Marvel Releases Official Illuminati Merch Featuring Reed Richards, Professor X
It's been over a month since the debut of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the latest film within the ever-sprawling tapestry of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The film was chock-full of surprises, including the arrival of the Earth-838 version of The Illuminati, a buzzed-about group of powerful Marvel superheroes. This particular roster of The Illuminati included some surprising faces that diehard Marvel fans would recognize, including Patrick Stewart's return as Charles Xavier / Professor X, Anson Mount's return as Blackagar Boltagon / Black Bolt, and John Krasinski's first appearance as Reed Richards / Mr. Fantastic. Now that Multiverse of Madness has been out in the world for a while, it looks like those Illuminati members are now making their way onto official merchandise for the film. A new listing on the apparel site RedWolf includes a shirt design that proclaims "The Illuminati Will See You Now", alongside silhouetted versions of all of the Illuminati members.
Ultimately, Earth-838's version of The Illuminati was not long for this world, with almost all of the team members being brutally killed in a fight with Wanda Maximoff / Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen). Still, their presence in Multiverse of Madness served as the most concrete inclusion of the members of the X-Men and the Fantastic Four into the MCU — something that didn't go unnoticed.
"I can't confirm or deny any specifics of that stuff yet," Multiverse of Madness writer Michael Waldron told ComicBook.com of the properties' potential reboots in the MCU. "But I mean, I try not to think of it as me being the one, introducing them. We're all doing it together. Everybody in that sequence, it's a collaboration with [director] Sam [Raimi], of course, [and] with the actors. I'm just trying to give them a great foundation, to come in and bring this stuff to life. And geez, they all knocked it out of the park."
Professor X and Mr. Fantastic's appearances in Multiverse of Madness come after the X-Men and Fantastic Four rights were held up at 20th Century Fox for decades, prior to Disney's acquisition of the company a few years back, and any inclusions or references to them in MCU canon were relatively few and far between. As Waldron stated, it's unclear when either group will topline their own live-action project in the MCU, with Fantastic Four recently losing Jon Watts as its director, and the X-Men not yet announced among Marvel's slate. Still, the Multiverse of Madness cameos serve as the tip of the iceberg in terms of what the multiverse — and the MCU — can be capable of.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is now playing in theaters.