We’re talking full spoilers for ! Cameos are to be expected in almost every Marvel Studios movie and while a handful of the ones found in the new Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness were actually revealed in trailers beforehand, there were a couple that were kept secret and took fans by surprise. While we all knew that The Illuminati would be present in the film but the final seat at that table was one fans have been waiting for, and fancasting for ages, the smartest man in the world, Reed Richards, leader of the Fantastic Four. To top it all off, he’s played by none other than John Krasinski, a fan favorite.
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Krasinski as Reed only has a few scenes in the film, but introduces some major Marvel Comics terms into the MCU lexicon by revealing the concept of Incursions to Benedict Cumberbatch’s Stephen Strange. It’s a major piece of Jonathan Hickman’s run on the New Avengers, something that least directly into Secret Wars, but also something that Reed does within the pages of Marvel Comics. Reed is present for some dialogue exchange with strange and then in another where he confronts Wanda Maximoff. In this scene he implies some big things, like his wife Sue Storm and their two children, Franklin and Valeria Richards, exist on this Earth (designated 838). Sadly we only get to see him do a little big of stretching before Wanda turns him into spaghetti and pops his head like a champagne bottle.
Will John Krasinski play Reed Richards in the MCU Fantastic Four movie?
We don’t know, and frankly the casting of the entire illuminati on Earth-838 seems to be implying variants of these characters that are wholly different from the ones that are in the MCU’s Earth-616 (the main universe). The use of Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier, Anson Mount as Black Bolt, and John Krasinski as Reed Richards, seems to come from fan desires more than anything; while the use of Lashana Lynch’s Maria Rambeau as the 838 Captain Marvel and Hayley Atwell’s Peggy Carter as 838’s “Captain Carter,” is a direct flip on what we have for those characters on Earth-616.
As we know, Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers was Captain America and Brie Larson’s Carol Danvers is Captain Marvel, by that logic the Professor X, Black Bolt, and Mister Fantastic of the MCU could very well be different. Even Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Karl Mordo, the only actor who is playing the same character on Earth-838 as they do in Earth-616, is the Sorcerer Supreme of that world, and in fact on a different alignment than his MCU version.
Here’s what we do know about the Fantastic Four in the MCU:
Marvel Studios is developing a version of Marvel’s First Family for the big screen, but it recently had a setback in the form of director Jon Watts stepping away from the project. No official release date has been announced, and the fact that no official details on John Krasinski’s potential MCU future have been reported anywhere seems to allude to him not being the MCU’s Reed Richards. Things can change naturally, but right now it seems like the appearance of The Office star as the Fantastic Four’s leader was a one-off gag. That said, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and the Inhumans have all now entered the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The sad part is none of them made it out alive.
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Image Credit: Marvel Comics
