Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness

 

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness details Strange's mission to protect America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez), a young girl with the ability the travel between dimensional realities. America has two problems: she can't control her ability, and she's being hunted by someone who wants to steal her powers for their own gain. It's not long before the movie reveals her pursuer is none other than Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), the former Avenger and current Scarlet Witch, who is desperate to reunite with the children she magically willed into being in WandaVision. Wanda has learned that her children actually do exist in every other universe except for the one she lives in and becomes determined to slide into another universe where she can reunite with her children. Those who have become attached to Wanda the beloved Avenger and didn't like her darker turn in WandaVision should be warned: She goes full Daenerys-Targaryen-in-the-last-season-of-Game-of-Thrones evil in this movie, as she attempts to achieve her goal at all costs.

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. 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. It's in this world where the film's writers decide to have the most fun with longtime Marvel fans. Earth-838 doesn't have S.H.I.E.L.D. or the Avengers. Instead, it has the Illuminati, a secret cabal of heroes who protect their world. And the Illuminati's roster is made of alternate versions of characters.

After all, it's not like any of this makes much sense. Again, the recent Marvel projects have lacked that feeling the Infinity Saga had where one film leads into the next which leads into the next. They started teasing the multiverse in WandaVision with Evan Peters' return as the X-Men franchise version of Quicksilver, before revealing it was all an elaborate prank. Then, in Loki, the viewer was introduced to alternate timelines and different versions of a single character, although the events of that series so far seem completely limited to that show. 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.