What if? – NetSenshi Productions

strange-caterpillar Doctor Strange in The Multiverse of Madness might be the hardest challenge for Marvel fans going forward. Up to Avengers: Endgame, everyone had been tasked with watching every single movie either in order of release or when it took place in the timeline. The extreme nerds maybe watched Agents of Shield, maybe Agent Carter, but we had a good sense all we had to do was watch EVERY SINGLE MOVIE in phase I, II, and III and there would be an amazing pay off at the end… game. But where are we after Endgame?

Amazing_Spider-Man_Vol_1_149 Spider-Man Into The Spider-Verse was a stand alone film that had the idea of crossing over different Spider-Men™ because… for some reason… that’s always been a popular idea since at least… 1975? When Spider-Man: No Way Home came out, the universe became cracked and we had to deal with The Sam Rami Spider-Verse as well as The Amazing Spider-Man movie-verse. My wife had watched the Rami trilogy in the past, Amazing 1 but not 2, so I decided to have her watch the Sony/Marvel Spider-Man movies to prepare, and starting with 2019’s Spider-Man Far From Home, I saw a huge problem going forward. “Tony Stark is DEAD?!?!“ I forgot about the other movies with huge plot lines… Okay… that was my bad.

Fast-forward to last month. My wife explains that she has never seen Doctor Strange and up really of The Marvel Cinematic Universe. She wanted to watch Doctor Strange 2, because I guess Cumberbatch was her new goateed idol? I myself had not seen Eternals or Shang Chi because after a decade long movie arc, I had decided to treat the movie-verse the way I used to treat the comic-verse… on an issue by issue basis. I had already started skipping things like Netflix’s Luke Cage or any of the basic TV shows, but Wandavision? Loki? Falcon and Winter Soldier? I was still mostly up to date, so I should be golden! The wife however… can I demand that she watch What if?! so she can even know to care about random character encounters, such as Agent Carter’s time-displaced and roided out form possibly making a cameo?

female-thor She hasn’t even seen a Captain America wielding another universes Mjolnir yet, let alone seen the MCU’s Odinson’s magic hammer he summons with twinkle hands be destroyed by Hela… and Thor Love and Thunder comes out in JULY! Dear Lord!

For many, the global pandemic starting in 2019 did give us a ton of time to focus on fictional movie realms because we had to keep society running. Marriages happened, houses were purchased.

“What is the pre-requisite to watch Doctor Strange 2?”

Insider lists the following as the pre-requisite: X-Men (2000), Age of Ultron, Doctor Strange, WandaVision, Loki, What if?!, and Spider-Man No Way Home.

I, however, would argue that you just need to see the cover to the original X-Men movie and that should be enough, because that should not be that universes Professor Xavier! He has the flying hover chair he got in the comics after going to SPACE, but always casually had in the animated series from 1992! So… yeah.

Also, Loki? Maybe? Maybe not. What if?! Err… Cumberbatch claimed that the alternate Strange from that was NOT the one from that, but eagled eyed people have seen other characters who could be… so…

Ultimate Spider-Man was a comic book series that came out after the original Sam Rami Spider-Man series. It was a new universe that took ideas from the older comic series, and made it approachable for newcomers. It made a lot of changes, but it strived to be something that people could pick up and read. It later had spin off comics, dipped it’s toes into a different universe creating The Marvel Zombie universe, and even had an Ultimate Spider-Man video game before Peter Parker had to exit that convoluted mess. That universe folded in on it-self. A Spider-Verse happened in the comics at some point, long story is that the younger character Miles Morales Spider-Man came to the main comic universe, and a lot of his world became their world.

Spider-Girl_Vol_1_10 All bets are currently off. I do not know where The Marvel Cinematic Universe is going to go or if fans will all follow or not. Things are getting crazy, and I kind of just want to be able to see a cool trailer, watch a movie, and just turn my brain off again. Hopefully I can (mostly) do that again, sometime soon. I’m getting to old for this stuff.