Canon Doesn't Matter in a Multiverse
The weak and lazy excuse of Marvel all writers should avoid
Hello and happy Friday everyone. Today I present you a short article about how to not dilute your story. The element of a “multiverse” has become quite prominent in major media lately, especially adopted by Marvel. While not necessarily a new concept in the realm of fiction, we’ve certainly seen it used as a way to contradict a story’s own canon, diminishing the value of the author’s written works.
I’ve been a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I loved Iron Man and Dr. Strange especially. Hell, I even argued good things about Ant Man, and I even thought Morbius wasn’t nearly as bad as everyone ridiculed. When I sat through and watched Infinity War, it was a marvelous spectacle. The grandiose war, the high stakes, and the clawing inevitable defeat of our heroes was quite a refreshing take in the super hero genre.
Even though Infinity War and Endgame were impressive feats of filmmaking, it left me… surprisingly empty, especially after the later. A while has passed since I seen Endgame, and I recalled the scene with Dr. Strange scouring 14 million universes for an answer on how to defeat Thanos.
14 Million Universes.
It got me thinking about all the variations and reiterations of the super heroes, often swapping them out for completely different casts of characters — what is the point? Whether the surviving heroes defeat or become defeated felt trivial, as they succeeded in at least one of these “universes” (arguable half of them if Dr. Strange gazed upon more than 14 million of them.)
This is an issue with implementing a multiverse in your setting, as it implies everything and nothing is “canon.” Any tale can be true if your audience likes it enough (or if you scam enough investing firms.) While it may seem fine and dandy to bring in a wider audience, it dilutes the invested interests of already established fans. Swap the race or gender of a hero. Turn a bad guy into a hero. Make a once threatening villain into the shell of his former glory. Often these changes, at best, waters down the setting. At worse, it completely insults the fan base.
Instead of trying to adhere to an audience (who may not even care about your story,) writers need to ensure their fans are treated with respect and love. To do that, writers must respect the limitations of the franchises they write for.
Enjoying the article so far? Consider subscribing to support Thunderous Fantasies!
The other problem with multiverses in story telling is that it dilutes the stakes. Like Dragonball Z, what is the point of a character dying if they can be brought back with the Dragon Balls? Vegeta’s sacrifice in protecting his son was a wonderful form of writing for his character development. Yet, when the reader is reminded of the Dragon Balls, what did he really sacrifice? In a multiverse, everyone is “Schrodinger’s cat.” Every character may be alive or be dead at the same time, pending on which universe you’re invested in. The meaning of life and death is rendered pointless, where the reader might as well just write the story for the authors.
Not only can it dilute the stakes, it can dilute the characters too. The Disney + series, Loki, is a prime example. He’s the god of mischief with a lot of power and trickery. He was a serious threat to Earth before the Avengers stepped in. However, in this series, he’s rendered as a powerless mortal when apprehended by the “Time Variance Association” (TVA). Even the infinity stones are rendered as shiny rocks. Even the whole premise of the TVA is almost like a mockery of fans who want to maintain some level of quality control for Marvel movies.
One way to get around to the dilution of a canon is through a more grounded narrative explanation. Take Warhammer 40k, where thousands of tales across the cosmos is written by various accounts of explorers. These tales can never be verified within the universe of Warhammer 40k, as everyone is experience the equivalent of an informational dark age. Some stories may have nuggets of truth, but can be written by a chaos worshipper. Others can be written by traitors of the Imperium with an intent to sabotage mankind with misinformation, or even written by radical Emperor worshipping fanatics. The xenos races certainly have their gripes against the Imperium and will obviously write unflattering stories about them. We could explore all the wonderful, epic tales of the grim dark future of space, have a healthy debate of what’s true and not true, and still be unserious enough to just simply enjoy the setting.
If Games Workshop chose not to dictate through PR what is canon and not canon, then fans could simply write off the heretical tales of “female custodes.” Sadly, the company has developed a recent habit of subverting their own beloved franchise.
Canon doesn’t matter when you have a ‘multiverse.’ Neither do spoilers. In fact, none of it really matters if you can posthumously and arbitrarily pick and choose what’s canon. So why even write? Why even read? If we are all supposed to say “yes” to everything thrown at us as consumers, we lose our ability to maintain our own boundaries. We give producers too much permission to create unqualified tales, when we should be pushing them to, at the very minimum, maintain a quality that we’ve expected from them when we first became fans. If they throw in a ‘multiverse’ element to their story, it’s a major red flag.
A limitless multiverse is like an open border. There are no rules, laws, nor order, and the writers are not sending their best. So maintain your boundaries, close that border, and “deport” all the “illegal variants” of your beloved heroes. If they want to be in our canon, they need to be properly vetted.