Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

The multiverse is a tricky and confusing place. These books will help you get your bearings.

As it happens, there’s more than a small amount of thematic crossover between this run by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie and the second Doctor Strange movie, including magical threats to reality, the cosmic consequences of selfish actions, and, oh yeah, Wanda’s two kids being in the middle of everything. As the Darkhold corrupts heroes across the world, only Wanda has the knowledge and the strength to take care of business … but even she might not be enough in the end. For one of the greatest Marvel multiverse stories, look to writer Jonathan Hickman’s celebrated run on Fantastic Four, in which Reed Richards joins the ultimate think tank: a council made up entirely of versions of himself from alternate realities.

A guide to movies and TV shows you should see before the latest Marvel film opens May 6.

The latest edition of " The Frame" features a matte, anti-reflection display. The trippy 2020 movie "Palm Springs" stars Cristin Milioti and Andy Samberg as a maid of honor and wedding guest, respectively, who hook up, only to get trapped in a time loop. "Rick and Morty" has danger, plenty of humor and a surprising amount of heart. "Everything Everywhere All at Once" is showing exclusively right now in theaters. That's more reason to check out "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" now. In late April, a new TV commercial for "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" featured an apparent flash of Peggy Carter's Union Jack shield from the comics (and a certain episode of "What If..."). The ad fueled speculation that the Carter character will play a role in the new film. A sequel, "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse," is due out in 2023. Turns out "Spider-Man: No Way Home" wasn't Spidey's first time at the multiverse rodeo. The first episode is called "What If... Captain Carter Were the First Avenger?" So, um, yeah, you might want to start with that one. " Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" hits theaters Friday, May 6, 2022, and, judging by the previews, it looks you're in for a maddening ride. In preparation for "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness," you're definitely going to want to see the first film to fully explore the MCU multiverse. What better movie to watch before the sequel than the first "Doctor Strange" film?

Disney+'s WandaVision first feinted at the notion of a multiversal cameo, recruiting Evan Peters (a.k.a the Fox X-Men films' former Quicksilver, a character ...

Who’s most likely to show up? Who’s least likely to show up? Finally, and unfortunately, we would be remiss to forget Ryan Reynolds’s Deadpool. The snarky mutant has apparently survived the Disney-Fox merger — his third film is on its way — and some fans swear they see a red smudge vaguely resembling Deadpool’s mug on another piece of fractured glass in that same, aforementioned Doctor Strange poster. Let’s start with the least gratuitous possibility of the bunch, Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Pietro. The return of Wanda’s brother would strike a bittersweet note, especially after she finally got a moment to process his death in WandaVision. Maybe Wanda’s chaos magic conjures an illusion of him in Multiverse of Madness, or he turns up as a variant from a different universe. If any of these guys show up, minus Taylor-Johnson’s Pietro, I will have to laugh. Who’s most likely to show up? In the episode (spoiler alert), Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) murders T’Challa and becomes Wakanda’s new Black Panther. MoM could show us a Killmonger variant of Black Panther, and the switch-up wouldn’t even have to be permanent — this is the multiverse, after all. Black Panther was once an Illuminati member in the comics — and while Marvel has promised not to recast the role after original star Chadwick Boseman’s passing, episode six of What If …? points to a potential way around that. Since Marvel is planning to introduce audiences to the Illuminati, they’re going to need to fill out the rest of the roster beyond Professor X and Captain Carter. The trailer indicates the group will occupy five to six seats, with one for Mordo, presumably, since he introduces them all. And the person seen to Strange’s right in this trailer does look like it could be Captain Carter in live action. But without the proper build-up to such a dramatic turn, it’d be an odd move. The plots of WandaVision, Loki, What If?, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and now Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness all rely heavily on the idea of infinite selves and possibilities, with the latter film (in theaters Friday) introducing the inevitable: a way to hop between those universes at will.

Thinking back on Marvel Studios' Infinity Saga—the 23-film cycle that makes up the first big overarching story in the MCU—it's amazing how well producer ...

Watching him come to grips with the fact that he can't be with the love of his life, Christine (Rachel McAdams), in any reality, while also learning that sometimes it makes sense to value the individual over what should be done for the greater good, is genuinely moving. Sure, you'd get more out of this movie if you revisited the original Doctor Strange and WandaVision before watching. Maybe Covid is partially to blame, as the pandemic has forced Marvel to reshuffle their schedule and then reshuffle it again. And then Raimi and the film's writers have Wanda brutally and hilariously murder all of them. During the Infinity Saga, these extra scenes were often made up of small breadcrumbs that almost subtly hinted at where the films would go next. Now they're just a giant movie star showing up to play a character general audiences probably don't know who might become an Avenger six years down the road. Yes, I said "hilariously." (Did you see Black Bolt's head explode?!) It's such a subversion of what the MCU movies typically do, and, quite frankly, it works like gangbusters in the movie, especially considering that it refocuses the narrative on Strange's seemingly impossible odds. In Spider-Man: No Way Home, a spell from Strange gone awry rips large holes in the Multiverse. But even though the Doctor Strange sequel is a movie about multiverses, it barely connects to No Way Home at all, with the events of Spider-Man only given a brief throwaway mention. The most prominent is Earth-838, a world where green means stop instead of go and Bruce Campbell sells something called a pizza ball from a sidewalk food cart. But if you do have an eye on the bigger story at play, you may find yourself starting to wonder if Marvel has any kind of grand plan right now at all. After a brief sequence where the pair tears through a bunch of different universes in a row (a universe where they are cartoons, a universe where they are paint, etc.), the movie largely plays out across the primary MCU universe plus two others. Well, the next step in the MCU has been the Multiverse—a loosely connected batch of stories that are built around the theme of infinite possible realities.

First, and perhaps most obviously, there is the so-called Sinister Strange that our regular Doctor Strange meets in an alternate universe earlier in the movie, ...

But for the purposes of the Multiverse of Madness, all you really need to know is that, in WandaVision, Wanda created them, using her magic, as part of a mass delusion she perpetrated as a way to escape her grief over Vision’s death. But her first appearance in the Marvel comics was back in 2011, when she appeared as a member of superhero troupe the Teen Brigade in a limited comic book series. It’s OK if you don’t know America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) already—she is, indeed, from the comics, and this is her first appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. America is the star of her own series of comics, appropriately called America, which started in 2017. In the first movie, the ability to manipulate time plays a major role in the defeat of the dread Dormammu (and later is awfully helpful in taking down Thanos). In the second, it’s mostly just a token of their multiverse-spanning affection, and an opportunity for a luxury timepiece company to get a few seconds of screen time. Either way, the movie reminds us that there are an infinite number of Wandas scattered throughout the multiverse, some of whom probably aren’t even homicidal maniacs, which gives Marvel license to bring her back whenever it wants. There’s speculation that the introduction of younger heroes like America, Hawkeye’s Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld), and the forthcoming Ms. Marvel’s Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) into the MCU will lead to the on-screen debut of the Young Avengers. That would be a great reason to keep America around: She’s a hero whose true powers only really become apparent toward the end of the movie, after all. Before that it made several appearances in the Marvel TV series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Still, yeah, it’s basically the Necronomicon. Finally, the third eye also evokes the Eye of Agamotto, the magical pendant Strange wears around his neck, which, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, once contained the Time Stone. In the comics, the Eye of Agamotto is a little different: Instead of holding the Time Stone, it gives Strange a sort of third sight, allowing him to see into the true nature of things—and when he uses it, a third eye appears on his forehead. Captain Carter (Hayley Atwell). Last seen in the animated What If … ? Peggy Carter’s super-soldiered alter ego makes her live-action debut here, with her own Union Jacked-up version of Captain America’s shield and a frickin’ jet pack. The Earth with the Illuminati, etc. In other words, there are a few possibilities of what the eye could mean, but together they suggest that Strange’s experiments with necromancy might have some lingering side effects. Naturally he turns up here as well, in the pivotal role of Pizza Poppa.