The second trailer for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse has dropped and it’s given us a few more hints about the nature of the film’s plot as well as new insight into the multiverse and where the MCU fits in. During the trailer, Miguel O’Hara, aka Spider-Man 2099, references “Doctor Strange and the little nerd back on Earth-199999” a clear nod to the MCU spidey and his antics in No Way Home.
The concept of the multiverse has made the MCU into a confusing affair. Ever since Marvel first started setting it all up in its live-action movies, people have been scratching their heads trying to figure out how everything fits together. While the idea of parallel universes isn’t that complex, the way Marvel makes use of them can throw even the most diehard fans through a loop. How the MCU coexists with the comics is a rabbit hole few have dared to go down but it’s vital in order to understand how Earth-199999 fits into all of this and whether it is the main timeline for the MCU or something else entirely.
The number assignment for universes in the MCU has been a point of contention for a while now. Way back in its early days, the MCU was designated as Earth-199999 in order to separate it from the timeline of the comics but still allow it to exist in the multiverse. However, the movies clearly have their own ideas as some of them seem to be hinting the MCU is the main timeline, or ignoring the comic universes altogether.
In Spider-Man Far From Home, Mysterio explains that he is from another universe and that Peter Parker’s Earth, and the one we’ve all been following since 2008, has been dubbed Earth-616. Not only does this contradict the assigned number already given to the MCU but it also causes another problem: the main Earth in Marvel Comics is assigned the same number, so how can they both be in the same universe? It was confirmed that the MCU timeline and the timeline of the comics coexist in the multiverse; characters from the comics have even been into the MCU timeline (offscreen, of course). But if that’s the case, how can there be two different versions of the same Earth-616?
The simple answer is, they aren’t the same. By the end of Far From Home, we learn that Mysterio is a fraud — he made the whole story up. So it’s safe to assume his multiverse story was fabricated, too, with his claim potentially just a nod to the comics by the film’s writers. So the MCU Earth isn’t Earth-616, right? We can go back to calling it Earth-199999, right?
Wrong. Not long after the second Spider-Man movie cleared everything up, Doctor Strange 2 came along to confuse things again. This time, we follow Strange as he actually travels across the multiverse, ending up on Earth-838. Here he encounters the Illuminati, who informs him that he is from Earth-616, thus confirming Mysterio’s claim about the MCU Earth.
Of course, that raises more even questions, like how could Mysterio know the assigned number for Earth without having contacted another universe? But even worse, this now makes Earth-199999 defunct again and means that the MCU and the comics’ universe can’t exist in the same multiverse if they are both supposed to be the same universe.
So is the MCU designated Earth-199999? Well yes and no. It seemed like the original plan was to keep the MCU in a separate universe and allow the main comics’ timeline to exist alongside it. But maybe because Marvel Studios wants to keep its universe as the main timeline, it seems to be ignoring the comic book universe altogether. The lore of the comic books could explain how there are two Earth-616s but then we’d have to start getting into the Megaverse theory, (a multiverse of multiverses) but that’s as far as we’re going to go down that rabbit hole.
Most fans would still prefer to call the MCU Earth-199999 as that would allow it to fit in with the rest of the Marvel multiverse, and there are some explanations as to why certain characters would call the MCU Earth 616. The Illuminati have assigned each Earth their numbers in Doctor Strange 2, but in the comics, it is The One Above All, who is pretty much the embodiment of God, so there’s still a chance that it’s just a coincidence that people keep labeling the MCU as Earth-616. Either way, most fans are sticking with 199999 as the MCU’s designated number because let’s face it, it’s already confusing enough.
