Who Is The Character In Doctor Strange 2 Post-Credit Scene And How Does The Multiverse Work?

The article contains spoilers for the Wandavision series and the film
Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness.

1. Multiverse

The creators confirmed the existence of the multiverse in the Loki series, in which they explained how it works. Loki broke the multi-universe with his female version, but we have not seen the consequences of this disruption in the Marvel world since then.

The multiverse was subsequently opened by Doctor Strange in Spider-Man: No Way Home. In Doctor Strange 2, it is not opened by spells, but by America Chavez. America is a young heroine who first appeared in comics in 2011 and later became a member of the Young Avengers team.

He can physically navigate the multiverse just as Doctor Strange and Wong can navigate portals to other parts of their own reality. Her abilities do not seem to be limited in any way and she can travel to any dimension.

2. Baron Mordo

At the end of the first film, we saw Baron Mordo gather his magical powers and prepare to destroy Doctor Strange. Marvel somehow forgot this storyline, as it hasn't moved anywhere since 2016.

In addition, in Doctor Strange 2, Mordo appears only in its alternate version (variant) from the multiverse, and we haven't even seen Mordo "from our world". Marvel may keep it in reserve, but it will be strange when, for example, it emerges 10 years after the premiere of the first first film and the audience will not even remember why he is fighting Strange.

3. Illuminati

In the comics, the Illuminati is a secret group that operates outside the reach of governments and other superheroes. In comics, the team is originally composed of heroes who represent human communities and countries. 

Doctor Strange represents the wizards, Black Bolt represents the team of mutants Inhumans, Iron Man represents people and Avengers, Black Panther represents the African landscape of Wakanda, Namor the underwater world of Atlantis, Charles Xavier represents X-Men and Reed Richards, known as Mr. Fantastic, represents Fantastic Four. In comics, team members sometimes have trouble working together as they all tend to approach crisis management differently.

This team of Illuminati lived in the dimension of Earth 838, while "our" Strange comes from Earth 616. Unlike the world of 616, the Inhumans, X-Men and Fantastic Four teams live and operate in the 838 world. Captain Marvel was also a member of the Illuminati team. In this universe, however, it was Carol Danvers, but her friend Maria Rambeau, who became the superhero. There is no Captain America, but there is Captain Carter.

Steve Rogers did not get the serum of a super soldier in this world, Agent Carter did. The Inhumans team at the Illuminati Club was represented by Black Bolt, played by Ansom Mount, who played the role in the failed Marvel series Inhumans, produced by ABC.

The creators of the Marvel world of Avengers had nothing to do with it, as in the case of the SHIELD Agents or Netflix's Marvel series (Daredevil, Punisher, etc.), which were created by other directors and screenwriters.

Another Illuminati member was Reed Richards alias Mr. Fantastic, the greatest genius on Earth and a founding member of the Fantastic Four team. It was played by John Krasinski. Interestingly, Marvel fans dreamed of this casting for many years and the actor himself wanted to be cast in this role. Marvel is preparing a film Fantastic Four, which will be part of "our world", i.e. the world of Earth 616, but we still do not know who will star in it.

It was to be directed by Jon Watts, who also made the Spider-Man trilogy with Tom Holland, but he recently resigned to take a break from superhero films. It would be great if he was replaced by Krasinski, who has already proved with two great parts of the thriller A Quiet Place that he is not only an excellent actor, but also great a director.

Another member was Mordo, who was not particularly interesting compared to "our" version of the character. However, a great uproar was caused by Charles Xavier aka Professor X. The founding member of the X-Men team and the spiritual father of all the mutants has already appeared in a number of films. His presence delivered by actor Patrick Stewart has delighted every Marvel fan.

It was not clear for a long time when we would finally see the first X-Men in this Marvel world. Although the mutants still don't exist in Earth 616 (or we haven't seen them yet), Marvel's bosses basically said in this film that X-Men and Wolverine with actor Hugh Jackman are simply set in a different reality, and the same characters may appear in the world of Earth 616 (with the same but also new actors).

Doctor Strange was part of this version of the Illuminati, but the other members decided to kill him because he caused the demise of other dimensions. If you like stories about the multiverse, we highly recommend the animated series What If?, which offers the best film / animated treatment of the character of Doctor Strange and his story so far, although it is quite depressing.

In What If, you will also see several versions of popular characters from the multiverse, ie the so-called variants, as Loki called them. For example, Charles Xavier in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness is just one of many variants of Charles Xavier / Professor X. So it's definitely not the same character we know from X-Men and Wolverine.

4. Fate of Wanda/Scarlet Witch

Similarly to Wandavision, in Doctor Strange 2 Wanda 'woke up' at the end of the movie and realised how much pain and evil she had caused. And as was the case in the series, it was too late. However, for some reason, the authorities and other Avengers forgave her after the events of the series. But it didn't make sense at all. Just as it didn't make sense that Wanda hadn't learned from her actions at all, and in essence, her character development from Wandavision had just been repeated, just in a much more brutal and murderous form.

Wanda killed an entire team of Illuminati from Earth 838 (only Mordo survived), several dozen wizards from Kamar-Taj, a variant of Doctor Strange, and disrupted the multiverse. So it's nonsense for the Avengers to pardon her. The excuse that she was "dominated" by the dark book Darkhold, from which she drew magic, cannot succeed if someone decides to kill innocent people for selfish reasons.

Wanda may understand this, which is why she wanted to kill herself. Or so it seemed when she was "buried" in the ruins of a demonic temple, on the walls of which were engraved lines of dark magic. At the same time, it destroyed the Darkholds (dark witch books) in every dimension. They didn't explain how she did it in the film, but Marvel at time wants viewers not to think about some events at all.

Just before the complete collapse of the fortress, we saw an explosion of red energy, which means that something happened to Wanda. So it's likely that Wanda is still alive and we'll see her in the future.

The film also revealed to us that her children really live, but in other dimensions. Unfortunately, not a word was said about her husband Vision except for one sentence, so we don't know what happened to him after the events of the Wandavision series.

5. Different versions of Doctor Strange and the characters, which in the end, did not appear in the film

Did you look forward to Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, Tom Cruise as Iron Man or Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool? In that case, you were probably disappointed. There was no Blade performed by Mahershal Ali, Spider-Mani from the movie No Way Home, or other surprises in the form of bonus characters.

Actor Mads Mikkelsen in the role of Caecilius has also been speculated. He played a villain in the first one, but here he was to play a variant - another version of Caecilius. However, we saw four versions of Doctor Strange. The first was Strange from the beginning of the film, who died and was subsequently taken over by our Strange. Every single scene with Zombie Strange was amazing.

The Third Strange of World 838 ignored the rules, destroyed the entire dimension, and was killed by Black Bolt. The fourth Strange "went insane" and began killing other Strange variants from other dimensions after succumbing to the book Darkhold. It was a lot of fun to watch different versions of the Strange. It has shown us the great potential of the multiverse.

For example, the Universe 838 is very different from ours. It showed us that the Avengers were able to defeat Thanos in other ways as well. In "our world", however, we saw that Doctor Strange saw more than 14 million attempts to win the Avengers, but only one was successful. He did not see more successful attempts, just because he did not have the information about heroes available in the world 838.

Post-credits scenes

There were two in the movie. The second is just a small joke referring to a previous event in the film. However, fans were pleased with director Sam Raimi. In the scene, we saw the actor Bruce Campbell, who is friends with Raimi and also appeared in all three of his Spider-Mans and as the main character of the Evil Dead trilogy.

The first scene is much more important. At the end of the film, Doctor Strange found that the use of Darkhold had consequences and a third eye appeared on his forehead. We don't know how it will affect him yet, but he doesn't seem to be becoming a villain. In the post-credit scene, the figure of Clea came to see him. Clea is played by actress Charlize Theron and is one of Strange's comic book loves.

Clea is the niece of the demon Dormammu, with whom Strange made a deal at the end of the first film in 2016. But Strange no longer has Time Stone to manipulate Dormammu, so Dormammu can attack Strange's reality again. 

In the comics, Clea becomes the Sorceress Supreme (Wong is currently Sorcerer Supreme) and the wife of Doctor Strange. In a short scene at the end of the film, he tells Strange that he has caused an Incursion.

The Illuminati explained to us that this is a phenomenon when two dimensions begin to merge as a result of multiverse travel. Clea asks Strange to help her fix what he's caused, and he takes walks into another dimension with her. We may learn more about this in Doctor Strange 3.