Source material
What is 'Time Runs Out'?
What is 'Time Runs Out' in Marvel comics? The final act of Hickman's Avengers run that leads into Secret Wars - the incursion countdown that ends the multiverse, explained.
If incursions are the disease, “Time Runs Out” is the final stage. It’s the closing act of Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers saga - and the direct on-ramp to Secret Wars.
What it is
“Time Runs Out” is a storyline that ran across Avengers and New Avengers in 2014-2015. Its signature move: it jumps the story forward roughly eight months, dropping readers into a world where the heroes are already losing the war against incursions. Things are worse, alliances have shattered, and the clock is nearly at zero.
Why the time jump matters
By skipping ahead, Hickman puts the reader in a state of dread - you arrive mid-collapse and have to piece together how it got this bad:
- The Illuminati and the Avengers have fractured over the morality of destroying other Earths.
- Doctor Doom and other players are manoeuvring behind the scenes.
- The incursions have accelerated to their final collisions.
How it leads to Secret Wars
“Time Runs Out” is literally the countdown. It ends with the last incursion - the final collision between the two most important Earths in the multiverse - and the failure of every plan to stop it. That collision tips directly into Secret Wars (2015), where the multiverse dies and Doom builds Battleworld (full explainer).
What it means for the films
The structure is instructive for Avengers: Doomsday:
- A sense of a losing battle and mounting dread fits a “part one” film.
- Fractured heroes and hard moral choices are exactly the drama Marvel loves.
- It shows how the saga can move from “multiverse in danger” to “multiverse gone” - the hand-off from Doomsday to Secret Wars (how it connects).
Bottom line
“Time Runs Out” is the dread-soaked countdown before the end - the comic that turns a simmering crisis into a full apocalypse. It’s the tonal template for a film literally called Doomsday.