Of the many mind-bending moments in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the latest of the Marvel movies, is a sequence where Stephen Strange and America Chavez jump through 20 universe in just 40 seconds. During the brief, but beautifully executed scene, the superhero pair go places like a paint universe and another where dinosaurs seem to still roam the Earth. While it may seem random, perhaps it could signal something more for the MCU?
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is always expanding, sometimes in ways we may not be aware of until they come to fruition years later. With that in mind, a recent anecdote told by Multiverse of Madness VFX supervisor Alexis Wajsbrot might be worth earmarking. While discussing the construction of the scene to Variety, Wajsbrot said this:
One was an Incan statue world, which ended up in the movie because Kevin Feige thought, ‘Well, that could be a great world to put the Living Tribunal in.’ So that world became the Living Tribunal world... We proposed a jungle and Kevin Feige said, ‘Well, it could be cool if it was Savage World.’ It’s a world that exists in the Marvel Universe, so we had to add dinosaurs. We had to model and texture and render and animate dinosaurs for two seconds, which is extremely not cost-efficient.
If you’re not keyed into Marvel Comics knowledge, the Living Tribunal is an omnipotent celestial being, with the function to safeguard the multiverse from an imbalance of mystical forces. Here is an illustration of the Living Tribunal from the comics, who made a brief appearance in the multiverse-jumping scene in Doctor Strange 2:
For keen eyed Marvel fans, a statue of the Living Tribunal also made an appearance during Loki, in Season 1’s fifth episode. Between Doctor Strange and Loki, it seems Marvel boss Kevin Feige might have the character on his mind. Does this mean the character could make a legitimate appearance in a future project?
Considering Doctor Strange and Scarlet Witch just disrupted the balance of the multiverse, it seems a visit from the Living Tribunal to the main universe the Marvel movies are set could happen any day now. We don’t know what’s in store for Doctor Strange in a future movie, but during the Multiverse of Madness mid-credit scene, he meets Charlize Theron’s Clea, who opens a portal to the Dark Dimension, setting up another wild adventure for the hero.
Especially following the November release of Eternals, it seems like Marvel is opening the door for more cosmic entities in the MCU, making a storyline with the Living Tribunal more likely than ever. Wajsbrot also mentioned Savage Land, which is a world in the Marvel Comics that is a tropical prehistoric land surrounded by volcanoes and hidden in Antarctica. Apparently a prehistoric plotline is possible in the MCU as well.
Now that we’ve seen Doctor Strange 2, the next Marvel movie to look forward to is Thor: Love and Thunder, which hits theaters on July 8. The movie will include Greek mythology like Russell Crowe’s Zeus, so yeah, Marvel is perhaps in its unhinged era.
