One of the most talked-about scenes from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is easily the introduction of the Illuminati, allowing for various surprises faces, both new to the Marvel universe and old, to pop up for a mind-blowing cameo. Chief among them is John Krasinski as Mr. Fantastic, marking the first time one of the Fantastic Four has appeared in the MCU.
But it turns out the Sam Raimi sequel nearly went even further with setting up the arrival of Marvel’s First Family in the franchise. While reflecting on how the movie came together with Empire, screenwriter Michael Waldron made clear that it was always one of his major ambitions with this project to get Reed Richards into the mix somehow.
Before the concept of the Illuminati was floated, Waldron revealed he planned for the film’s post-credits scene to feature Reed in the Baxter Building. Here’s what he had to say:
“In my very first draft, I wrote a tag just for the hell of it, of the events of the movie being recorded and reviewed by somebody in the Baxter Building, and a stretchy hand coming into frame to run it back. Reed is probably my favorite Marvel comics character so I was always gunning to get him in here somewhere.”
In this version of the movie, we might not have actually got to see Mr. Fantastic in the stretchy flesh, but the upside would’ve been that it sounds like this might’ve introduced the Earth-616 version of the genius hero, instead of the doomed Earth-838 version that we’ll probably never see again.
We can also perhaps presume that, by depicting Reed as possessing his powers, this means Marvel’s plans is to have the foursome already operating as heroes in the MCU for a while once they are properly introduced into the universe come 2024’s Fantastic Four reboot. This fits with Kevin Feige’s promise that the reboot won’t rehash the same old origins story.
We love ya, Bruce Campbell, but we might’ve preferred to have this end credits sequence instead.