Marvel Studios is eage to remind fans of its own Backrooms amid the success of A24's creepypasta horror movie. While the concept of the Backrooms has been around for some time, since the creepypasta emerged on 4chan in 2019, it has been all the rage lately since A24 took YouTuber Kane Pixels' lore to Hollywood. Backrooms has become a box-office juggernaut, becoming A24's highest-earner yet and even topping Disney's latest blockbuster, The Mandalorian & Grogu.
As Backrooms remains the talk of the town, Marvel Entertainment took to X with the caption "liminal spacetime" and four pictures of its own version of the creepy space, the Time Variance Authority (TVA). The Backrooms' creepiness famously comes from its use of liminal spaces, endless transitional locations that draw their sinisterness from being vacant, uninhabited, and eerily familiar.
Beyond its broadly creepy liminal aesthetic, Loki establishes that the TVA has much in common with the Backrooms. Namely, both regions of their respective universes exist outside space and time, and function very differently from reality.
On a similar front, Owen Wilson's Mobius stated in Loki that "time passes differently here in the TVA." That same timey-wimey fact recently plagued Chiwetel Ejiofor's Clark in Backrooms, as he was stuck among those yellow walls for much longer than he thought before the credits rolled.
It only becomes clearer when examining these Marvel Studios stills of an unpopulated TVA, just how liminal, eerie, and empty many of its rooms are.
A24's Backrooms made sure to honor the sinister world's creepypasta lore by maintaining its simplistic blocky layout and truly ugly yellow walls. Despite carrying some similarities, the Backrooms does have key differences from the TVA, like its ability to recreate people, places, and objects from a corrupted memory.
That concept is more similar to The Void, which was also part of Loki, and acted as the TVA's dumping ground for anything they pruned from the timeline. However, unlike the Backrooms, which recreated these "memories" in strange ways, things found in the Void were ripped out of reality to be placed there, not remade.
Placing the two vastly different liminal spaces side by side, there's no denying that both carry a sense of eerie emptiness. However, unlike the Backrooms, the TVA isn't usually crawling with sinister Still Lifes and is instead more of a bustling workplace filled with the MCU's Sacred Timeline police.
In terms of what's next for the Time Variance Authority, many are hopeful to see them again in Avengers: Doomsday and Secret Wars. After all, Tom Hiddleston's Loki will officially return in this year's Avengers flick, and recent rumors have indicated that some of his TVA buddies are also in the mix, perhaps setting them up for a role akin to a Multiversal SHIELD as Incursions come for Earth-616.
The TVA's prior appearances in Loki and Deadpool & Wolverine are streaming now on Disney+, while Avengers: Doomsday hits theaters on December 18. But for those looking for an excuse to visit their local theater before then, Backrooms is playing now on screens around the world, and likely will be for some time.
It's Time For Marvel Studios to Invest in the Horror Genre, But How?
Between Sinners, Weapons, and The Conjuring: Last Rites last year, and the recent back-to-back success of Obsession and Backrooms, it's clear that the horror genre is all the rage. The superhero fandom will receive its own horror later this year as James Gunn's DCU offers up its crucial shape-shifter flick, Clayface.
It's tough to imagine that Marvel Studios isn't mulling over which of its properties is suited to the horror genre, and will be even more so if Clayface becomes a hit. Sadly, that probably won't happen in a Backrooms-like TVA spookfest, but the MCU has plenty of supernatural icons who could fit the horror vibe.
Marvel Comics recently announced a new horror-centric initiative, opening the doors to more creeptastic MCU movies and shows. The logical answer is through the Midnight Sons, a team of supernatural heroes like Blade, Ghost Rider, and Moon Knight who are rumored to assemble in the MCU and take on Mephisto.
Then again, Midnight Sons may turn into more of a supernatural blockbuster with horror elements than the true commitment to the genre many are hoping for. Instead, a true MCU horror should lean on one hero, be that through Blade's vampiric terrors, Moon Knight's mental illness, or Ghost Rider's demonic foes.
