Marvel Studios first teased the Multiverse in Avengers: Endgame, but fully embraced the concept starting with Loki. Since then, we've seen three cinematic Spider-Men come together for a spectacular team-up in Spider-Man: No Way Home and followed the former Sorcerer Supreme on a wild ride through reality in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
It's been fun, but there have definitely been some inconsistencies. Remember, we've met three totally different Peter Parkers and a whole host of Loki Variants, though all the Doctor Strange Variants have, so far, looked exactly the same.
During a recent interview with Empire (via The Direct), Marvel Studios producer Richie Palmer was asked about that and shared a convincing explanation. "The Lokis are different, the Spider-Men are different. We have story reasons that Michael [Waldron] and I can talk about for an hour about why it makes sense for characters like Loki, who is inherently a chaotic being."
"That was always Michael's thing, Loki is pure chaos, so it makes sense to him, in the grand calculus of the Multiverse, on the Multiversal spectrum, he would be one that looks like different people."
"If you go to the Spider-Verse comics, or even, what was it in the early 2000s, there was the start of the idea of just these other Spider-figures out in our universe or the Multiverse, and it wasn't always Peters, it wasn't always people who looked like Peters," Palmer continued. "I looked at the comic and I actually think it makes sense to me, as a comics fan, why the Peters might look different."
The producer would go on to say that they didn't want to squander Benedict Cumberbatch and Elizabeth Olsen in the Doctor Strange sequel by casting different actors as their Variants. However, moving forward, he can see familiar characters return with different faces.
"I think there's room for even the most stalwart characters, like a Steve Rogers, to maybe not look like Chris Evans. I think there is room as you move further away from the main timeline, from the main universe," Palmer teased. "I think it depends on the character, it depends on the actor, it depends on, frankly, the medium we're telling the story."
The response to the MCU's take on the Multiverse has been a little mixed, but it's also delivered some incredible moments and a lot of box office success. The assumption is that it's building to an eventual Secret Wars movie that would be an epic culmination of everything we've seen up until now and beyond.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is now playing in theaters. It's now available on Digital platforms and Disney+, and hits Blu-ray, 4k Ultra HD, and DVD on July 26.