Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness Explained

It looks like fans of the MCU are heading into the multiverse of madness with the announcement of Doctor Strange 2.

Throughout this, I’ll be breaking down everything that you need to know about the upcoming Doctor Strange film as well as the secret meaning behind its title.

There will be heavy spoilers here, so if you don’t want anything from the film potentially ruined for you then I highly suggest that you turn off now. There are also some spoilers in relation to Spider-man: Far From Home so definitely skip this for now if you haven’t had a chance to watch that.

With that out the way, I just wanna give a huge thank you for clicking the video now let’s get into my breakdown of Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness!

Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness Release Date

Ok so firstly the film was announced at San Diego Comic-Con 2019 a the Marvel Phase 4 Panel in Hall H. Kevin Feige who hosted the panel stated that the film would be directed once more will be directed by Scott Derrickson, who was at the helm of the first film and will be released on May 7, 2021.

Doctor Strange 2 Plot

The movie is currently being promoted as Marvel’s first-ever horror film and it is also the first movie in the slate that will directly tackle the multiverse. Whilst the multiverse was a huge plot device in Spider-man: Far From Home, with Mysterio claiming to be from another Earth, this was revealed to be a lie, however at the panel Kevin Feige himself said that this doesn’t mean that it does not exist.

The film is set to tie directly into the events of the upcoming Disney + show WandaVision which will center directly around the relationship of Scarlett Witch and Vision who will presumably be resurrected in the film after his death in Infinity War.

Doctor Strange Plot Predictions

Though we haven’t had any confirmation of the plot or villain there are rumors that the evil entity Nightmare is set to be the big bad of the film with casting directors currently deciding between Christian Bale and Matt Smith. Nightmare is the ruler of The Dream Dimension which is an area that humans are brought during their sleep to be tormented and tortured,

Though Nightmare is predominantly a villain, he and Strange have had to team up in the past to save the world so there are definitely a lot of dynamics that can be added by the appearance of the new character.

The film is also set to pick up on the post-credits scene of Doctor Strange in which Mordo had started his mission of destroying sorcerors.

The fact that there are fewer wizards in the world has been pointed out in Infinity War when Strange wasn’t really joined by any others when fighting the forces of Thanos and later in Endgame when Wong arrived with his forces and Strange asked ‘is this all that you could get?’

This kinda cements that Mordo has been successful in his mission of murdering so many and whilst Wong, who took over the position of Sorcerer Supreme in Stranges Absence, probably thought that this absence was due to the snap, the fact that they are not there at the end confirms this.

Therefore I think that the film will center around Strange discovering the multiverse and Nightmare along with it and accidentally introducing him to our world which begins to send people to the brink of insanity. Strange will have to call on others such as Scarlett Witch, Vision and Mordo to take him on and thus their alliance will be formed.

The madness in the title could refer to the fact that in the comics Nightmare requires humans to dream in order for him to live. Without them traveling to his dimension he is unable to feed and therefore exist. Juxtaposing this if humans are unable to dream or sleep then they will eventually go insane and thus I think that the film will focus heavily on Strange trying to return Nightmare to his home in order to save humanity from collapsing in on itself.

The title in The Multiverse Of Madness

So what is the title itself actually a reference to? Well, Strange is no Strange to horror in the comic books and it appears that In the Multiverse Of Madness is a nod to the infamous H.P. Lovecraft novel titled At The Mountains Of Madness. Throughout his long and rich history, Strange has tackled many of the creatures that Lovecraft created due to his work now being out of copyright and it appears that this film will take a similar form.

At The Mountains Of Madness follows an expedition group that discover uncharted areas of Antartica and unwittingly unearth a long-forgotten civilisation and an alien race that exists there. There book went on to inspire classic horrors like The Thing and there is a wealth of potential to pull from here if Marvel decides to use elements of it.

The film does sound incredible from the tidbits that we know so far and it’s great to see that the MCU is slowly drifting away from their formula to discover new areas in their universe that will tonally shift the balance of the films going forward.

I can’t wait to see what In The Multiverse Of Madness is like and needless to say I’m really excited for the film’s release in 2021.