With the Multiverse Saga prepping to pack its own Infinity War-sized punch two years from now, fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe would be wise to expect some of the most topsy-turvy, imagination-defying nuances a comic book franchise can deliver in the meantime, and comparable power level spikes to boot.
Indeed, with the council of Kangs gearing up to launch their offensive on the multiverse, near-omnipotent foes will be the business-as-usual opposition for our heroes before long, but that’s not to say that such infinitely-powerful beings haven’t charted MCU waters before.
One such being is Dormammu, a monstrous, mystical entity whose abilities are near limitless. He made his MCU debut in 2016’s Doctor Strange, and given the current trajectory that the franchise is on, we highly doubt that we’ve seen the last of him.
What happened to Dormammu in the MCU?
In the MCU, Dormammu is the overlord of the Dark Dimension, and is summoned to Earth by antagonist Kaecilius and his cronies so that Dormammu may absorb their dimension into his own, as he intends to do with every universe in existence.
Being a character of near omnipotence, a freshly-caped Doctor Strange stood no chance in an out-and-out fight against Dormammu, but that didn’t prevent him from coming out on top.
In the climax of Doctor Strange, Strange trapped himself and Dormammu in a time loop using the Time Stone, preventing Dormammu from killing him definitively and only agreeing to break the loop if Dormammu left Earth alone and took Kaecilius with him. Dormammu agrees, and he departs Earth.
Could Dormammu return in the MCU?
The bottom line is, Dormammu isn’t dead, and the looming inevitability of two enormous MCU crossover events coupled with Doctor Strange’s current plight could very much spell a return for the eldritch overlord.
In the post-credits scene for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Strange comes across a sorceress named Clea, who warns him that he’s needed to help stop an incursion, which leads to him following Clea into the Dark Dimension; the very plane that Dormammu rules over.
With Strange diving head-first into the realm of a powerful old enemy who probably isn’t pleased about how the events of Doctor Strange played out, we’re placing the odds of a Dormammu return somewhere in the “very high” range.
As for what project he could return for, that question is a bit murkier; a third Doctor Strange film would be an obvious bet, assuming it would cover his and Clea’s escapade in the Dark Dimension, but given that we have no word on any further Doctor Strange projects at the time of writing, we can only go so far with this assumption, even if such a project feels like an inevitability.
As for other possibilities, the sheer scope that will no doubt be home to Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars means that just about anything could happen. With Kang’s involvement alone, those projects might be too overstuffed with power as is to add someone like Dormammu into the mix, but if Kevin Feige and co. are intent on going bigger than Infinity War, we wouldn’t put it past them to pull out all the stops, for better or worse.