The Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness trailer teased multiple potential villains, including one who could be an even greater threat than Thanos. The Doctor Strange 2 trailer showed several different adversaries that Strange will take on in the sequel. From Gargantos to the evil Strange Supreme variant of Doctor Strange from Marvel's What If...?, the amount of danger threatening the multiverse continues to escalate in the trailer. Nevertheless, none of those threats match the potential danger of Alioth being the main villain of the film.

Alioth made its MCU debut in the Loki Disney+ series. He Who Remains (the founder of the TVA) harnessed the power of Alioth to end a war between different universes and timelines of the multiverse. The creature could consume all matter and energy, allowing it to destroy anything in its path. He Who Remains used the trans-temporal beast to serve as a guard for the Citadel at the End of Time beyond the realm of the Void, which was located beyond time and used by the TVA to eliminate whatever (and whoever) they pruned from branched timelines. The end of the Loki series opened up a terrifying situation with the death of He Who Remains. Alioth is now a free-roaming force of pure destruction that threatens all realities without someone to control the creature's power.

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Doctor Strange tampered with the multiverse in Spider-Man: No Way Home, and there could be yet another instance of multiverse meddling in this Doctor Strange sequel. In the same way that the Spider-Man villains crossed over into a different universe, Alioth may escape the Void. In the Doctor Strange 2 trailer, there appeared to be a massive dark cloud approaching the city of Kamar-Taj and the fortress of the Masters of the Mystic Arts. The rolling cloud that struck terror in the eyes of the Kamar-Taj sorcerers looked an awful lot like Alioth. Of course, it could be just a cloud generated by a dark force instead of the force itself, but Alioth escaping the Void and wreaking havoc on the multiverse would be perfectly fitting for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

Loki Episode 5 Loki and Sylvie Enchanting Alioth

Stan Lee once said, "The first thing you have to do is get a villain who seems to be unbeatable by the hero." (via YouTube). An unchained Alioth would pose the greatest threat for the former Sorcerer Supreme in Doctor Strange 2. Strange faced off against a similar menace when he outsmarted Dormammu in Doctor Strange. However, Dormammu and Alioth don't compare; unlike Dormammu, Doctor Strange can not bargain with Alioth. According to the comics, Alioth's power and size grow with whatever it consumes; if the creature has consumed its way across the multiverse, there's no telling how powerful Alioth might now be.

The benefit for Doctor Strange in having Alioth as the secret villain is that it would be a considerable boost to Strange's character development as a superhero. He would have to push himself to new limits to defeat such a foe. Undoubtedly, Strange would be forced to make difficult decisions that would impact the type of hero he becomes. Viewers have already seen one potential outcome of Strange's decision-making from the evil Doctor Strange variant in What If...?. On the other hand, a battle with Alioth could make the sorcerer an even greater hero if he makes better choices. Either way, Doctor Strange would have to pull every trick in the book to save not just his reality, but all realities.

Doctor Strange wouldn't be the only beneficiary of having Ailoth as the primary villain in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The future MCU films stand to gain as well. It was already problematic that He Who Remains is no longer controlling Alioth. If Doctor Strange manages to defeat or possibly kill Alioth, that could create an even greater vulnerability for He Who Remain's variants to invade the Sacred Timeline. The most dangerous of those variants will be Kang the Conqueror, and, with him already being teased in Loki, the villain will make his official MCU debut in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

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