Doctor Strange 2 Writer Defends Introduction of the Multiverse: "It Was Never About Fan Service."

For most of the fourth phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, other than passing the baton to the next set of heroes, the multiverse has been one of the main topics that the franchise has introduced. The writer of Doctor Strange 2 defended the idea being focused on saying, “It was never about fan service.”

Credit: Marvel Studios

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness has made its way into theaters with a bang and it has been the talk of the town ever since. It opens up the franchise into bigger possibilities having the multiverse explored on a larger scale from its mind-twisting narrative to the interesting cameos that appeared, the writer of the film, Michael Waldron, defends the multiverse.

In a chat with ComicBook.com, Michael Waldron defends the concept of the multiverse being introduced and whether it was just to give a fan service that they included characters like the members of the Illuminati, “Of course, I guess. It's easy to be seduced by the cheap laugh, the cheap cheer, whatever. But that's never what Marvel or Sam were interested in.”

Waldron reiterated that the narrative has always been their guide, “It was always about what's right for the story, what's right for Steven Strange, what's right for Wanda. It was never about fan service, really. It was like, 'If these Illuminati characters are here, they should be here because that's who's in the Illuminati in the comics, and that's who would actually be in the Illuminati.' That was our north star."

Related: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: Other Universes Confirmed in the Movie

Waldron also expressed how the concept of the multiverse in Doctor Strange is a continuation of stories, "You don't want to overwhelm the audience,it can easily buckle under all of that. In addition to the multiverse, this is a continuation of Wanda's story. It's a continuation of Steven's story."

Waldron even compared the multiverse that the series of Loki delved in, "It's not a show like Loki, where we had time to really live in these moments and explain them and slow play our explanation of all this stuff. We had to move fast. It's about keeping it focused on the character, and trying to find the heart of it."

He added that the road they took was picked out carefully, “The route that we took, I thought that the most interesting version of a multiverse story would actually be to fully invest in the reality of one alternate universe — go there, really feel like it was a real place, with real stakes and real characters and histories and everything.”

Credit: Marvel Studios

Waldron even compared the film to Rick and Morty, “As opposed to what we did on Rick and Morty, which is more 'you hop from universe to universe', and it feels a little more fast-paced and comedic. We wanted to feel like the multiverse and the MCU, these are real places. That was what we tried to render on screen."

With America Chavez being introduced into the MCU, her very existence proves that there are universes beyond where the mightiest heroes have been for the past decade. In every universe, there is a counterpart of them which may or may not have been heroes or sometimes, villains, too.

Different from that of Loki, the series talked about a supreme being, He Who Remains, who made sure that there would be no alternate universe that would branch out but in his death, everything became possible and connected to the timeline that everyone followed in the past decade. It was all because the lid to the multiverse was opened that paved way to the rest.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is now in theaters.