In ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’, we were introduced with the concept of ‘Incursion’. As Reed Richards said, multiversal travel would cause an incursion. However, in many Marvel’s projects, several characters have been shown to travel in and out the multiverse without any repercussions.
Has Marvel forgotten about incursions, or have they been secretly building up to ‘Avengers: Secret Wars’?
What Is An Incursion?
In ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’, Reed Richard said an incursion happens when a boundary between two universes erodes – destroying one or both universes. The larger the footprint a variant leaves behind, the greater the risk of an incursion.
Let’s Make a Headcount
The Avengers traveled to several timelines to steal the Infinity Stones. A variant of Gamora stayed in the Sacred Timeline in ‘Guardians of Galaxy Vol. 3’. Several variants of Spider-Man fought a battle in ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’. Monica Rambeau was trapped in another timeline at the end of ‘The Marvels’. A variant of Wolverine and Laura were shown to live with Deadpool in his universe.
And we are still excluding the fact that there have been countless versions of Spider-Man and TVA agents wandering around and executing missions in the ‘Spider-Verse’ movies and the ‘Loki’ TV series.
So what is going on here? Countless amounts of variants have been leaving footprints throughout the multiverse but we have yet to see another ‘incursion’.
How Large Does A “Footprint” Have To Be?
Several variants have shown to fight a few battles throughout the multiverse, sure. The most possible reason we have yet to see another incursion is that these footprints aren’t big enough compared to the ones left by other variants of Doctor Strange.
In ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’, we’ve seen two variants of Doctor Strange that caused an incursion. Supreme Strange used the dreamwalking sorcery to possess his variants to find a way to defeat Thanos. His action caused an incursion, destroying another reality.
Meanwhile, Sinister Strange dreamwalked to find a universe where he lived a happy life with Christine Palmer. His action caused an incursion, destroying his own reality.
What Is Dreamwalking?
So, what is dreamwalking and why does it leave a larger ‘footprint’ than physically traveling to another universe? The answer is Darkhold.
Darkhold provides the knowledge of a dark sorcery known as ‘dreamwalking’ – this enables a person to possess their own variants throughout the multiverse. Considering how dark this sorcery is, of course it endangers the reality itself.
Therefore, dreamwalking is more severe than traveling throughout the multiverse through scientific methods like quantum tunnels or Tempads.
A Footprint Is Still A Footprint
So does that mean the Sacred Timeline is safe? Not really. Our Doctor Strange still dreamwalked to possess a corpse, remember? And at the end of the movie, Clea (who’s surprisingly played by Charlize Theron) said that he caused an incursion and they need to stop it.
As for the other characters that traveled the multiverse by Tempads or quantum tunnels, like Wolverine, Monica Rembeau, Gamora, and more, they are still leaving footprints. Incursions will happen, but not as fast as we expect.
As teased in ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’, when Thor is shown to cry with Deadpool in his arms, superheroes from different universes will have to fight to ensure the survival of their own realities. All of this will happen because of their reckless behavior in traveling throughout the multiverse. This is the battle that they will fight in a battle called ‘Secret Wars’.
Conclusion
While the concept of incursions introduced in ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ has not been consistently addressed in subsequent Marvel projects, it is unlikely that Marvel has forgotten about it. Instead, it appears they are carefully building up to a larger narrative, potentially leading to ‘Avengers: Secret Wars’. The varying impacts of multiversal travel, especially through dark sorcery like dreamwalking, suggest that the MCU is laying the groundwork for a major multiverse-spanning event. As characters continue to leave their footprints across different realities, the threat of incursions looms, setting the stage for an epic confrontation to save their respective universes.To find out Doctor Doom’s plan to save the multiverse in ‘Secret Wars’, we highly recommend you to read this article.
