Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness features a lot of developments and revelations that could have big consequences for the MCU, but perhaps the one that’s literally the most mind-blowing is the movie’s explanation for dreams. The film’s opening establishes that the characters’ dreams are actually multiversal visions in which they experience the life of a variant from another universe.
What this means is that one scene from Avengers: Infinity War now hits very differently after watching Doctor Strange 2. Remember when Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) told Pepper (Gwyneth Paltrow) about his dream of them having a daughter called Morgan together? Now we know that he had a vision of a reality where Morgan was born earlier in the timeline. He even stresses how it felt “so real.”
Redditor whiskey__wizard gets the credit for pointing this one out, with their post on the MarvelStudios subreddit leading fans to realize that there are numerous dream sequences in the MCU that we can now look at through a different lens.
What’s more, Wanda’s illusions that she implanted in the Avengers’ heads in Avengers: Age of Ultron could retroactively be interpreted as her briefly sending the heroes on a dreamwalk.
Others are being party-poopers, though, and are pointing out that the multiverse was possibly only created after Sylvie killed He Who Remains in Loki. To be fair, however, there is some confusion over the difference between alternate timelines and multiverses, so this may not be the case.
Tony’s bizarrely accurate prophetic dream always seemed a little — pardon the pun — strange as the reason behind his sudden ability to peer into the future went unexplained. So the reveal about dreams in Multiverse of Madness actually helps us make much more sense of it. Likewise, Scarlet Witch’s powers in Ultron are more understandable, too. We’re used to the MCU only jumbling up its continuity as it goes on so it’s pleasing when a new development actually helps things fit together better.
