The Marvel Cinematic Universe has reached a new phase of neologisms: it’s all about the Multiverse, Gap Junction, Dreamwalking and Incursions now. Get yourself a glossary. Bookmark the Fandom Wiki. Do your homework as Marvel has opened a whole new can of wormholes with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
Quantum mechanics, its many-worlds interpretation to be precise, is enjoying a pop culture moment. Between Undone and Shining Girls, Everything Everywhere all at Once and the new Marvel movie, there has been every incarnation of it (from parallel universes to alternate realities) and its bendy sci-fi cousins (from space-time travel to shifting reality). If the universe contains a boundless ocean of worlds, the multiverse contains a boundless ocean of universes, full of what-ifs, populated by similar to different versions of beloved characters.
All superhero stories, in essence, stem from what-ifs, alternate realities and fantasy worlds. Having reached the end of the rope with its Sacred Timeline, Marvel has decided to go above and beyond to explore universes sitting adjacent to other universes in a strategic bastardisation of multiverse theory. After all, what is the multiverse if not a corporate strategy for Hollywood’s studios. Like Spider-Man: No Way Home before it, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is a cross-over event rooted in brand synergy. By introducing Fantastic Four and the X-Men, both of whom were once Fox properties, as part of the secret society in a parallel universe, this is a starting point for a whole new level of cross-overs in Marvel’s Post-Infinity Saga.
The events of Avengers: Endgame put MCU’s holy continuity in disarray. Loki then opened up a Pandora’s box — an idea Multiverse of Madness director Sam Raimi has flirted with throughout his career — allowing an endless series of branched realities to grow unchecked. The problem is the resulting complications confuse the characters just as much as those watching. So, the actors are made to speak in exposition to shed light on the five Ws and H of multiversal madness.
Raimi’s movie begins with a night terror so vivid, Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) jerks awake from his sleep. A pony-tailed alternate Strange and a young girl are battling a Lovecraftian beast in a cosmic dimension of floating rocks. When the beast and the girl end up in Manhattan, Strange realises it was no night terror. After he defeats the beast with a Raimi-appropriate eye gouging, she introduces herself as America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez), explaining she is being pursued by a demonic threat for her dimension-hopping powers. “Dreams,” she says, “are windows into the lives of our multiverse selves.” America is thus a MacGuffin as well as an exposition delivery system. When the demonic threat turns out to be Wanda (Elisabeth Olsen) gone rogue, old friends turn foes.
Wanda, who had dreamed up a sitcom reality to deal with grief before transforming into Scarlet Witch at the end of WandaVision, leans into outright villainy, ready to sacrifice America to harness her powers for a chance to reconnect with her children in another reality. That she is ready to take over her alternate self — a happy mother of two sons — suggests a tendency towards hubris, as if grief entitles her to use everyone else for her own purpose and every other reality is secondary to her own.
In the spirit of anything goes, Raimi transports us into a multiverse inspired by Steve Ditko’s otherworldly illustrations, where the laws of physics are elastic and whole worlds act as sandboxes and battlegrounds. An inventive montage sees Strange and America get sucked through a series of distorting mirrors, where they turn into blobs of paint, break into cubes, and fly past underwater, Jurassic and futuristic realms. Given its screenwriter Michael Waldron worked on Rick and Morty and created Loki, all this is right in his wheelhouse. Where our two heroes land (Earth-838), they will meet allies and adversaries, familiar and new.
The last time we saw Strange, his spell to make everyone forget that Peter Parker was Spider-Man broke the multiverse. But in No Way Home, we remained in the main continuity aka Earth-616, while characters from other realities dropped by. Multiverse of Madness, on the other hand, spends a lot of the second act navigating the reality of Earth-838, where a superhero cabal called the Illuminati — made up of Professor Charles Xavier, Captain Peggy Carter, King Blackagar Boltagon, Captain Maria Rambeau, Doctor Reed Richards, and Mordo — offer a glimpse into how reality can be both radically and subtly different in parallel timelines. Marvel is obviously using this to set the foundation for future franchises.
But the multiverse cannot just be a playground for nostalgia, cross-overs and fan service. Multiverse of Madness uses it as a lens to frame a cross-dimensional introspection into a character’s choices, regrets, expectations and hopes. Strange and co are often asking themselves if they are happy, and how saving the world comes at a personal cost. Just as Wanda yearns for a second chance with her family, Strange too hopes for one with his ex-girlfriend Christine (Rachel McAdams) when he encounters another version of her. Each version of himself he meets is a cautionary lesson. So, Strange is not just duelling Wanda, but also manifestations of his worst impulses too. Not all habits are easily broken. Not all mistakes can be undone. Some cycles and patterns are fated to repeat.
One of the problems with a multiverse is when there are multiple versions of a character in different universes, the stakes reduce in indirect proportion. Even if a character may be dead in default MCU, there is always a chance we could see them again in another universe. Grief will not hit the character or the viewer the same way it might have with Black Widow or Iron Man’s deaths in Endgame. For superhero-weary audiences, new franchises and sequels aren’t the only worries. Potential reboots of MCU favourites could be launched once Marvel believes sufficient time has passed.
The sacred timeline that dictated MCU’s continuity had also acted as an assembly line for conformity — a subject of repeated criticism of the franchise. Yet, the branching of realities in a multiverse hasn’t really allowed Marvel’s Phase IV directors and showrunners to flex their creative muscles.
What If...? gamed out counterfactuals that weren’t in the least bit clever. Surely, the writers could have done better than “What If... Thor Were an Only Child?” and “What If... Zombies?!” Not being bound by the constraints of continuity was supposed to let them get bolder and weirder. Moreover, the studio’s assembly line seems to have lost its quality control in the process. Given the multiverse allows for a plural, rather than a singular, engagement of choices, there is potential for much richer storytelling than Marvel offers us with What If…?, No Way Home and Multiverse of Madness.
No Way Home wasn’t the first Spider-Man movie to explore the multiverse. Into the Spider-Verse got there first, with Miles Morales grappling with identity and sense of belonging, while teaming up with a variety of Spider-beings to defeat Kingpin. The animated movie is getting two more instalments that will plunge us again into the multiverse. DC will be getting on the bandwagon too. The upcoming Flash movie will see Michael Keaton and Ben Affleck’s Batmen return. It is unfortunate that the Daniels’ Everything Everywhere all at Once, the one multiversal foray we do want to see this year, may never release in Indian cinemas.
No doubt the multiverse holds a wellspring of alternate realities and endless possibilities. With no continuity to consider, studios can branch out in any direction with sequels, prequels, remakes, reboots and spinoffs — milk the IP for all it’s worth. By the time it’s done, it looks like Marvel is going to leave a pop cultural footprint the size of its expanding cosmos. But somewhere in the multiverse, perhaps there is a version of them that takes bolder steps to invest in more adventurous storytellers — and doesn’t tether them to a house style.
Prahlad Srihari is a film and music writer based in Bengaluru.
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