[Everything Explained, the Ending Included] Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness [Analysis & Easter Eggs]

I’m going to write about Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness — the key points of MoM, the explanations, the theories, the Easter eggs, and predictions for what comes next. I’ll go especially deep on the final scene, on where the MCU heads from here, on the Illuminati, a huge amount of it!

In this piece I’ll jot down what caught my eye on the first watch and the Easter eggs, and then get into the theories.

Spoilers ahead

Click the images below for the episode reviews!

The Spider-Man piece is here!

【MCU Discussion, Commentary, and Review】Spider-Man: No Way Home)【Thoughts and Easter Eggs】

Contents

What I’ve been into lately

I’ve started shooting all sorts of things for fun recently. Camera is an α7 IV, shooting RAW and editing in Lightroom.

This time I shot Hakone.

Overall verdict

A staggering premise

Wanda as the main villain, of all things! And a shattering ending where she probably dies! Then the long-awaited Illuminati, every one of them killed — an outrageously extravagant film. The MCU has a mountain of assets from its past and its future, but to be able to handle characters as important in the comics as Wanda and the Illuminati like this… wow, magnificent. Great pace too, easy to follow!

The multiverse premise was great as well! Genuinely anything goes lol Would love a show that just wanders around visiting different worlds lol

The idea that the dreams people have are another version of themselves somewhere in the multiverse is a hugely important one!

The three-eyed Strange at the end got a laugh out of me lol

Sam Raimi all over it

Sam Raimi means the Spider-Man trilogy and The Evil Dead! And that Evil Dead flavour came through strongly this time! I’m sure he wanted it far gorier and far more frightening, but it looks like the age rating put a stop to that lol

His signature move is zombies! Never expected the Doctor Strange corpse from the opening to end up being the trump card lolol Absolutely superb lolol

So glad he brought in a style the MCU has never had before!

How far Doctor Strange has come

Doctor Strange has grown a whooole lot… He was the type to grip the scalpel himself, and to see him change this much… Personally I think meeting Tony, Peter, America, Christine and Wong is what did it… The confession to Christine was hot too… Thanks to the Earth-838 Christine, Strange finally lets her go, and fixing the watch reads as his heart being mended. Lovely.

And the friendship with Wong at the end was wonderful too! I cried

The ending said Doctor Strange will return! Cannot wait for Doctor Strange 3!

Theories / Explanations

Earth-616 and Earth-838

If I’m remembering right, this is the first time official multiverse universe numbers have turned up! The Sacred Timeline we’ve been watching all this time is Earth-616, and the world the Illuminati were in is Earth-838!

This numbering has been used in the comics all along, and the main continuity there is 616 as well. What’s interesting is that Mysterio in the live-action Spider-Man: Far From Home — all of it lies, obviously — said this world was Earth-616 and that he came from Earth-833. Maybe he was the real thing after all? (joking)

Is Wanda dead? (Earth-616)

At the end of the film Wanda destroys the temple on Mount Wundagore to destroy the Darkhold, and ends up buried under the rubble. She kills a great many people over the course of this film, and that’s a little too much sin to come back from as a hero, so there’s a real chance she died right there… But her actually being alive and coming to the rescue one day is very much on the cards too.

There’s the whole White Vision problem still hanging around as well.

America Chavez

Here she’s drawn as a race? or maybe an individual, with no variant anywhere in the multiverse and the ability to travel between universes! Such a good kid… In the comics the setup is as follows.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKu5YYM9Emc

Born in another dimension called the Utopian Parallel, she has Superman-like abilities (flight plus superhuman stamina) as well as the power to travel between dimensions (she kicks at space, breaks the dimensional wall and moves through it). A woman with a tough mouth and a hard punch — fierce at both.

Her powers are thought to come from the Demiurge, a god of the Utopian Parallel (conceptually a lesser god, though close to an omnipotent one).

Abilities

Flight. Superhuman physical ability (strength, endurance). Interdimensional travel, and a body that can withstand it: she punches or kicks at space to open a “door” to another dimension. Once that door is open, other people can pass through it and come out the other side too.

Sexuality

Homosexual. She comes from a world of women only, so whether she really counts as a “sexual minority” is an open question.

https://w.atwiki.jp/studentx/pages/1065.html

In the MCU her home also looks like a world of women only. Would love Ned from Spider-Man to aim for sorcerer as well and end up friends with America.

Christine Palmer (Earth-616 and Earth-838)

An original character with no same-name counterpart in the comics! Never thought she’d marry someone else… I cried

The Earth-616 one cares about Strange too, and she even tells him why she can’t love him. The 838 Christine couldn’t stay with him, but she became the thing that let him settle his feelings.

The Darkhold

The Darkhold, from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and WandaVision, is the main item this time! Who actually wrote the book had never been said before, and this film finally tells us! The author is Chthon, exactly as in the comics! And this book is a copy — the original was in the temple on Mount Wundagore! In the end Wanda destroys the Darkhold in every universe, but with Doctor Strange getting a third eye and so on, it doesn’t look like the material is going to run out any time soon.

Dreamwalking was pretty handy as well.

Chthon, god of chaos

Chthon gets named in this film — does that mean he shows up at some point? It’d be fun if that third eye were proof of being placed under Chthon’s control.

Chthon, god of chaos, is a character with deep ties to Wanda in the comics to begin with. In the comics Wanda’s mother was a witch, and Wanda was born inheriting that power. On top of that, Chthon’s blessing hands her an outrageous power called chaos magic.

The site below goes into Chthon in serious depth, so it comes highly recommended.

A full breakdown of Chthon’s powers and background [Marvel character guide]

Moon Knight, Shang-Chi and Eternals have brought in a lot of gods lately, so I’d love Chthon to turn up too.

The Book of Vishanti

The Book of Vishanti, sitting at the opposite pole from the Darkhold! Who wrote it, I wonder? The great Sorcerer Supreme O’Bengh, maybe?

A small one: the Vishanti already came up in What If…? episode 4, when Wong puts a protection spell on Strange!

The Illuminati (Earth-838)

The Illuminati, a hugely important group in the comics, finally arrive!! In the comics the members each hold on to one of the Infinity Stones, and make enormously important decisions entirely among themselves! Thought they’d be the organisation that manages the multiverse in the MCU, and it turned out a bit different lol Somehow they reminded me of X-Force in Deadpool 2 lol

And all of them dying, on top of that… lol

Let me introduce the MCU’s Earth-838 Illuminati!

Professor X

Charles Xavier from X-Men himself! Him being the one who vouched for Doctor Strange felt really good!

Captain Carter

Looks like she’s yet another variant, different again from the one in What If…?! Getting cut in half by Wanda, though…

The Monica version of Captain Marvel

There were rumours it might be Iron Lad, but it turned out to be the Monica version of Captain Marvel lol

Black Bolt

Real name Blackagar Boltagon. The leader who holds together the Inhumans, that group of so-called superhumans. The destructive force of his voice is monstrous, but having his mouth sealed and his head blown apart was a shock.

Mordo

A Mordo from another Earth arrives! Unpleasant as ever. And the ones standing behind him are Ultrons from another Earth.

Mr Fantastic

Thought Mr Fantastic might be Ioan Gruffudd, who played him back then, and it turned out to be John Burke Krasinski, pictured below! An MCU Fantastic Four is confirmed to be in production, so is he the one who’ll play the part there?

The purple woman in the post-credits is Clea

The woman in the post-credits scene appears to be a character called Clea, played by Charlize Theron. In the comics she’s married to Doctor Strange!

In the comics Clea’s mother Umar is the twin of Dormammu, master of the Dark Dimension. Which makes Clea his niece.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC82W_V_p9E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0Ocb_Kgh5g

What Clea tears space open into in the post-credits scene is clearly the Dark Dimension from the first Doctor Strange! So the odds of it being Clea look extremely high!

What’s the next film? And why was the incursion triggered?

Apologies if my memory is off here, but I’m fairly sure people were fleeing in panic in the post-credits scene. Which means I think a crisis on the scale of the Avengers films is happening in that world. Looking at the MCU’s announced slate there’s no big team-up equivalent to Avengers 6, so the continuation of this Doctor Strange story looks like it’s a fair way off. The talk out there is that it’ll be Secret Wars, the story that goes enormous with the destruction of the multiverse, but personally I think it comes only after the multiverse and the individual films get deepened a lot more.

The end credits are an Evil Dead parody

The man selling those pizza balls is Bruce Campbell, who led Sam Raimi’s landmark film The Evil Dead!!

And him beating himself up like that was apparently a parody of it! Time to go and watch The Evil Dead!

The junction point of the universes (the Gap Junction)

The place where the Book of Vishanti was appears to be called the Gap Junction! You’d think the TVA from the Loki series might be there too, but a TVA from another universe has already turned up, so it probably isn’t in the Gap Junction, which looks like it exists only once.

Wondered whether the place the Watcher was in What If…? is the Gap Junction lol

The Doctor Stranges

All sorts of Doctor Stranges turn up in this one! Besides the ones above there was the Earth-838 Doctor Strange, seduced by the Darkhold and killed by Black Bolt (close to a suicide)! Apart from our Earth-616 Doctor Strange, every one of them is arrogant and the type who grips the scalpel himself in the crucial moment rather than leaning on his friends.

The one the three-eyed Doctor Strange lost to — another Doctor Strange, perhaps? And losing to that Doctor Strange is what collapsed his own universe?

Never expected this extremely villain-looking Doctor Strange to become Earth-616’s trump card lol

What is the third eye?

Doctor Strange’s third eye isn’t a first — apparently it has happened in the comics as well. Couldn’t quite work out the circumstances there. In this film it feels like something that appears on anyone who breaks the Darkhold’s rules. Which would make it Chthon’s eye, maybe?

Incursion

An incursion is a law of the multiverse: two universes are drawn towards each other, and one or both of them is wiped out.

What triggers an incursion seems to be someone from another universe arriving in a universe. Which would mean Spider-Man: No Way Home was pretty dangerous too? Would like to get my head properly around all this going forward.

The Brazier of Bom’Galiath

The Brazier of Bom’Galiath that Christine uses to beat the evil spirits had already appeared in the first Doctor Strange, as the weapon used against Kaecilius!

The evil spirits

The evil spirits that come out of the Darkhold looked incredibly cool! When they started talking I thought, is this Mephisto?! lol

Would love it if we found out who those spirits actually are later on!

The minotaur’s name is Rintrah

The sorcerer with a bull’s head and a human body who keeps turning up is apparently called Rintrah. He has a weighty backstory in the comics, as below, but in the MCU he’s probably no more than an Easter egg.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqdmRKtt428

The statue of the Living Tribunal

There’s a statue of the Living Tribunal in the sequence where America Chavez and Doctor Strange move through the multiverse! The Living Tribunal is a three-faced being, a kind of arbiter of the universe, as below.

History

The Living Tribunal has been granted omnipotent power by the omnipotent being the One-Above-All, in order to protect and maintain the harmony of the main continuity (Earth-616), branch universes (What If and so on), pocket universes (Earth X and so on), the entire multiverse, and the past, the future, reality and parallel worlds.

The Living Tribunal appears on Earth as needed, watching the actions of other cosmic beings, judging whether they will affect the universe as a whole, and handing down verdicts.

Appearance

For convenience the Living Tribunal manifests in a humanlike form with three faces. Only one of the faces can be seen completely, the second only partially, and the last is entirely hidden by cloth. The three faces represent equity, necessity and vengeance respectively.

Powers and abilities

The Living Tribunal has infinite cosmic power, is omniscient and omnipotent, and holds authority to control the Marvel universe absolutely, second only to the One-Above-All. Should he choose to, he has the power to wipe out the entire multiverse in an instant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_Tribunal

The Sands of Nisanti

The Sands of Nisanti, which can seal magic away, turn up! Had no idea anything like that existed.

Raimi-style direction

Loads of classic filmmaking flourishes in this one! The iris-out that closes a circle around whatever you’re meant to be looking at, as below, hard zooms onto that same subject, several people overlapping semi-transparently while the story carries on, and more! Full of character. Lovely!

Mordo (Earth-616)

To think the Earth-616 Mordo, who’s still out there hunting down anyone who handles magic wrongly, doesn’t appear at all… Fingers crossed for Doctor Strange 3!

Nightmare

Had Nightmare, ruler of the dream world, pegged as this film’s final boss, but no such thing. If Wanda hadn’t been the one behind it all, making Nightmare the mastermind would have worked, I think. Let me introduce him anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml-m5812O88

Gargantos, the one-eyed octopus monster

The familiar of Wanda’s that turns up in this film is a monster called Gargantos. It was kind of cute.

Gargantos is a creature that appeared in Sub-Mariner Vol 1 #13 in 1969 — likewise a giant one-eyed octopus-like thing. An almost unknown character, having appeared in Sub-Mariner only twice. There is next to no information on it.

The creature in the Multiverse of Madness trailer plainly looks like Shuma-Gorath, so there must be some reason the name Gargantos is being used. It could be a rights issue, or it could be a reason that connects to a future story. For the record, Sub-Mariner, the comic Gargantos briefly appeared in, is as the name suggests a solo series for Namor the Sub-Mariner. Gargantos appears to turn up there as a servant of Namor’s arch-enemy Naga.

https://theriver.jp/ds2-shuma-gorath-or-gargantos/

https://theriver.jp/ds2-shuma-gorath-or-gargantos/