'Doctor Strange 2' Might Have Created a 'Spider-Man: Far From Home' Plot Hole
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Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness has given Marvel fans plenty to discuss, including one particular niche debate over some numbers.
When Doctor Strange finds himself in an alternate universe, he's told by that universe's Christine Palmer that in order to keep track of all the different universes within the multiverse, they've given them numerical designations.
The main MCU universe where Strange is from is Earth-616 and he's found himself in Earth-838. However, Earth-616 is the main universe in the comics, which had given the MCU the designation of Earth-199999, meaning it could technically co-exist alongside the comics.
As a result of Doctor Strange 2 confirming that the main universe is actually Earth-616, this is no longer possible. It makes total sense for the MCU to adopt the designation from the comics, but it has left some fans a bit annoyed with it for continuity reasons.
Not least of which: could the revelation in the sequel have created a Spider-Man: Far From Home plot hole?
If you cast your mind back to Far From Home, Mysterio tells Spider-Man that he's from Earth-833 and that Spidey lives in Earth-616. As we discovered though, Mysterio was a big fat liar and was actually Quentin Beck, who had zero knowledge of the multiverse.
It's always been an issue as to how he ended up using Earth-616, but before we could just put it down to Guterman (who created the story for Quentin) plucking a number out of the air. It was an Easter egg for the Marvel fans and nothing more.
However, now that Doctor Strange 2 has confirmed that the main universe in the MCU is Earth-616, it's just too much of a coincidence that it was previously used in Quentin's totally made-up story.
So how the hell did Guterman know not only that universes had numbers, but that 616 was a significant one when nobody else even knew the multiverse existed at that point?
In a Rolling Stone interview with writer Michael Waldron, it was put to him that maybe it's a result of the revelation that dreams are "windows into the lives of our multiversal selves". Waldron admitted that he didn't have a definite answer ("is it just a coincidence?"), but seemed happy enough with the theory.
Either Quentin or Guterman had dreamed of an alternate self who happened to know about the universe designations. Sure, it's not the most exciting dream you can think of when you could be seeing literally any other life in the multiverse, but it works well enough.
It would be a massive retcon though, so we feel this is another Easter egg that the MCU has come to regret, much like seeing the Infinity Gauntlet in Thor way back in Phase 1.
Or maybe we're just completely overthinking a set of numbers. (We are, we definitely are.)
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