Given the monumental scope of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the movie was always going to stretch itself so thin that some rips in the plot started to appear — and Marvel fans have been dissecting these story and logic errors over the past couple of months. The sorcery-themed sequel’s arrival on Disney Plus this past week has only allowed fans to dig deeper into those plot holes.
And a debate has erupted over whether one such hole can be easily filled in or not. Twitter user @HailEternal started a viral thread by celebrating the awesomeness of a particular shot from Doctor Strange 2 — the flashback to how the Illuminati defeated the Thanos of Earth-838. But one reply that got folks talking argued that this scene breaks Avengers: Infinity War, by proving that Strange was lying when he said there was only one possible future out of 14 million where Thanos could be beaten.
Most don’t agree with this, however. Fans descended upon this hot take, almost as much as they did that tweet calling Sam Raimi a bad director, to educate the OP on the error of their ways. As many pointed out, Strange’s Infinity War line still holds up as he only viewed the potential futures of his reality, not every reality.
Needless to say, Strange never envisioned a future where anything like this happened because the Illuminati don’t even exist on his Earth.
There are basically 14 million differences between these two universes.
One more time now: Strange only viewed the future of Earth-616!
It is true, however, that Strange could’ve seen across the multiverse if he’d had the Darkhold at the time. Having the evil grimoire in his back pocket would no doubt have entirely changed the course of Endgame. There’s a What If…? episode for you, Marvel.
While Strange might not have seen this coming, fans would definitely love to witness the Illuminati of 838’s fight against Thanos. How did they manage to succeed in killing the villain on Titan? Was it just because Star-Lord wasn’t there to screw up? We’d love some answers to these questions, but as for whether Doctor Strange 2 broke Infinity War, the answer is a firm no.