Has "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" changed the Marvel Cinematic Universe forever?
Or are we just dreaming?
Keep watching for the terrifying truth.
For much of its runtime, "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" is exactly the
kind of fever dream only the combination of Sam Raimi's horror sensibilities and the trippiest
big-budget corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe can deliver.
Though Doctor Strange and his various allies and antagonists face plenty of oddness and
terror in cold daylight, dreams are a surprisingly big part of the movie.
"Every night, I dream the same dream."
In fact, some of the movie's creepiest moments come when powerful magic users deploy a technique
called dreamwalking to possess their alternate universe counterparts.
Dreamwalking is a dangerous Darkhold technique that wreaks havoc on both the user and, it
seems, everyone in their vicinity.
When Darkhold-corrupted Wanda Maximoff overwhelms her Illuminati universe variant, she becomes
an even more unstoppable horror movie monster, easily tearing her way through the Illuminati's
defenses ... and killing the vast majority of the group in increasingly inventive, grim
ways.
Later, Strange manages to make dreamwalking even more horrifying when he possesses the
dead body of his variant, harnesses the power of lost souls, and attacks Wanda as a zombie
wizard with an army of dark spirits.
Both of these sequences are as grim as they're exciting.
Yet, somehow, these elaborate Raimi moments aren't even the scariest dream-related revelation
the movie has in store.
See, "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" reveals the truth about the nature
of dreams in the MCU ... and the truth is nothing short of terrifying.
It turns out that in the MCU, your dreams actually happen to you somewhere in the multiverse.
Even Sorcerers Supreme old and new can learn new things, and when multiverse-traversing
America Chavez tells Strange and Wong that the dream the former was having was actually
real to the Strange variant who died in the opening scene of the movie, they're somewhat
taken aback by the news.
In fact, Wong is pretty concerned when he finds out that his dream of being chased by
a clown in a tragically undressed state has actually happened to some poor Wong variant
out there.
Because the whole "your dreams are real" concept apparently isn't unnerving enough on its own,
the movie also gives a very concrete example of a common bad dream, and how it might play
out in the MCU multiverse.
When Doctor Strange encounters a Darkhold-corrupted variant of himself who has a rather questionable
hobby of killing alternate-universe Stranges, the variant reveals that most dreams of falling
that the main Strange has ever had were likely caused by the Darkhold Strange killing other
Strange variants in ways that, presumably, involve great heights.
Sounds like a real …
"Nightmare."
Not all multiverse dreams, of course, are nightmares ... but that doesn't mean they're
any less heartbreaking.
For instance, Wanda is able to confirm the multiversal existence of her supposedly nonexistent
children because she keeps dreaming of them.
Given that the majority of the movie's characters are magic users, multiverse experts, or both,
there's a chance that the whole "your dreams are actually happening to another version
of you" thing might be exclusive to people who are in tune with the strange, unseen forces
that govern the magical side of the MCU.
However, as long as that's not clear, the viewer can't help but think that every single
bad dream a character's ever had in the MCU is just a vision of their variant having a
really, really bad time.
This, by proxy, implies that the MCU is an even wilder place than you've seen so far
-- which is saying something, considering that "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of
Madness" alone introduces viewers to things like an animated universe and some sort of
cubist nightmare universe.
Every time the mega-franchise's heroes and villains go to sleep and dream the uneasy
dreams their stressed brains no doubt conjure up, they're actually watching the wild and
awful adventures of their multiversal variants.
That's just the super-folks, too.
If the same applies to the billions of people living on Earth alone, this means that any
and all truly mind-boggling dreams these countless people are able to conjure up are on the table.
Imagine how many truly weird dreams fit in there, and what kind of odd universes they
might reveal.
It's entirely possible that by this simple dream revelation alone, the MCU has stealthily
opened the door to stories that are so weird, they make even "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse
of Madness" look like a walk in the park.
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