The MCU Hasn’t Used Its Multiverse Correctly (But Comics Have Show Us The Way)

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been going on since 2008. In that nearly twenty year span, the MCU has brought the glory of superheroes to the general public like never before; comic superhero stories have taken the genre through time and space, into the multiverse. In the comics, Marvel wasn’t the first comic company to introduce the multiverse, but they beat their distinguished competition (DC) to a cinematic multiverse. The MCU’s multiverse has been around for several years now, and at one time was going to be the center of what was called the Multiverse Saga. Of course, this has never happened, although newly leaked art from Avengers: Doomsday is showing that the multiverse is still important to future plans. However, it’s impossible to say that fans have loved the MCU’s multiverse and how it’s been used.

Now, that’s not to say that the MCU’s multiverse hasn’t been profitable: this isn’t the case at all. Look at the success of Deadpool & Wolverine, and it’s plain to see that the MCU is, at the very least, on a profitable track; that said, it’s also easy to see that the MCU hasn’t used its multiverse correctly. As usual, comics have shown the right way to use the concept of the multiverse, and the MCU should follow these examples in the future.

Multiverses Are Not Cameo Generators, They’re a Chance to Tell NEW Stories

Deadpool & Wolverine was a movie that anyone watching superhero movies in the 21st century could find something to like; it played with nostalgia wonderfully. It was great to see Chris Evans come back as Human Torch or Pyro from the Fox X-Men movies, and that’s before we get to Hugh Jackman returning as Wolverine or Deadpool meeting Happy Hogan. The film took everything that Marvel has established as their tropes for the multiverse — bringing in characters from the various superhero film universes it has access to — to tell an entertaining story with heart, humor, and action. It was a true Marvel Cinematic Multiverse movie.

Spider-Man: No Way Home, Loki Seasons One and Two, What If… Seasons One through Three also use the multiverse, but they do so in different ways. Spider-Man: No Way Home is basically the proto-Deadpool & Wolverine: it lived and died by cameos from three cinematic generations of Spider-Man actors (Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield, and Tobey Maguire). Spider-Man: No Way Home was a hit, but it was also the first sign of what Marvel thought multiverse movies should be for superheroes. Loki, on the other hand, eschewed the mega-cameo route (probably because of the TV budget), instead taking fans to different variations of the MCU Earth and mostly using the multiverse as set-dressing. What If… is closer to the comics, but always ends up using the same characters, in big crossover events, thereby still using the multiverse as a cameo delivery system. High-profile cameos and alt-universe set-dressing are fine, but they aren’t what the comic book multiverse is really for.

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The multiverse is a brilliant storytelling tool because it allows stories to be told with the familiar characters that go in extremely different ways. A good example of this is the alt-universe X-Men story arc “The Age of Apocalypse“. Marvel mostly used the multiverse as a lab: alternate realities that are created when something from the mainline universe is drastically changed. In this case, the death of Charles Xavier years before he founded the X-Men resulted in a world where Apocalypse conquered America and started a genetic war between humans and mutants. Readers got to see characters we knew in a completely different worldly context; their characters and goals were completely different. Dead characters were suddenly alive, popular ones were now dead, and nothing was the same. Such is the promise of a good multiverse story.

There’s another way of using the multiverse, and this one is more of a DC method than a Marvel one, admittedly. Multiverse theory posits that there are alternate Earths; however, unlike “The Age of Apocalypse”, where everything is radically different, DC explored alternate earths where there would instead be slight timeline differences, such as superheroes appearing to the world in an earlier era. Same basic world, only with subtle changes. Some alternate realities have even introduced and/or maintained their own groups of iconic heroes – like the Shazam family in DC and the Squadron Supreme in Marvel. It’s still different enough for fans to get new kinds of stories, but it isn’t so massively different. These changes lead to great crossovers and new versions of familiar characters and mantles.

Marvel Studios Can Go in New Directions Through Better Multiversal Stories

The MCU isn’t currently in the best place. While it still has some blockbuster successes, there are fewer than before, not to mention some legitimate failures. Fan hype for the MCU is at its lowest, and a big reason for that is just how formulaic things have gotten. The MCU needs a change and it seems to think that using the multiverse can do that. It’s not a terrible idea: the multiverse allows people to see their favorite characters in new ways (through variants), putting them in new situations, sometimes with new histories we know nothing about until the story unfolds. That sort of thing could freshen up the MCU – if the franchise uses its multiverse the right way, that is.

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Marvel Studios has already fallen into tropes with its use of the multiverse, which is the exact opposite of what a “Multiverse Saga” should be. The entire point of a multiverse is to do away with the tropes that everyone expects and get something new, unexpected, or counterintuitive to the status quo. The MCU somehow found a way to restrain its own creativity, instead of using multiverse stories to go in bold new directions. It’s already felt like they’ve run out of ideas – not because ideas are finite, but because there are only so many cameos from defunct Marvel movie franchises they can still use. This is a huge mistake and will do more damage to Marvel than good, until they learn to use their multiverse correctly.

Marvel Cinematic Universe “Multiverse Saga” content can be streamed on Disney+. Thunderbolts* will be released in theaters on May 2nd.