The Marvel Cinematic Universe is, without a doubt, one of the most impressive and lucrative franchises in all of cinematic history. Not to mention that the sheer extent of the many characters and destinations featured throughout the films is staggering.
And with Phase 4 now on the horizon, fans are eagerly awaiting all the upcoming installments headed their way, one of which is Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Benedict Cumberbatch is set to reprise his titular role in the continuation of the Doctor Strange saga within the MCU and as the franchise progresses, it seeks to bedazzle its audience with more far-out sci-fi concepts.
It’s evolved from alien encounters to inter-dimensional portals to time travel. And now, the forthcoming sequel will look to explore the multiverse. Although, this isn’t the first time the idea of the multiverse has been touched on in a Marvel movie. While not necessarily an inclusion of the MCU franchise, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) displayed a more narrowly-defined example of it. In the case of the Miles Morales’ story, the multiverse explicitly dealt with Marvel’s web-slinging vigilantes.
While it’s yet unclear how the multiverse aspect will come into play in the next Doctor Strange installment, it has made for some interesting theories. In the comics, for instance, when the multiverse comes up, it’s led to doppelgängers of familiar characters but from other worlds.
With this context in mind, fans have suggested that the MCU could include variants of some of the iconic characters we’ve come to know and love. It could even potentially open the doors for characters who’ve died in the current timeline. And it seems that might just be the plan, as MCU Cosmic claims the following:
“The concept of the Multiverse means there are other alternate realities where there are known MCU characters, but they could be very different. And according to a reliable source, the Doctor Strange sequel will explore that and it sounds like we may see some known MCU characters but in very different ways.”
The multiverse allows for unending possibilities, no doubt, and it’ll be intriguing to see if this means that we might see, say, an alt-Captain America or an alt-Iron Man show up at some point in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. As MCU Cosmic notes, it may not be the original actors playing them, but it’d still be a lot of fun to have characters we previously thought were gone from the franchise turn up for a quick appearance. Even if it’s in a different form.
