Naturally, the spoilery ins and outs of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness will be discussed below.
While the Marvel Cinematic Universe isn’t technically obligated to introduce an overarching big bad that necessitates several major crossovers before culminating in an epic event the size of Avengers: Endgame, it certainly looks as though Phase Four is on the way to replicating the Infinity Saga model, with fans having long since pinpointed Secret Wars as the eventual destination.
Jonathan Majors’ Kang the Conqueror is the latest Thanos-level threat, and his expositional introduction in Loki‘s season 1 finale indicated that the time traveling warlord has an innumerable number of variants from various pocket realities that can show up anywhere at any time, especially now that He Who Remains is out of the picture.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness took the idea and ran with it, dropping in all sorts of surprise cameos, alternate versions of Benedict Cumberbatch’s title hero, comic book mumbo jumbo about crossing the divide between worlds, and plenty more besides.
Now that audiences have been checking out Sam Raimi’s sequel in their droves, the hype for Secret Wars has just been ratcheted up another notch or 10.
Phase Four has been fairly disjointed so far compared to the Infinity Saga, with the likes of Eternals and Moon Knight operating more independently of the mythos at large than Hawkeye and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, but it’ll all dovetail together eventually, whether Secret Wars marks the finish line or not.