Since the Spider-Man: No Way Home trailer dropped, Marvel enthusiasts have been quick to dissect each moment in an attempt to uncover any clues relating to the movie’s plot. Without difficulty, eagle-eyed fans have already spotted a critical detail twenty-six seconds into the trailer when a man in a D.O.D.C. jacket interrogates Peter Parker about his battle with Mysterio following the events of Spider-Man: Far From Home. As some fans already know, the acronym on the interrogator’s jacket is short for the Department of Damage Control. Following the fallout from the Battle of New York and per Executive Order 396-B, the D.O.D.C. was the clean-up organization authorized to find and assess alien artifacts and other threatening devices and remove them from public spaces.
Understandably, Spider-Man’s fight against Mysterio falls under the Department of Damage Control’s jurisdiction, which is why they have placed Peter in their custody per the recently released trailer. However, this isn’t the first time the D.O.D.C. has popped up before, considering they were mentioned by Phil Coulson as far back as Iron Man. During the first mention of the organization after the Dual of Los Angeles, Coulson explains to Tony, “We have a team called Damage Control on the scene right now, at your factory and on the highway. They assess and control messes like this.” That’s where the Damage Control Deep Storage Vault comes in. Positioned in an undisclosed location in Washington, D.C., it houses some of the most dangerous alien technology and exotic materials known to humankind.
Interestingly, in Spider-Man: Homecoming, Spider-Man actually gets locked inside a Department of Damage Control truck dropping off recovered materials to their hidden vault. He is then trapped inside their large storage facility for thirty-seven minutes as he, along with his A.I. Karen, figure out a means to escape. Based on this scene, fans know what horrors are laid away in their immense stockpile of alien and advanced technologies, namely an explosive Chitauri energy core among countless unidentifiable, but equally terrifying weapons and otherworldly relics. What’s more, after the Battle of New York in The Avengers, the D.O.D.C. salvaged several items from the Chitauri. Still, the expropriated foreign and domestic objects don’t stop there. Some of the known confiscated equipment contained within the Damage Control Deep Storage Vault includes a massive cache of Chitauri technology and wares, such as a chariot, rail gun, helmet and staff. On top of that, Ultron’s head and sentry arm are secured inside their private repository, along with the remains of Iron Man’s technology.
The Department of Damage Control has even recovered Dark Elf technology they seized following Thor: The Dark World. One of the confirmed commodities recovered after this battle includes the incredibly powerful and deadly black hole grenades. This ancient short-range energy weapon has the capability of creating a miniature gravitational singularity that atomizes and crushes a target, further compressing their body into itself over and over again until the victim no longer exists. Outside of the second Thor movie, these small egg-shaped explosives appeared in Homecoming when Jackson Brice, one of Vulture’s criminal group members, offers to sell Aaron Davis, aka the Prowler, weapons. The devices Brice shows Davis includes an anti-gravity climber, taser rods, Ultron parts and the black hole grenades, all of which the D.O.D.C. would be interested in sequestering to their heavily guarded hidden storage unit. Of course, some of Mysterio’s weapons from Far From Home are perhaps now shelved in the Damage Control Deep Storage Vault, too, such as Stark Industries combat drones and illusion projectors.
It’s safe to assume that clean-up operations after Spider-Man’s battle with Mysterio are already underway, which means that the D.O.D.C. have access to even more perilous artifacts than they did both prior to The Battle of London and The Duel in the Tower Bridge. Theoretically, the hazardous objects stashed away in the Damage Control Deep Storage Vault could potentially rival that of the Time Variance Authority in Loki at some point soon. Based on the No Way Home trailer, it’s conceivable that these collected items could play a more significant role in the movies than ever before should these hazardous materials fall into the wrong hands. Furthermore, if any villains teased in the trailer obtain this tech, such as Doc Ock, Green Goblin, Electro and other potential villains from the Sony outings, it could have devasting consequences.
Nevertheless, later scenes in the trailer reveal that Peter gets released from the Department of Damage Control’s custody not long after questioning. It’s unclear if the organization plays a bigger part outside of this sequence in No Way Home, but regardless, its return spells danger for the entirety of the MCU.
To see how the D.O.D.C. returns to the MCU, Spider-Man: No Way Home swings into theaters on Dec. 17.
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