WARNING: This article contains MAJOR SPOILERS for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness screenwriter Michael Waldron explains the film's setup for Secret Wars. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness served as the culmination of storylines laid out in Phase 4 projects like WandaVision, Loki, and Spider-Man: No Way Home. While it offered some conclusions, it also left the door open with a number of new characters for future MCU stories, and the inclusion of the word "incursions" in regards to the multiverse seems to be laying the groundwork for Marvel's next event, Secret Wars.
Published in 2015, Secret Wars was an epic Marvel event title that paid off years of writer's Jonathan Hickman stories he laid out in his run on titles like Fantastic Four, The Avengers, and New Avengers. The series sees all of the Marvel multiverse destroyed and rebuilt into one single location: Battleworld, a world made up of various pieces from the multiverse under the creation of Doctor Doom. With Phase 4 emphasizing the multiverse, and various references to incursions being laid out in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness it appears that the MCU is setting up Secret Wars to be the big Avengers: Endgame style event film the franchise is building to.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness' Waldron revealed in an interview with Gizmodo about the decision to include incursions and what it means for a possible Secret Wars adaptation. Waldron compared it to how Marvel gradually introduced cosmic elements into the MCU first with Thor and the buildup to Thanos and that the reference to incursions is a tease of what is to come. This is the writer's second tease at Secret Wars, as Waldron also previously served as the head writer on Loki and that series made reference to a multiversal war. Waldron said:
"Well, I guess I think of it akin to it in the way that as soon as the MCU introduced the notion of space, of going to space, they teased Thanos almost immediately. There was Thor. And then Avengers was the first movie where there was a threat from the stars. And here comes Thanos. Obviously, there was a big build from there. So I think that maybe I always thought of the multiverse as kind of like, “OK, this is space.” You know, once upon a time, the MCU left Earth and went to the stars, now we’re going into the multiverse. So yeah we’ll see what happens with these incursions. They’re bad news."
Secret Wars being the focus of the next few Phases of the MCU makes a certain amount of sense, as the characters at the heart of the story are the Fantastic Four and Doctor Doom, with the former group now set to join the MCU with the upcoming Fantastic Four reboot. Secret Wars fits very much into the current MCU as the comic series' main storyline does not feature Captain America or Iron Man, the two most prominent heroes of the MCU who also have left the franchise with other heroes taking up their original mantle. This means new characters like the Eternals, Shang-Chi, and Ms. Marvel can take the spotlight in the adaptation.
Phase 1 of the MCU was defined as the lead-up to The Avengers, and after that movie's tease it was apparent Thanos and an adaptation of The Infinity Gauntlet would be where all roads lead. Phase 4 has not had a clear pathway, with various different teases across the franchise from the team that Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine is forming, to the threat of Celestials, and now the upcoming appearance of Kang the Conqueror. These desperate threats imply that Phase 4 will keep the cosmic, earthbound, and mystical characters separated in their own franchises until all the plotlines eventually converge during Secret Wars. Kevin Feige recently revealed they have mapped out the next ten years of the MCU so it may be a while until this plotline unfolds, but Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness may be one of the more important films in regards to the future of the franchise.
Source: Gizmodo
