It’s one of the most quoted — and memed, for that matter — lines of Avengers: Infinity War. Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) went forward in time over 14 million times — 14,000,065, to be exact — in order to see how many futures the Avengers beat Thanos (Josh Brolin).
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The question remains — how long was Strange in his time loop on Titan? As the audience, we only saw the character in the time loop for a few moments, but it goes to say he was probably in it for much longer.
In one popular fan theory that’s surfaced online, /u/CleverD3vil thinks that Strange could have been within the time loop for, much, much longer. As the theory states, Strange — at the very minimum — would have had to view at least the events of Avengers: Infinity War as they were displayed.
Rounding up to a three hour run time, that means Strange would have viewed at least 42,001,815 hours of scenarios when you multiply three hours by the 14 million times the master of the mystic arts went forward in time.
Doing some rough math, the 42 million hours equates into roughly 4,794 years, and that’s if — and only if — Strange only viewed three hours each time he went into a new scenario. Of course, there are all sorts of scenarios in which he could have seen less than three hours — say, Thanos invaded New York himself right out of the gates and razed Earth then — but it’s very possible, some of the potential futures took Strange many more hours when he got through.
The insane amount of time in the time loop would explain why Strange held his own against Thanos, with nearly every Infinity Stones during the final battle on Titan. With nearly an infinite amount of lifetimes to live in the time loop, Strange had plenty of time to train new fighting techniques and methods, much like he did in his battle versus Dormammu in Doctor Strange (2016).
Avengers: Endgame hits theaters on April 26th.
Other MCU movies coming out this year include Captain Marvel set for release on March 8th and Spider-Man: Far From Home, the Jon Watts’ follow-up swinging into theaters on July 5th.
How long do you think Strange spent in the time loop on Titan? Do you have the over or under on 5,000 years? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below or join the conversation online by hitting me (@AdamBarnhardt) up on Twitter to chat all things MCU!
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