Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness recently got an official update to its ending, the first one in many years, by Marvel Studios. It's been over four years since that movie hit theaters in May 2022, and much to the chagrin of many fans, Marvel has yet to officially green-light a third Doctor Strange movie. Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) hasn't been seen on screen in a while, and he's potentially the most notable absence from the current cast list for Avengers: Doomsday. That said, part of that multiverse-bending ending has a new spin.
Back in Multiverse of Madness's post-credits scene, Clea (Charlize Theron) found Strange in the street and didn't waste time explaining herself: "You caused an incursion. And we're gonna fix it."
For anyone who needs a refresher, incursions are essentially what happens when someone leaves and overstays their welcome in a universe that isn't theirs, and the walls between realities start to collapse. Left unaddressed, they don't just damage a universe. They destroy it.
Near the end of Multiverse of Madness, the main universe's Doctor Strange finds himself battling Sinister Strange in the post-Incursion universe.
There's a variety of theories regarding past MCU moments that could be leading to the upcoming conflict in Avengers: Doomsday.
Coming from Clea, fixing an incursion sounded almost simple: a mess Strange made, and a mess the two of them could clean up together in the Dark Dimension. That's the last anyone has seen either of the characters, yet incursions are about to be as prominent as ever.
Avengers: Doomsday's synopsis and trailers have recently directly addressed incursions, and potentially put the ending of Doctor Strange 2 into a new context.
The official synopsis warns that heroes from three separate universes are being set on a "deadly collision course," facing "an existential threat unlike anything they've ever encountered," with those three universes being Earth-616, the Fox X-Men's Earth-10005, and the Fantastic Four's Earth-828.
How Marvel Studios is selling incursions in Doomsday, not really a description of something that can be fixed, as Clea had suggested. It's describing something that happens regardless of what anyone does about it, unless there's a higher magical or cosmic (or both) power being utilized, like the Beyonder or potentially Loki in the MCU.
How Doctor Doom (Robert Downey Jr.) describes the incoming collision also seems to speak to just how unfixable, or undeterrable, an incursion is:
"Something's coming. Something we may not be able to deter. Before this day is done, we shall be faced with an unthinkable decision."
That's a strange (no pun intended) thing to hear from the character whose entire mission, many fans believe, is repairing the multiverse before it falls apart. Downey himself seemed to tip that same idea in August, captioning a new poster on Instagram with "Nothing gets fixed gently."
Putting the puzzle pieces together, it puts Clea's confidence at the end of Multiverse of Madness in a much different light. Either she and Strange genuinely believed incursions could be undone and simply haven't been able to pull it off yet, or Doom doesn't actually know about whatever fix Clea had in mind back then.
In the MCU, it's completely unclear what type of power Clea holds, due to her momentary screen time thus far. In Marvel Comics, she eventually becomes Sorcerer Supreme in her own right after Strange's death, and rules the Dark Dimension. In that case, maybe she doesn't have a few tricks up her sleeve Doom doesn't know about.
What Clea and Doom have said thus far does align with what Doomsday has shown so far: a story built around a collision that looks less like something to be prevented and more like something already locked in.
Either way, the version of "fixing an incursion" Clea sold Strange (four years ago) is looking a lot more complicated now that Doom is the one standing in the wreckage. Ultimately, it will come down to whatever that "unthinkable decision" is that Doom hauntingly mentions.
Pair that with Doom claiming many of the Avengers are living stolen lives, and make no mistake that the super-children of these heroes are in grave danger.
How Will Avengers: Doomsday End?
In short, all signs point to Clea being wrong. Based on where Avengers: Doomsday's marketing has pointed, the looming three-universe incursion doesn't get stopped by our heroes. It happens, and the MCU comes out the other side looking like an entirely different place.
Some plot details already point to a bleak outcome: a climactic battle where the Avengers, Fantastic Four, and X-Men (maybe even more surprises) join forces against Doctor Doom, only to fall short, emblematic of Avengers: Infinity War.
Rather than the heroes stopping the incursion, some have theorized that Doom is the one who comes out on top, absorbing enough multiversal power, whether from Loki or the collapsing realities themselves, to ascend into God Emperor.
The final result would be Battleworld, the patchwork planet from Jonathan Hickman's Secret Wars comics, built from the wreckage of the universes that just collided. Sound familiar?
That would explain why Kevin Feige has already confirmed that Avengers: Secret Wars is designed to streamline the MCU into a single, simplified universe as it heads out of 2027 and into 2028.
In other words, the "fix" Clea promised back in Multiverse of Madness isn't coming. The incursion wins, if that's even the correct way of putting it, Doom takes what's left, and Secret Wars picks up in a new reality of sorts.
