, Season 8 could change the game’s story forever. With the mid-season update Season 8.5 scheduled to launch on June 12, 2026 and the Path to Doomsday event running until the release of Avengers: Doomsday, Doom seems to be one step closer to being an even bigger threat to our heroes.
Marvel Rivals is free to play on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store.
