Doctor Strange in The Multiverse Of Madness is now out and throughout this post we’re gonna be breaking down the ending, explaining the cameos in it and also giving our full review of the film.
Once more we are back with the Doctor who makes you forget rather than being the Doctor you forgot about. The film follows him as he goes toe to toe with Wanda in the Marvel Magic version of Civil War and we culminate with him meeting a brand new character that teases an upcoming threat come the end of the film.
That’s as far as I wanna get before we go spoiler heavy so if you haven’t had a chance to check it out then check out now. There will be no memory spells from this point.
Introducing Defender Strange and America Chavez
The movie opens with Defender Strange attempting to protect America Chavez from a giant demon attempting to steal her powers. Attempting to get to the book of Vishanti seems like the only way to stop whatever it is that’s chasing them. In case you don’t know, the book of Vishanti in the comics is described as being a text comprised of pure light that can counter its opposite The Darkhold. Wanna got her filthy little black fingers on this during Wandavision and we learn throughout the film that it’s slowly started corrupting her over time.
Now America has similar powers to how she does in the comics except she can’t really control them here which becomes a big character arc that she goes on. When feeling scared her powers come into effect and she’s able to open up multiversal portals that appear like stars, similar to the source material. However, she hasn’t quite come to grips with these yet and the movie actually paints Defender Strange out as quite a bad guy because he tries to kill her to strip her of these powers early on. Much in the same way that the MCU one said he would be happy to sacrifice Peter and Tony to protect the timestone in Infinity War, this guy literally says ‘f**k them kids.’ However, the demon stabs and America manages to escape into the MCU main universe along with Defender Strange who dies just after freeing her from its grasp.
In the film, we learn that America got scared once by a bee and she opened a portal which sucked her mothers through. America believed that this killed them however Strange does say that he thinks they’re alive which is in keeping with the comics.
At the Sanctorum, our Doc gets a flash of this opening scene but he thinks ‘it was all a dream.’
Turns out it’s Christine Palmers Wedding, who moved on in the five years that Strange was gone. Guess everyone getting snapped affected the Doctor because she had no Patience…ey…that was alright.
Anyway Strange pretends to be happy but he’s about as happy as happy Hogan is this month.
It’s May.
Needing Wanda’s Help
At the Wedding Party, New York is attacked by Gargantos who’s come to strip Chavez of her powers.
After defeating the beast he ends up learning about America, seeing the body of Defender and realising that the monster was brought in by witchcraft he goes to the only person that he thinks can help. Now Wanda has had a tough old time in the MCU, not only were her parents killed in front of her but she was also experimented on, watched her brother die, caused Civil War, hand ad to kill the love of her life and then watch him die after Thanos hit rewind. Then, then right she enslaved an entire town, made vision and some kids and then again had to watch them die. So ey, probably not in the best of moods.
Now we learn in the film that dreams are actually us seeing through the multiverse and these are our variants.
Wanda has ones where she’s with her kids which lets her know that there are universes in which she can be with them.
She dreams of them every night but her heart breaks in the morning when they’re taken away faster than your plans of finally having a good year after the last two pieces of s**t.
Strange arrives at her new home and she brings up America by name without Stephen telling her, he realises something is wrong. She very much refuses to sacrifice the thing that she loves which juxtaposes Stephen who gave up Christine to save the universe. The guy literally said f**k them cats.
Introducing Rintrah
Wanda reveals the Darkhold which Stephen warns can get a dark hold on people and it’s clear she’s corrupted. Wanda gives him a chance to hand over America peacefully like in the war of independence and he heads back to Karmar Taj.
Not sure if that’s accurate but arriving there, Wanda roles in like a bad fart and we’re also introduced to Rintrah.
Pulling from the comics, this Minotaur’s arc is pretty much halfway through how he’s introduced. In the comics, the character was born on the extradimensional planet of R’Vaal. Rhintrah ended up repairing Strange’s Cloak Of Levitation which had been destroyed in a battle and after handing it back he was invited to become the sorcerer’s apprentice. In comics, he lived at the Sanctum Sanctorum which is changed up to Kamar Taj here.
What Could Have Been
Now if you’ve been following the channel you’ll know we did a plot leak breakdown that was pretty much 90% of what was in the movie. However, this had some additional scenes that may or may not have been in the movie. Because of how accurate it was I do think that this was what was originally shot and according to it, there was a scene in which the MCU Mordo arrived to kill Wanda. If you cast your mind back to the end of Doctor Strange he was hunting wizards but whether it’s true or not this isn’t in the film. It was supposed to open the movie but I kinda think it might have been cut so we get more of a twist when it’s revealed that she’s the villain.
New Worlds
After a big battle Strange and America escape through the multiverse and they arrive in a utopian world and the pair travel to the Sanctum Sanctorum. Along the way, they pass Bruce Campbell who appears as someone selling Pizza balls. In this world food is free but he wants some money for it, there’s also a great reference to the Evil Dead in which Strange enchants his hand.
This repeatedly tries to slap him much like the one from The Evil Dead 2 which was also directed by Sam Raimi.
Bruce also appears in the second post-credits scene which is when it finally stops and the guy can go back to pizza balls which ey, I gave your girl a piece-a deez balls…and some nuts.
What nuts?
Deez nuts!
What.
Meeting the Illuminati
After being captured by Mordo, Strange is taken before the Illuminati who in the comics was a supergroup that secretly controlled things behind the scenes. First teased on an app on Tony’s phone in Iron Man 2, their lineup is highly different here to what’s come before.
Now the movie isn’t specifically based on one graphic novel or comic book run however it does pull from several books like House of M and even Age Of Ultron. In the latter, we watched as the world was taken over by the maniac machine which…yeah bear with me I’m getting to it. Wolverine travelled back in time and he killed Hank Pym but when returning to the present he found a completely alien timeline to what he’d known. There he met Defender Strange and a twisted Iron Man, the pair of which ended up interrogating him along with Professor X. It was revealed that the world had changed massively because Hank wasn’t there for several of their major battles which sort of reflects a big plot point we’ll get to in just a bit. The world now had a new enemy, Morgan La Fey, who in case you don’t know, is a witch in the comics with similar powers to Wanda. She rolled into their base at the end like Wanda rolled into the Illuminati headquarters but before we could see the outcome, Wolverine escaped.
There are also the ties to House Of M which featured Wanda creating a fake reality in which she could be with her kids once more who had been taken away years before by Mephisto.
This comic also culminated with Strange going to Wanda to try and convince her to destroy the illusion and she brought it crashing down on herself which could hint at what’s next for the character, especially as she’s signed a 7 year7-year deal.
Now the Illuminati here are made up of Professor X, Captain Carter, The guy from the Slots Light Advert, Black Bolt from The Inhumans, Mordo, Mr Boombastic Tell me Fantastic and lastly Tom Cruise.
Syke.
All those people who said I was wrong about this being Maria Rambeau L.
Who is the Illuminati?
Now we don’t really learn the ins and outs of their backstory but we do get the X-men cartoon theme tune playing at one point which leads me to believe this is the same Professor X from the show. He not only has his yellow floating chair but also his Green suit and we know from the Disney plus day event that Marvel is dropping an X-men 97 cartoon at some point. However, he could just be a variant of the show and I think that’s definitely the case with Captain Carter. Carter is confirmed as being in Season 2 of What If and the one we met in that show ended up reuniting with Steve who’d been turned into a capsicle.
She drops an I can do this all day before being De-CAP-itated, ey, by her own shield.
As for Black Bolt, for the three of you who watched the Inhumans, Anson Mount returns from that but he’s in a far more comic-accurate costume. The character has the tuning fork on his head and who knows, this could mean that Marvel takes another crack at the characters.
Now Maria Rambeau is someone whose influence has been felt over the whole MCU since her death which we learned about in Wandavision. Turned out that after the events of Captain Marvel that she ended up becoming a founding member of SWORD but she died between the snap and the blip. Nice that there’s a universe in which she still exists so Monica can be with her but…nope Wanda kills her.
Now it’s clear that she took the tesseract test flight instead of Carol Danvers and how this happened could’ve been explained in Captain Marvel. We learn that the pair were both called to the base but that Carol took a shortcut so she got there first. What If this didn’t happen instead Maria got there earlier so she was the one who ended up riding with Marv-ell.
Carol didn’t have any attachments on earth so she flew into space with the Skrulls but potentially Maria remained behind because she had a daughter.
Lastly is John Krasinski as Reed Richards. This one fan edit has to stand up and take a bow as it pretty much got the internet demanding this until they all turned on it last week and said it was too obvious cos that’s what we do.
Will We See Krasinski in the MCU Again?
Now though he gets an uh-oh-spaghetti-o I think introducing him this way shows that he is gonna be played by John in another universe and that we will likely get him as the main one in the MCU. Jon Watts was signed on to direct Fantastic Four however last week he stepped away from the project and with Krasinski’s directing chops I think it would be great to get him behind the camera.
Now there’s also Peyton Reed who’s directed the Ant-Man films and he’s been saying for years that he’d love to get involved with a Fantastic Four movie. So if Krasinski thinks it’s a bit too much to have on his plate he might end up staying in the role and just passing it over to him. Now with Krasinski also comes the possibility that Sue Richards will be played by his wife Emily Blunt. It’s something else the internet asked for and ey, you get what you f**king deserve.
Nah I’m super hyped for it and really hope that they go that route because Krasinski completely nails the little time that he has on screen.
Against him we get one of the coldest lines I’ve ever heard in a movie when Wanda asks if his kids have a mother, he says yes and then she says that’s good because they’ll have someone to care for them. Godddamn.
Anyway the fact that he mentions his kids is in keeping with the comics when he and Sue eventually had them. In the MCU we know that Reed doesn’t have his powers yet as the Fantastic Four probably would’ve come out by now so I think the Reed we meet will be younger, not yet a father and then we’ll develop things from there. Would be awesome to see him eventually come face to face with Wanda who killed him in another universe and I think that would be such a cool way to take things.
Earth 838’s Strange
In the film we learn a lot more about the Strange of their Earth who formed the Illuminati. This ties back to the line ‘we should tell him the truth’ which sets the groundwork for learning more about the one from their earth. The truth is that this Doctor Strange ended up creating an incursion which has a lot of precedent in the comics. This happens when two different realities collide with one another and it was a major plot point in the book Secret Wars which this film further sets up. First teased during Loki, Secret Wars was a run in which multiple Earths all ended up crashing into one another and this formed a new planet called Battleworld which was overseen by Doom. Multiple versions of the character all fought for control and by the end of this conflict, Marvel streamlined the entire thing to create a new continuity that kept some things canon whilst it discarded the rest. This is how Miles Morales jumped from the Ultimate Universe into the 616 one and it’s likely that we’ll be getting some form of Secret Wars as the next major event.
Secret Wars Hints
He Who Remains said at the end of Loki that this would happen and Kang is probably going to be the next big Thanos-level threat we get in the MCU. Now Phase 4 has very much been about been about duplicate characters from other universes. We of course had several Spider-men in No Way Home, Loki was filled with a lot of Lokis and this movie has multiple Doctor Stranges, Wandas and so on. Don’t get me started on Ralph Bohner but it’s clear the multiverse is now open.
This again ties into Secret Wars in which we all had multiple versions of the characters appearing. I can definitely see that being this phases Endgame and who knows we might get a big battle scene where everyone from over the last 20+ years of Marvel movies comes together.
Fixing Incursions
Now the incursion wiped out a universe and behind the scenes, the Illuminati put in place their plan to correct things. They killed Thanos to fix things and also had Black Bolt kill their Strange. However, they told a lie to the public to cover this up and said that their Strange died fighting Thanos whereas the one in the MCU one of course handed over the timestone.
We learn that he had been using the Darkhold to dream walk and even after they told him not to he kept doing it. This corrupted him because the spell came from the Darkhold and it created the incursion. We learn that if you stay in a universe for too long that it leaves a footprint which causes universes to bleed together and this sets up the post-credits scene that we’ll talk about in just a bit.
Wanda vs Illuminati
Now for years, we’ve been asking how both the Fantastic Four and X-men will be brought into the MCU and I think their inclusion here is gonna be a bit divisive.
The Darkhold is destroyed and thus Wanda has to take things into her own hands. Wanda is desperate to find another Darkhold-esque book and Wong tells her about Wundagore mountain which in the comics was where it was created. This was by Chthon centuries ago and the pair travel there, namely to castle Darkhold. There are giant beasts that act as guards there and these resemble Chthon though we don’t know if he’ll turn up eventually.
She also goes to the Illuminati universe to grab America.
She does this by dream walking much like Strange did and it allows her to puppet a version of herself in another universe.
She wipes them all out pretty brutally and it’s a super dark scene. Professor X chalks up his third on-screen death and he attempts to enter her mind to route out the corruption. He almost gets through to her but a creepy version of Scarlet Witch arrives and snaps his neck.
In the Illuminati chamber, Strange goads Mordo into fighting him by saying that he was jealous of this universe’s Strange and he snaps the cuffs on him before escaping.
Along with this universe’s Christine Palmer, he and America escape into the basement, namely a door between universes and she uses the watch that she gave Steven as a gift in the first film to open up the door.
Grabbing the book of Vishanti things all come to a head and Wanda manages to grab America and she pushes Strange and Christine into a destroyed Universe. At the centre of this is Sinister Strange who Strange ends up fighting and killing.
We discover that he tapped into the Dark hold which caused an incursion and his universe is now in ruins.
Final Wanda Battle
Strange manages to get back to the MCU main earth by dreamwalking into Defender Strange’s body which as we’ve mentioned is a no-no. He masters dark demons that resemble the deadites and then he flies to Wundagore.
Wong climbs up though they’re beaten by Wanda, Strange inspires America which finally gives her the ability to master her powers.
Together they travel through to the Illuminati universe in which Wanda was with her kids and the Wanda here realises how in pain she is over losing her children. It seems like Vision doesn’t exist in this universe either which was a bit of a weird one as I kinda wanted to see him in the film. At one point Wanda snaps at them and after attacking her mother they’re terrified of her.
Realising that she’s been corrupted and consoled by the variant of herself she finally turns good and travelling back with America, and she makes one final move. Wanda destroys the castle with herself inside of it and it’s left ambiguous whether she’s alive or not. However, we do see a red glow from it and learn that she destroyed the Darkhold in every universe.
Is Wanda Dead?
Now as mentioned earlier Elizabeth Olsen has signed a brand new deal with Marvel so expect to see her back. There is of course the unresolved issue with White Vision and I do think that he will be the one that pulls her fully back from the brink. Viz is still out there somewhere and he is technically still the person that she fell in love with. That was, of course, his body but he was reprogrammed by Hayward however this was overwritten by the Hex one in Wandavision.
At the end of House Of M, we caught Scarlett Witch with her hood up keeping her head down and this was somewhat also referenced when she left Westview. I think that she will likely follow the same path as this and that it’ll be some time before she pops back up however she will still be alive. Wanda was out of the spotlight for several years in the comics and they will probably do the same thing here, bringing her back much in the same way they brought Steve back in Infinity War out of the shadows.
Also back to that Civil War thing, wild how Steve protected Bucky from Tony and here Strange protects America from Wanda…but I digress.
“I Love You in Every Universe”
Now Strange and the Christine Variant also say their goodbyes in what’s quite a heartbreaking scene.
Before he sends her back, he tells her he loves her no matter what the universe. She cries cause clearly she feels the same but knows they can’t be together. So he sends her back which is pretty sad.
However, the movie isn’t over and we learn that America becomes a sorcerer’s apprentice. The film ends with Strange collapsing in the street as he walks through New York and a third eye opens on his head showing that he’s corrupt.
Post-Credit Scene
From here we cut to the post-credits scene to find him once more walking and he’s approached by Clea played by none other than Charlize Theron. She says that he caused an incursion and that they need to stop it. She then cuts open reality to the dark dimension and his third eye opens showing he may have mastered the dark energies.
Now in the comics, Clea was the daughter of a prince that formerly ruled over the dark dimension and his wife Umar who was the sister of Dormammu. She was brought up believing that Dormammu was someone to be worshipped and that he may be the one who threatens her universe.
There’s a theory going around at the moment that Dormammu might actually be a Strange variant and you might remember that Tony Todd was originally meant to voice the character in the first movie. However, this was changed up to Benedict Cumberbatch and I think it would be a great twist if this was also a version of Strange who tapped too heavily into the Dark Dimension.
Now in the comics, Dormammu ordered her to kill Strange but the pair ended up falling in love which could hint at what’s happening in the future. If they don’t want to go with Dormammu they could end up with someone like Wanda, Chthon who the beasts in the castle are modelled after or we could just get Kang.
Teased at the end of Loki he would be someone that would definitely be the kind of person threatening realities and this would set up secret wars perfectly. I’d love to see him slowly teased over several movies and we of course know that he’s going to be in the upcoming Ant-Man movie. There are multiple versions of him out there and we know from He Who Remains that for every good one there is, there’s a bad one too. So potentially we’ll get several of them across the vast multiverse in some of the overarching movies.
Now, will Strange give into the dark energy.? Personally, I don’t think so, the Darkhold is destroyed and America points out that he’s not like any other versions of Strange. There’s also the fact that the others couldn’t stop the incursions whereas he seems like he’s going to.
My Review
I’d love to hear your thoughts below and as for my thoughts on the movie, I really enjoyed it and though I have my issues with it I feel it was a pretty well laid out heart-pounding chase film throughout. This felt like the Terminator at points and I think Wanda might be my favourite villain in the MCU now as she’s completely ruthless and unstoppable. The pace is really none stop but there are also some issues with that.
I do think that there could’ve been some breathing room during some scenes as it feels like there’s a lot on the cutting room floor that would’ve helped take the movie from being a 9 up to a 10.
Spoiler alert that’s my score.
Elizabeth Olsen really knocks it out of the park again and she’s by far the most complex and complicated MCU character that we have right now. On the opposite side of this is Benedict Cumberbatch who provides a lowkey heartbreaking performance at points. As of now, I think the guy is up there with Robert Downey Junior, Florence Pugh, Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart and the rest with being absolutely perfect casting.
The guy can really carry scenes and he’s one of my favourite Marvel characters right now. I love how they also brought the horror elements into this movie and Raimi is adept at integrating this into the story. The guy knows what he’s doing as a director and this is by far one of the best-shot Marvel films out there. There are so many creative choices that they use with the camera and at points, it almost feels like an indy film.
I just wish there was more of it.
I feel had they just maybe given a good twenty minutes on top of what we have then this would be absolutely outstanding but it’s still pretty good. Overall I had a blast with the movie and it gets…you guessed it an…
9.1/10
Ha got ya.
Now obviously I’d love to hear your thoughts so make sure you comment below and let me know.
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