‘The Marvels’ gets a heavy dose of multiverse fatigue in latest promo

The latest promo for The Marvels is here, and it unveils an aspect of the plot that wasn’t as obvious in past promotional material that helps firmly cement it in the Multiverse Saga.

Before now, all we really knew about The Marvels is that Brie Larson‘s Captain Marvel, Iman Vellani’s Ms. Marvel, and Teyonah Parris’s Monica Rambeau would be swapping places at random due to some kind of cosmic mishap. Meanwhile, we knew that the Kree Dar-Been, played by Zawe Ashton, would be our main villain holding some kind of grudge against Carol Danvers. So what is the new element of the plot the latest promo revealed?

The promo revealed by Marvel Studios Canada showed a scene in which structures protrude from a hole in the sky with a hexagonal pattern. At this, Captain Marvel asks, “What are we looking at?”

Monica Rambeau responds with: “That is a different reality bleeding into ours.”

While this extra element of another reality crashing into ours is an intriguing development for the plot of The Marvels, as it no doubt raises the stakes of the story, we can’t help but notice it bears a lot of similarities to other Marvel Cinematic Universe movies lately and even comic book movies in other franchises. For instance, the idea of an alternate dimension colliding with our own, and potentially destroying our home, could be found in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and even The Flash.

Does this mean The Marvels will be dead on arrival when it hits theaters, due to stepping onto already well-trod territory with its story? Not necessarily, as plenty of superhero movies rely on well-worn tropes of the genre and many rise above those clichés to bring something entertaining to the screen. With that said, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t just a little bit disappointed to see the plot of The Marvels go in this direction.

We’ll have to see if the filmmakers can pull off a crowd-winning spectacle or if their film will come crashing to the ground when The Marvels hits theaters this Friday, Nov. 10.