MCU Breakdown: The Multiverse Part One

 

The MCU or Marvel Cinematic Universe has been a box office behemoth for the last 15 years. If you use your memory to remember what film came out in that time, that would be 2008's Iron Man which not only birthed the MCU as it is known today but also reinvented the career of its star: Robert Downey Jr. In the 15 years since the first Iron Man film, there have been 32 films spread through four phases and two sagas(The Infinity Saga and the Multiverse Saga). The Infinity Saga covers the MCU's first three phases, starting in 2008 with Iron Man and ending in 2019 with Spider-Man: Far From Home. The Multiverse Saga is the saga that we are currently in it started with the 2021 film Black Widow and will continue with 8 released films(the most recent film being Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3) and including 8 films yet to be released including two more Avengers films (The Kang Dynasty on May 2 of 2025 and Secret Wars on May 1 of 2026) with the first out of those 8 films being The Marvels which will be released in theatres on November 10, 2023, and is the sequel to Captain Marvel which came out in March of 2019. The film also serves as a continuation of both Wandavision and Ms. Marvel, two Disney+ shows produced by Disney and Marvel.

In all the 15 years of the MCU, there have been a multitude of characters already introduced with many more on the way. In that time, there have also been many complicated scientific ideas that have been introduced that many fans probably are not familiar with on a grand scale. One such idea is the idea of "The Multiverse". According to the MCU side of the Fandom website, the Multiverse is defined as being "the aggregate of all dimensions and parallel realities in existence. Although dimensions are just portions of reality within a universe, there are also parallel universes that coexist with one another¹. To better understand that we must understand how the multiverse came to be. In the Disney+ show Loki, a character by the name of He Who Remains who is a variant of the villain Kang and like Kang and the other variants is played by Jonathan Majors explains that the Time Variance Authority was created and he isolated what he called the "Sacred Timeline" to combat his other variants who started a multiversal war. In the MCU, the Multiversal War was "an all-out conflict across the Multiverse between variants of Nathanial Richards, a descendant of Reed Richards. The war began when some variants of Richards decided to conquer other parallel realities; however, this attempt was met by retaliation from other variants of Richards, who were not going to let themselves be defeated so easily. The conflict lasted until one of the variants (He Who Remains) created the Time Variance Authority to prevent another war from happening as well as protect an isolated collection of realities that he would refer to as the Sacred Timeline². 

What is the Sacred Timeline? That same website states that "These realities shared the same baseline despite being different from one another as they all only led to the birth of He Who Remains and therefore prevented any villainous variants of him from being born. Therefore, the Sacred Timeline followed a strict script, which meant their inhabitants did not truly have free will since, if their choices caused a branch within the Sacred Timeline that deviated from the sacred path, the Time Variance Authority would arrive to prune it. These divergences were referred to as Nexus Events. The TVA had to prune those branches before they reached a certain point of no return, since after that, the timelines could not be reset and the Multiverse would spiral into chaos. However, the TVA would allow for alternate realities to exist as long as these did not deviate from the baseline and thus generate the slightest chance of a new evil variant of He Who Remains being born³.  

All of this raises a valid question: How did the Multiverse start and where has it come up in the MCU so far? For starters, if you look at the website The Wrap, the website states that "At the end of the first season of “Loki” – spoiler alert – Loki and Sylvie (a Loki variant played by Sophia Di Martino) confront a character called He Who Remains (played by Jonathan Majors) who has been overseeing this pristine timeline. He tells them that if they kill him, the multiverse will be unleashed and the timeline will unfurl. As you may have predicted by now, Sylvie did kill him, and the multiverse was unleashed⁴. The website also goes on to state that, "The next major multiversal event was seen in “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” which saw Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man and Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man brought out of their own universes into Earth-616 to fight alongside Tom Holland’s Spider-Man — a direct result of Sylvie killing He Who Remains⁵. In other words, due to one small change from a certain character, the world changed and our world which in the MCU is called Earth 616 became overrun with different heroes and sometimes villains from alternate universes with those universes being the universes of different versions of the characters that we have already met. There is not enough time in the world to talk about the long length and history of the multiverse because it is vast with time and locations and even characters. 

I mentioned briefly the idea of the "Multiversal War" but to discuss it further, it was introduced in episode 6 of Season 1 of Loki and described like this, "The MCU multiverse event began in the 31st century when variants of Kang the Conqueror discovered the existence of parallel universes, and their desire to rule them began. This led to various versions of Kang from across the multiverse fighting for dominance, even as more friendly versions of Kang united their knowledge and resources to help improve other universes. The war between these different versions of Kang concluded when there was just one left, who became known as He Who Remains. This variant took it upon himself to restore balance to the universe and used the being Alioth to defeat his other variants, thus bringing an end to the multiversal war"⁶. In discussing not only the Multiversal War but also Sacred Timelines it is very important to discuss what "Branched timelines" are. Also introduced in Season 1 of Loki, branched timelines were described as "a new timeline that branches off from the Sacred Timeline and is caused by a change in how events are supposed to unfold. The branched timelines are not permanent immediately upon their creation, as their effects can be erased and reversed before too much damage has been done. If a branched timeline is not stopped before it "redlines," it becomes permanent and part of the vast MCU multiverse"⁷. When the branch timeline redlines that means it passes the point of no return. 

The key to understanding the multiverse is understanding the rules and when not to break them. You look at every character in the MCU that has encountered some form of the multiverse, and they have broken more than one rule. The multiverse is like time travel, there are rules in place that you follow and lines you do not cross. The MCU is just getting started when it comes to the multiverse. With many MCU projects on the way, more and more information about the multiverse will be revealed. Science has power and it is up to the person on how they use that knowledge. 

1. Multiverse. Marvel Cinematic Universe Wiki. (n.d.). https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Multiverse#History 

2. Multiverse. Marvel Cinematic Universe Wiki. (n.d.). https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Multiverse#History 

3.  Multiverse. Marvel Cinematic Universe Wiki. (n.d.). https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Multiverse#History 

4. Chitwood, A. (2022, May 12). All your MCU multiverse questions were answered. TheWrap. https://www.thewrap.com/mcu-multiverse-explained-how-it-works/ 

5. Chitwood, A. (2022, May 12). All your MCU multiverse questions answered. TheWrap. https://www.thewrap.com/mcu-multiverse-explained-how-it-works/ 

6. Hood, C. (2022, August 7). MCU multiverse guide: Every term, concept, & Location explained. ScreenRant. https://screenrant.com/mcu-marvel-multiverse-guide-glossary-terms-locations/ 

7. Hood, C. (2022, August 7). MCU multiverse guide: Every term, concept, & Location explained. ScreenRant. https://screenrant.com/mcu-marvel-multiverse-guide-glossary-terms-locations/