A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Multiverse: How to Understand Timelines in the MCU, DC Universe, Star Trek and More
variety.comHugh Everett III is widely credited for developing the theory at Princeton in the 1950s. The multiverse has cropped up in science fiction and comic books ever since, and it’s most often been employed in time-travel stories like “Back to the Future,” where a timeline has been split or changed and needs to be repaired.But the head-squeezing metaphysics of parallel timelines intersecting and influencing each other has largely kept the idea on the fringe of mainstream popular culture.Then, ’round about 2016, the idea that we are “living in the worst timeline” began to take a rather fearsome hold on social media, accelerating in 2020 with the COVID pandemic.
In that potent environment, Hollywood has embraced the multiverse utterly. This has been especially true for the comic book adaptations championed by Disney, Warner Bros.
and Sony, as each has reached a kind of critical mass in the face of the astronomic success of the interconnected Marvel Cinematic Universe.
There have simply been so many Marvel and DC movies over the last 40 years that the only way to link them all, and be fresh while doing it, is to scream “Multiverse!” and hope for the best.OK, yes, it’s a bit more — or way more — complicated than that.
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