In the comic books, The Illuminati was comprised of some of the Marvel Universe's smartest heroes. They'd assemble to tackle their world's greatest problems in secret, while a later version of the group gathered specifically to deal with incursions and the threat they posed to reality.
In Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, we meet Earth-838's Illuminati. The team is made up of Professor X, Captain Carter, Mister Fantastic, Black Bolt, Captain Marvel, and Master Mordo, and their mission seems in line with their comic book counterparts. However, while they appear to be heroes, writer Michael Waldron has suggested that their world isn't all it seems on the surface.
"838 is a little more of a police state, a little more Orwellian than our universe," he explained in an interview with Vanity Fair. "Maybe this Memory Lane thing isn’t as innocent as it seems." Asked if The Illuminati exists in other realities, Waldron suggested the team is unique to this reality. "Not that we know of. I guess they could. Maybe. But not so far as we know. They only exist in 838."
In a separate interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the writer was finally asked about that empty chair in The Illuminati's headquarters. While many fans have assumed it might have once belonged to Earth-838's fallen Doctor Strange, it appears there's a little more to the story.
"That’s also an unanswerable question, but we talked about that a lot, though," Waldron teased. "Maybe that was just a mistake. Maybe the set [decorator] guy had one too many chairs [Laughs]." Asked if he knows the answer or if it's open-ended for now, he responded: "A bit of both."
Something tells us we might not have seen the last of Earth-838, and with Marvel Studios only beginning to pull back the curtain on the Multiverse, it's obvious there are lots more stories to come.
Who do you think that empty chair belongs to?