Doctor Strange’s actions at the end of Avengers Infinity War completely baffled Tony Stark. The Sorcerer Supreme willingly gave up the Time Stone to Thanos in exchange for Iron Man’s life. The Mad Titan then went on to collect all six Infinity Stones and snap away half the universe including Doctor Strange himself.
Of course, prior to this Doctor Strange had used the Time Stone to view all 14,000,605 possible conclusions to the Infinity War and only one of those saw Thanos defeated: the events of Avengers Endgame.
Knowing the only possible victorious future, the Sorcerer Supreme needed to save Tony from death in 2018, so Iron Man could willingly sacrifice himself by snapping away Thanos five years later in 2023’s final battle.
But now the MCU is beyond Endgame, we’re beginning to see the ramifications of the Time Heist on the Marvel multiverse.
After all, a variant Loki from 2012 escaped with the Tesseract because 2023 Tony Stark was knocked over by Hulk.
Interestingly, the first episode of the Disney+ Loki show saw the variant watch a video explaining how the TVA works to stop Nexus events like his that could descend the multiverse into madness.
Now considering Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is arriving in cinemas in 2022, we wouldn’t be surprised if this variant Loki is the cause of it.
But here’s the thing: surely when considering the Endgame future in Infinity War, the Sorcerer Supreme was aware that a version of the god of mischief would dip out of the Sacred Timeline and be captured by the TVA, before causing havoc across alternate realities.
Sure, the TVA has said that the Avengers’ Time Heist was part of this Sacred Timeline and so was always meant to happen, but alternate Loki’s actions were not.
While Docile_Doggo commented on this writing: “Which is weird, because Doctor Strange said he saw only one future that had the Avengers ‘winning’, so that future Strange saw must have included Loki stealing the Tesseract.
“Either Doctor Strange simply didn’t view all possible futures, Doctor Strange lied, or a Sacred Timeline in which Loki never stole the Tesseract and the Avengers still ‘won’ was never possible to begin with.
“Or maybe, by the end of the Loki series, the TVA simply ‘resets’ the fact that Loki stole the Tesseract, thus preserving the Sacred Timeline.
Whatever’s going to happen, it seems likely that variant Loki will cause the multiverse of madness and impact the events of Spider-Man No Way Home.
After all, Doctor Strange will be mentoring Peter Parker in that blockbuster, just three months before his Multiverse of Madness movie.
While Spider-Man No Way Home itself is heavily rumoured to feature not only Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s Web Slingers but villains from their Sony movies too.
So far only Doc Ock star Alfred Molina has admitted he’s in the movie, while Jamie Foxx’s Electro has been confirmed too. And who knows, perhaps Loki and Scarlet Witch will be turning up too?
Spider-Man No Way Home hits cinemas on December 17, 2021 and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness follows on March 25, 2022.
