Math rarely ever seems like a go-to activity for anyone, much less for the most diehard fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, who are used to Kevin Feige’s magical spectacles chock full of Easter Eggs and eye-popping combat. Of course, then we remember how the world figured out that “I love you 3000” was a reference to the collective runtime of the MCU up to and including Avengers: Endgame, so maybe it’s not as unlikely as one might think.
Indeed, it looks like Marvel fans have a tendency to clutch their calculators as tightly as their comic books, because the question of Doctor Strange’s mental aging during the events of Avengers: Infinity War has become a matter of utmost importance; with Strange having long since dropped that magic number (namely 14,000,605), the brainiacs of r/marvelstudios went straight to work.
As Strange scoured the multiverse for a reality in which Thanos was second-best, the user assumed that the sorcerer spent at least a day in each universe, followed by factoring in a theoretical additional time period that he spent with Dormammu in Doctor Strange. This led to the conclusion that Strange, mentally speaking, is over 38,000 years old, which sounds absolutely crippling.
But not everyone was convinced that Strange needed a day in each universe, and knocked that value down to one hour instead. The result is still a mental age that no one wants, but still infinitely more manageable for someone with an eidetic memory.
And for others, all they could see was opportunity.
We’ll see if this millennia of experience helps Strange out in his voyage through the Dark Dimension, where we’ll likely be seeing him next after Clea recruited him at the end of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. In the meantime, we’re sure the MCU has plenty of other equations to sink one’s teeth into.
