The MCU’s multiverse is no longer the purview of a handful of characters and a few movies. Avengers: Endgame‘s Time Heist might have saved the universe, but it also set the MCU on a much more complex path. Infinite paths actually, to infinite dimensions and parallel worlds. And these branching timelines and other realities are changing the face of the entire franchise for every Marvel Cinematic Universe hero and villain. Both new and (very) old.
Marvel’s multiverse can be a lot to keep track of, even for those creating it. But while all those roads can be confusing, they are important. Especially after Spiderman: No Way Home and ahead of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, releasing March 25, 2022. Fortunately, we’re here to help break down the multiverse’s most important figures, storylines, and many divergent paths. From Doctor Strange’s dimensions, the Quantum Realm, Loki‘s variants, the possibilities of WandaVision‘s Darkhold, and more, here’s everything you need to know about the MCU’s multiverse.
What Is The MCU’s Multiverse?
As laid out by the Ancient One in Doctor Strange and confirmed by He Who Remains in Loki, the MCU exists in a world “without end.” In short, the MCU’s multiverse is infinite. Vastly different parallel worlds, along with vastly different realms of existence, all exist. Anything and everything can happen with them. And they can cause utter destruction to one another. There are differences between other dimensions and parallel worlds, though.
Another dimension is an entirely different plane of existence. It’s possible to be in one plane while still observing another. However, if you travel the multiverse and go into a parallel world, you will only perceive the world you currently reside in. If that’s confusing, here are a couple of analogies.
According to the MCU’s multiverse theory, being in another dimension is akin to being a ghost. If you become a ghost, you exist in a different plane of reality, but you can still see the world you left behind.
Meanwhile, visiting a parallel world is more like walking through a portal into a new destination. Imagine if you walked into a world identical to our world, except the sky is purple instead of blue. In the purple world, you would no longer see the blue sky of home. Your actions in the purple world would impact everyone there instead.
In the MCU, other dimensions sometimes have no ability to impact each other. Even when one can be perceived within another. But both parallel worlds and other dimensions sometimes pose existential threats to other planes in the multiverse.
Marvel’s Multiverse Explained By Dimension, Realm, and Property
Countless dimensions and realities (a.k.a. parallel worlds) also mean countless sinister dimensions and threats too. The Ancient One explained that to Stephen Strange when he first arrived at Kamar-Taj during the events of Doctor Strange.
“This universe is only one of an infinite number. Worlds without end. Some benevolent and life giving. Others filled with malice and hunger. Dark places where powers older than time lie ravenous…and waiting.”
The “infinite dangers” the former Sorcerer Supreme warned of have already been seen in many dimensions and parallel worlds within the MCU. But so have other less nefarious places. These are the most important ones—good, evil, and in-between—to appear in the MCU so far. (Please note, this article deals only with the MCU, not Marvel Comics.)
The Many Dimensions of Doctor Strange
Stephen Strange first saw the true scope of existence when his soul traveled through many dimensions. Some beautiful, others nightmarish. His journey took him through wonderfully named planes like the Mandelibus, Actiniaria, Flowering Incense, and Grass Jelly Dimensions. These are all visual marvels worth exploring for any sorcerer-in-training. But thus far, these dimensions have been unimportant to the MCU. The film did introduce three vital dimensions to the franchise, though.
Astral Dimension
The Astral Dimension, sometimes called the Astral Plane, is “a place where the soul exists apart from the body.” Masters of the Mystic Arts can leave their physical bodies behind and enter the Astral Dimension. Within the Astral Plane they exist as pure energy. They still look like ghostly versions of themselves, though. Sorcerers can also push other souls into this plane. The Ancient One did this multiple times in the MCU. In addition to her encounters with Stephen Strange, she also pushed Bruce Banner’s soul out of Professor Hulk in Avengers: Endgame. Strange also did this to Spider-Man in No Way Home.
Marvel’s Astral Plane exists around and next to the physical Earth Realm. Souls in the Astral Dimension float through the physical world, but the two are not the same place. They are different and independent planes of existence. What happens in the Astral Dimension does not affect the physical world. An astral projection can reveal itself to a physical being, though, as Stephen Strange did to Dr. Christine Palmer.
Time also works differently within the Astral Dimension. For example, a single moment can be stretched out so that a dying Sorcerer Supreme can have a long conversation with the next one. In Doctor Strange, we see discussion starts and ends before a bolt of lightning hits the ground.
This plane of existence also lets those who access it multitask. A body can sleep or enjoy a mug of tea in the physical realm while the soul reads a book in the Astral Dimension. Doctor Strange made use of the Astral Realm while studying the Mystic Arts. In WandaVision, Wanda Maximoff also used this aspect of the multiverse to study the Darkhold. Finally, it was also within the Astral Plane where Wanda heard the voices of her sons, Billy and Tommy. Though what dimension they currently exist in is yet unknown.
Non-sorcerers can access the Astral Plane. And they have done so at other points in the franchise. However, depending on the MCU property, this dimension goes by other names and appears differently. The Astral dimension’s presence in Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame and its overall importance to the MCU’s multiverse are discussed later in the article.
Mirror Dimension
Sorcerers also frequently access the Mirror Dimension. This dimension is an exact copy of the physical world it parallels. “Ever present but undetected,” the Ancient One said. “The real world isn’t affected by what happens here.” It’s why Masters of the Mystic Arts use it “to train, surveil, and sometimes to contain threats.”
A sorcerer working to save the physical world can lock an enemy within the Mirror world. If that foe does not have a Sling Ring, which sorcerers use to access the realm, they have no way to get out. (That’s how Peter Parker managed to tie up Doctor Strange inside the Mirror Dimension.) A Mystic Arts master might also learn new skills in the Mirror Dimension that they can then use against an unsuspecting and unprepared enemy. It’s the ultimate secret training ground.
The Mirror Dimension is not invulnerable, though. Doctor Strange attempted to use it in his fight with Thanos on Titan in Infinity War. But Thanos used the Power Stone to shatter the Mirror Dimension and turn it against Strange. And while it can be used for good, the Mirror Dimension can also be used for sinister purposes. Those who practice darker magic can hide within it, train, and jail foes inside too. Their willingness to access another dimension’s terrible power also gives them additional strength within the Mirror world.
Dark Dimension
You don’t get a name like the Dark Dimension because you’re full of sunshine and rainbows. You get that moniker because you belong to the Cosmic Conqueror, Dormammu, Doctor Strange‘s interdimensional monster. This dimension is also known by the equally pleasant moniker the Hell Dimension. (If that name is not an exaggeration it might also house the much-awaited Mephisto.) What it definitely contains, though, are all of the worlds consumed by Dormammu.
This fate awaited Earth, but Doctor Strange struck a bargain with the MCU’s Eater of Worlds.
Earth almost became part of the unnatural Dark Dimension because a former Master of the Mystic Arts, Kaecilius, and his followers fell prey to its promise. The Dark Dimension is “a world beyond time” and therefore a world beyond death. It’s so strong it’s possible to draw power from it to extend your life in other dimensions. Sorcerers who do harness this dark energy, known as the Dark Force, become more powerful inside the Mirror Dimension.
But it’s not just misguided magic users who sometimes draw from the Dark Dimension. The Earth-born Ancient One used the Dark Dimension to live for hundreds of years, violating the natural order. Messing with Dark Force is a dangerous game for everyone and every dimension.
That’s equally true for the Scarlet Witch, who ended her time on WandaVision learning the secrets of the Darkhold. This sinister book of dangerous magic is made from the dark energy of the Dark Dimension. We may yet see more of this dark part of the MCU’s multiverse in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Both the Scarlet Witch and Doctor Strange will appear together in the upcoming Doctor Strange film.
Black Panther‘s Ancestral Plane
The Astral Plane is not simply the domain of sorcerers. Even though they both look different, the Astral Dimension of Doctor Strange is the very same dimension as the Ancestral Plane of Black Panther. It’s the realm where the soul goes after the body dies. And just like with the souls of the very-much-alive Strange and Bruce Banner, it’s a place the living can visit.
T’Challa and Killmonger each journeyed to the Ancestral Plane after being named King of Wakanda. They consumed the Heart-Shaped Herb before being buried in order to journey there. Each man met and spoke with their respective deceased fathers in the Ancestral Plane. This ethereal world appeared differently to each of them. T’Challa went to lands similar to his country, but it was a world of un-Earthly bio fluorescence and beauty. And Killmonger went to the home he grew up in with his father in Oakland. When each man woke, far less time had passed on Earth than he had experienced in the Ancestral Plane because time moves much slower there.
And yet, this is not the only other version of the Astral Plane the MCU has shown.
Infinity War‘s Soul Stone and Soulworld
When someone uses the Soul Stone, they enter a separate dimension inside the magic space rock. Thanos went there after his Snap in Infinity War. In the Soul World, he met his daughter Gamora as a small child. Professor Hulk visited that plane too, though we didn’t see what he encountered there. And Tony Stark, before he died, saw his young daughter as a grown woman in an Endgame deleted scene.
The Soul World is not only where people go when they use the Soul Stone. It’s where souls go when they die. Soul World is the Astral and Ancestral Plane by a different name. In the MCU, a world beyond life exists. It has many names and takes many forms, and it can be accessed in many ways. But it’s all one place, hidden in Marvel’s multiverse.
Ant-Man‘s Quantum Realm
The Quantum Realm is so important to the MCU we wrote an extensive primer on it before Avengers: Endgame. Then Scott Lang realized it could be used as a portal through time. You’ll definitely want to read that breakdown too. It explains why the Quantum Realm is not merely a smaller-scale version of Earth’s realm. It is actually an entirely different dimension. If you shrink your physical form down enough, you leave your own plane of existence and cross over into another one. As the MCU’s Quantum Realm is a unique dimension, just as the Astral or Mirror dimensions are. But it’s seemingly more important than both combined.
The Quantum Realm already reshaped the MCU by undoing the Snap. But its potential to totally upend the MCU going forward might very well extend beyond time travel. Especially if the Quantum Realm exists beyond the end of time itself, a place as we saw in Loki‘s finale.
The castle, known as the Citadel, of He Who Remains exists in a dimension outside and independent of time itself. Where that Citadel is located exactly is still unknown. But its surreal, swirling environment full of color looked a lot like the Quantum Realm. Considering the Quantum Realm can be used to hop in and out of a timeline, it’s the best candidate for where the Citadel exists. If that’s true, He Who Remains and the staff of the TVA are essentially time travelers.
Doctor Strange and Spider-Man quickly also entered an identical-looking plane when Strange’s spell broke apart in Spider-Man: No Way Home. That very well might have been the Quantum Realm too, and not just because of how it looked. Strange’s spell pulled in other Peter Parkers and his enemies from multiple dimensions. But they each come out of different points in time, even those who came from the same parallel world. That spell didn’t just open the multiverse, it opened up portals through time.
Loki‘s Variants and Parallel Worlds
Loki’s six-episode run on Disney+ took everything we knew about the MCU and flipped it on its head. Then it twisted and spun the entire franchise and its history all around, so we have no idea which way is up. Because as soon as He Who Remains gave us answers to monumental questions, Sylvie created even bigger ones when she killed him. (The show also left some important topics open to interpretation rather than explicitly addressing them.) Some valuable lessons Loki taught us about the MCU’s multiverse remain true, though.
The dimension where the Avengers live has an infinite number of parallel universes “stacked” on top of it. Many of those parallel worlds look very similar to each other. We know that because of Variants and the many versions of He Who Remains who fought a Multiversal War. Some Variants look like exact copies of each other, and their worlds have similar histories. But even those can have significant differences. Loki can, for instance, lose the Battle of the New York in one part of Marvel’s multiverse but win in another.
While we have yet to see it outside of Loki, the rules of infinite parallel worlds have major ramifications. For example, Tony Stark is dead in the universe we know. But an infinite number of Tony Starks must still live in parallel worlds. In some, he could be evil. In others, he didn’t defeat Thanos with the Snap. Another Avenger did. Other Variant Tonys never even became Iron Man. Instead, they died in that cave. Or lived the easy life of a genius-billionaire-playboy-philanthropist. The same holds true for every character, living or dead, in the main timeline.
Marvel’s What If…? series introduced some of these alternate realities. On What If…?, Peggy Carter stays in a room instead of leaving it. And because of that, she ends up a Super Soldier instead of Steve Rogers, thus changing history forever. Those alternate realities/parallel worlds can co-exist in peace. It’s even possible to travel between them and share knowledge and technology. So long as multidimensional travelers avoid two potentially catastrophic pitfalls. 1) don’t fight with each other and 2) don’t cause branches to the Sacred Timeline that keeps every parallel world contained.
Multiversal War and the Sacred Timeline
He Who Remains won a Multiversal War against his own Variants. (Possibly/likely not the first such war, and definitely not the last.) Once he and his Variants learned inter-dimensional travel between parallel worlds, some versions of He Who Remains sought to conquer the others. That battle threatened to destroy all of reality. It was nearly the end “of everything and everyone” in every universe and dimension. To prevent a potential multiverse apocalypse from happening again, He Who Remains organized all of those parallel worlds into one Sacred Timeline. Thus, variants and alternate realities co-exist on top of and next to one another in a single loop of time. He Who Remains created the TVA to make sure it stayed that way.
If a Variant causes a Nexus Event, which results in a branch from the Sacred Timeline, they are ripped from their reality and sent to the Void at the end of time. Those branches must be pruned lest they result in another all-out war between dimensions.
The TVA is the MCU’s most Machiavellian creation. It sacrifices the lives of some to protect the lives of everyone. It’s neither inherently good nor bad, and even similar Variants disagree on its merits. Loki ultimately decided the TVA was a necessary evil, a form of control that kept the worst outcomes at bay. Sylvie did not. She believed the universe and its infinite dimensions want to break free from control. Results be damned.
How one world can be so different, to the point Variants can be entirely different species (looking at you—from a safe distance—Alligator Loki), yet not constantly cause branches to the Sacred Timeline is hard to fathom. But that’s how powerful a Nexus Event is.
Is Shang-Chi’s Ta Lo a Part of the MCU’s Multiverse?
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings‘ Ta Lo is a pocket dimension that exists parallel to Earth, making it a part of the MCU’s multiverse. The residents of Ta Lo, who put magical dragon scales on their weapons, protect Earth and its people. But getting to this beautiful realm of peace is almost impossible. A shifting, moving maze of trees and earth keeps its Earthly portal hidden. Access is only possible once a year. However, a resident—either human or one of Ta Lo’s magical creatures—can direct an outsider through the otherwise impenetrable maze any time of the year.
The Ta Lo village seen in Shang-Chi is just a small part of this multiverse dimension. But it long stood guard against a creature that threatened both Ta Lo and Earth. The extra-dimensional beast the Dweller-in-Darkness, leader of the Soul Eaters, waged war against Ta Lo thousands of years ago. Thanks to the Great Defender dragon, the people of Ta Lo locked the Dweller-in-Darkness behind the Dark Gate. It stayed there until it lured Xu Wenwu, with the false promise of seeing his wife again, to free it with the Ten Rings. Shang-Chi ultimately killed the massive leviathan, keeping both Ta Lo and Earth from becoming victims of the massive eater of souls.
Non-MCU Marvel Movies and the Multiverse
The parallel worlds of the MCU are no longer limited to only the universes and dimensions created within the MCU and its parent company. Spider-Man: No Way Home made non-Disney Marvel movies a part of the MCU’s multiverse too. And that mega Spider-Man crossover is just the start. Kevin Feige has already promised Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool will join the MCU. And Sony’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage added another wrinkle to the franchise crossover fun.
That opens the (parallel worlds) door to any and all Marvel movies ever made now being canonically folded into the MCU. (Especially when magic—intentionally or not—can bring in anyone from anywhere at any time.) It’s why Chris Evans could return to the MCU not as Steve Rogers or even one of his Variants, but as Johnny Storm of the Fantastic Four. As could another former Johnny Storm, Black Panther‘s Killmonger himself, Michael B. Jordan. The Netflix Marvel shows and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, which no longer seemingly exist in the same universe as the MCU, are already making their way in. Daredevil‘s Matt Murdock and Kingpin are now a part of the MCU. And someone like Wesley Snipes’ Blade could one day help Mahershala Ali’s upcoming MCU version of the character fight vampires from across the multiverse.
And, of course, any and all members of Fox’s X-Men franchise might now join Disney’s franchise too. This might have already started. Right now, Evan Peters’s Quicksilver on WandaVision stands as a bit of stunt casting. But that might not be the case much longer. We could soon learn Ralph Bohner’s resemblance to the X-Men character was not a mere coincidence. Ralph might be a Variant of the cinematic X-Men‘s Quicksilver.
Thanks to the multiverse, it’s now possible to consider anyone who has ever played a Marvel character in film and TV for any studio to be part of the MCU.
The Future of the MCU’s Multiverse
Doctor Strange gave us a taste of what the multiverse is all about, both good and bad. The Ant-Man movies showed us how another dimension could upend the world as we know it. And Avengers: Endgame made good on that promise by manipulating time and reality to save the universe. Now WandaVision, Loki, and Spider-Man: No Way Home have expanded the multiverse in ways that have fundamentally changed the MCU forever. In ways we don’t even fully appreciate or know just yet. And that’s just the start.
Marvel’s multiverse will only bring more chaos and villains to (this) Earth’s mightiest heroes as the MCU goes forward. From Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and Loki season two, the MCU is diving headfirst into infinite possibilities. And with each step the franchise takes down that road, the more complex the many paths gets. But knowing where they are all coming from will help keep the road clear moving forward.
…We think. It’s not always easy to keep track of infinite dimensions and worlds. Even He Who Remains needed the TVA to do that.
This post originally published August 30, 2021.
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. You can follow him on Twitter at @burgermike, and also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.
The post Everything You Need to Know About the MCU’s Multiverse appeared first on Nerdist.
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