“Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” is set to be released in theaters on May 6. The plot of this film will be dealing directly with the aftermaths of “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and “WandaVision.” The events of “Loki” are also directly involved in the film’s plot. Marvel’s animated series “What If..?” also provides several interesting details to what can be expected in “Multiverse of Madness.”
In “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” Doctor Strange cast a spell to make everyone in the world forget that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, but it went wrong and caused people from other universes to come into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. At the end, Doctor Strange casts a new spell to make everyone in the world forget Peter Parker exists to correct the first spell. Doctor Strange will be dealing with the repercussions of tampering with both time and reality in the new film.
In the final scene of “WandaVision,” Wanda is seen reading from a book called the “Darkhold,” which deals with dangerous chaos magic, when the voice of her son Tommy is heard calling her name. Wanda will be using her newfound power to search multiple realities to find real versions of her twin sons, along with husband,Vision, after losing the fake ones that she manifested in “WandaVision.”
Doctor Strange will be looking to Wanda for help with the multiverse, but at the same time he will be trying to prevent her from tampering with it even more, which will be one of the main conflicts in the new film.
The “Loki” series sets up the idea that there are variants, or other versions of characters. For example, Sylvie is a variant, or different version, of Loki. “What If…?” also plays around with the concept of variants by showing Doctor Strange fight an evil version of himself in one of the episodes. In that same episode it also showed the consequences of what happens when someone messes with time and reality too much, as Doctor Strange’s reality ceased to exist because of his actions.
In the finale of “Loki,” Sylvie kills a man called He Who Remains played by Jonathan Majors. Majors is set to play Kang the Conqueror in “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantomania,” and it is established that He Who Remains is variant of Kang. The show also established that Kang’s variants discovered the multiverse and caused a multiverse war over their desires to seek ultimate power.
He Who Remains created the sacred timeline to protect the universe from his variants, but now that he is dead, there is no one to protect the multiverse from his variants and a possible war.
Marvel is clearly setting up Kang the Conqueror to be the next overarching villain in the MCU as a follow-up to Thanos, so it would not be a surprise if he showed up for a cameo. It has been confirmed that Patrick Stewart will be reprising his role as Charles Xavier, or Professor X. It was hinted in the trailers that he plays a role in protecting the multiverse, similar to how the Time Variance Authority protected the sacred timeline in “Loki.”
There are also rumors swirling around that Tom Cruise may make an appearance as a variant of Tony Stark as a fun callback to how Cruise was almost cast in the role over Robert Downey Jr. back in 2008. It is also speculated that members of the Fantastic Four, specifically Reid Richards, may have a cameo to set up the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s version of Marvel’s first family. There are a lot of rumors about potential cameos in “Multiverse of Madness,” and after “Spider-Man: No Way Home” the possibilities are endless.