Recent years have seen the MCU establish a variety of different terms and concepts regarding its greater multiverse. Beginning with Phase 4 which began with Black Widow, the bulk of the MCU’s projects have been focused on stories involving alternate realities and variants of known heroes and villains from other timelines beyond the primary MCU reality designated Earth-616. To that end, some of these new terms will likely become even more important as the current “Multiverse Saga” reaches its conclusion in the next few years.
Custom Image by Kevin Erdmann
Some of the most important MCU projects to truly understand the multiverse include shows such as Marvel’s WandaVision, Loki, and Marvel’s What If…? Core multiverse movies include films such as Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, as well as the more recent Deadpool & Wolverine. To that end, here are some of the biggest and most important MCU multiverse terms to know going forward, as well as what may still be confusing about them ahead of the Multiverse Saga’s culminating crossovers, Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars.
Absolute Points
Marvel’s What If…?
In the first season of Marvel’s What If…?, a key episode explored a timeline in which Doctor Strange lost his love Christine Palmer instead of damaging his hands. Still coming to learn the mystic arts, Strange was hellbent on gaining the power to rewrite history and save Christine, regardless of the damage he inflicted upon himself and his timeline. Eventually, it was revealed by the Ancient One that Palmer’s death was known as an absolute point, an event in which nothing could change its occurrence, lest the entire reality be destroyed, as was the case when this version of Strange still kept trying.
Keeping this episode in mind, it follows that each reality in the multiverse holds its own unique and immutable absolute points in its respective timeline. This would most likely be the origins of heroes, or major events such as the Battle of New York that first assembled the Avengers. Furthermore, the concept of absolute points may have some overlap with other terms that have been established in subsequent Marvel projects since this first season of Marvel’sWhat If…?
Nexus Beings
WandaVision
The term “Nexus Being” from the original Marvel Comics has yet to officially be said in the MCU. However, the concept has certainly been teased, beginning with WandaVision’s “commercial” promoting a medication called “Nexus”, one that “works to anchor you back to your reality, or the reality of your choice”. In the comics, nexus beings are unique individuals in their universe who possess the ability to greatly affect probabilities and the future. As the nexus being of the comics’ Marvel Universe, it makes sense that the MCU’s version would be teased as well.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ America Chavez was also teased as a nexus being, given her ability to travel realities at will. However, she may be more unique given her status as an apparent singularity in the multiverse, having no other variants as most do. While Wanda is the nexus being of the comics’ Earth-616, other known alt-reality nexus beings include Mister Fantastic and Invisible Woman’s son Franklin Richards, as well as Kang the Conqueror (who could also be nexus beings in the MCU as well).
Nexus Events
Loki
While “nexus being” is a more ambiguous term in the MCU, “nexus events” were more clearly defined in Marvel’s Loki. Nexus events are any moment or decision that can create alternate branches in the timeline. A prime example is Loki in 2012 using the Tesseract to escape the Avengers as seen in Avengers:Endgame, when he was supposed to be taken back to Asgard for imprisonment.
Other examples include Peggy Carter taking the super soldier serum instead of Steve Rogers as seen in What If…?, as well as the biggest known nexus event in the MCU where Sylvie killed He Who Remains. This resulted in major multiversal growth with several new branching timelines, spreading beyond the collection of timelines the Kang variant had specifically cultivated using the Time Variance Authority, having shaped the multiverse as he saw fit.
Incursions
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse Madness
As was first revealed in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and was somewhat fleshed out in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, “incursions” are a major threat to the stability of the multiverse. Essentially a collision of realities, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness confirms that incursions can happen due to prolonged multiversal travel which can result in the demise of one or more realities. However, it does seem as though there may be more than one exception to the rule, such as if you have no other variants in the multiverse (like America Chavez who now lives on Earth-616).
It also seems likely that prolonged multiversal travel won’t be the only way to trigger an incursion in the MCU. As the Multiverse Saga heads for Secret Wars, something or someone will more than likely trigger numerous incursions at all once, resulting in the creation of Battleworld as seen in the comics version of the crossover, a collection of realities held together as one realm to prevent their destruction. At any rate, the threat of incursions in the MCU will likely get bigger within the next couple of years.
Sacred Timeline
Loki
Originally, the Sacred Timeline was the work of the Kang variant He Who Remains. Focused on the MCU’s primary Earth-616 timeline, the Sacred Timeline was a framework for a constrained multiverse, one that wasn’t allowed to create any of He Who Remains’ more dangerous variants (like Kang). Any branching timelines that deviated from his designs were pruned and deleted by the Time Variance Authority. The Sacred Timeline was essentially a looped rope made of multiple realities He Who Remains deemed acceptable, effectively removing free will from the multiverse.
However, the Sacred Timeline has since been transformed in the wake of He Who Remains’ death. Due to its failsafe, the device known as the Temporal Loom used to weave the Sacred Timeline together was meant to destroy both the TVA and the rapid influx of new branch timelines that had formed. However, Loki steps in to save and reshape the entire Sacred Timeline going forward.
At the end of Loki season 2, the former God of Mischief becomes a living Temporal Loom using Asgardian magic. Keeping the new timelines alive and reforming the Sacred Timeline from a contained rope into a large multiversal tree, Loki allows new branches to grow with stability, while also effectively giving free will back to those living within them. The Sacred Timeline is also a widely accepted term for the primary events of the MCU proper on Earth-616.
Canon Events
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Despite being a Marvel film from Sony, the multiversal concepts introduced in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse do have some bearing on the greater MCU multiverse. After all, Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and Tom Holland’s Spider-Men are all either shown or at least referenced in the animated movie, and they were all featured in the MCU with Spider-Man: No Way Home. To that end, it does seem as though “Canon Events” have their place in the greater MCU multiverse.
In Across the Spider-Verse, the realities featuring a Spider are referenced by Spider-Man 2099 as a collective “Great Web of Life and Destiny”. However, this is likely just an alternate visual framework for the multiverse as it specifically relates to Spider heroes, rather than on a wider scale as it’s been shown in the MCU with shows like Loki. Similarly, “canon events” are moments in every Spider-Man’s story that have to happen for said reality to remain stable.
Major “canon events” for Spider-Men include significant deaths like Uncle Ben or Captain Stacy. If they don’t happen, their reality is in danger of erosion and is often destroyed. As such, “canon events” certainly seem to be the Spider-Verse version of absolute points by another name (though “canon events” certainly seems like the better name of the two). That said, it remains to be seen if “canon events” can be rewritten without reality falling apart.
Anchor Beings
Deadpool & Wolverine
“Anchor Being” is the newest multiverse term in the MCU, courtesy of Deadpool & Wolverine. Told by the TVA’s Mister Paradox that his reality was dying, Deadpool seeks to save his reality of Earth-10005 (the Fox Marvel universe). This is done by Wade finding a variant of Wolverine from another reality to replace the Wolverine who died in Logan. This is because Wolverine was confirmed to be the “anchor being” of Earth-10005, an individual so crucial to their reality that it gradually begins to decay once they’re gone.
