Will 'Doctor Strange 2' Finally Bring Mutants Into The MCU?
Is X-Men’s Professor Xavier about to cameo in Marvel’s cinematic universe?
Is he the latest interloper from outside Marvel’s purview to be incorporated into their storytelling?
To understand that, you have to recognize a simple truth: Hollywood rights are a fantastic beast. You struggle to determine who belongs to what, so any cross-pollination is a phenomenon. Marvel began their cinematic universe without the rights to some of their better-known characters, such as Spider-Man, the X-Men, and the Fantastic Four – that’s a whole lot of Marvel heavy hitters.
It wasn’t an issue in the beginning. Marvel launched their cinematic universe with Iron Man – a C-grade character in their pantheon who could be grounded in the preferred cinematic superhero aesthetic at the time: reality. Iron Man’s tech might be tech fantasy, but there was no magic, no aliens, and none of the extraordinary powers synonymous with so many super characters.
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They also brought in genuine A-List actors in Robert Downey Jr, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Jeff Bridges, with a stellar supporting cast. The story was also relatable, involving terrorism, military posturing, and entrepreneurial accountability, and offered our hero a genuinely compelling arc – arrogant, greedy, and oblivious powerbroker faces the repercussions of his business, takes responsibility for his choices, and reinvents himself as Iron Man.
Iron Man’s post-credits scene also introduced Nick Fury and teased a larger universe – it’s a clever bit of foreshadowing that opened us to all the possibilities. We weren’t just eager about the next Iron Man installment, but any Marvel installment. This was almost megalomaniacal ambition. We’d seen superhero movies before, but we’d never seen a superhero cinemaverse.
Marvel took a few bigger swings with The Incredible Hulk and Thor bookending Iron Man 2. Here now was the magic (gamma radiation) and superpowers (a god). But, again, the movies were solid, which is the least they needed to do to acclimate fans to how eclectic Marvel’s superheroes are. Then came Captain America: The First Avenger – unlike Thor, just a man; and unlike the Hulk, super-powered but still urbane.
As the Marvel universe has unfolded, they’ve grown more daring conceptually. Thankfully, throughout, they remained beholden to attempting good storytelling while building a grander arc – the Infinity Stones. It means they’ve always showcased an admirable consistency lacking from the DC Universe, which has constantly reinvented itself, trying to find the right tone while banishing misfires into some multiversal nether.
While Marvel worked on Captain America: Civil War, they agreed with Sony over the use of Spider-Man. Sony’s reboot with Andrew Garfield hadn’t enjoyed the success they’d anticipated. So here was the opportunity to breathe new life into the character. Spidey was rapidly conscripted into Civil War and then launched into his own movies.
Since Avengers: End Game, Marvel has actively explored concepts of time travel and multiverses. Their TV series, Loki, was dedicated entirely to the concept of the latter. Likewise, it’s the foundation of Spider-Man: No Way Home, which not only expands on the multiverse concept but incorporates Spidey predecessors created by Sony.
During Super Bowl LVI, we got a new full-length trailer for Doctor Strange 2. Among the striking sweet visuals and the welcome celebration of Sam Raimi as director, we see Wong tell Doctor Strange, “You opened a doorway between universes, and we don’t know who or what will walk through it.”Loki taught us that the present doesn’t reshape around us, as if there’s only one timeline. Instead, a schism is created that results in an alternate timeline. This branches off into other variations until the weight of possibilities becomes a threat to reality as we know it.
In Loki’s final episode, Loki himself meets Kang the Conqueror at the end of time. The two go back and forth. Kang would seem to be the next uber-villain in the vein of Thanos – the next significant threat. Loki has an open ending that suggests anarchy is looming.
Kang also appears in Doctor Strange 2 at 1.04, saying, “I’m sorry, Stephen. Your desecration of reality will not go unpunished.” Is this Loki’s Kang? The simple dialogue is synonymous with Kang’s motivation of temporal purity. However, this is the multiverse. This Kang has dreadlocks, while Loki’s Kang does not. With the multiverse being what it is, it could be an alternate version of Kang.
Then, come the 1.20 mark of the trailer, we see Doctor Strange brought before some sort of counsel (the implication is it’ll be for messing with the multiverse), and then we hear the voice of none other than Patrick Stewart say, with some gravitas, “We should tell him the truth.”
Stewart, of course, played Professor Xavier in the X-Men movies, and in X-Men: Days of Future Past was, in part, responsible for Wolverine changing reality as the X-Men knew it. Well, that’s the simple on-screen explanation. Off-screen, The X-Men franchise performed a soft reboot, casting younger actors in the roles of many of the same characters they’d been using.
Could Doctor Strange be about to learn the same truth that Loki did – is that what Professor Xavier, who’s screwed with alternate realities, is about to tell with Doctor Strange?
That the multiverse has been fractured and at threat of extinction?
Time will tell.
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