While there are many puzzles and questions after watching Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, the biggest one actually harks back to 2019.

In Multiverse of Madness, we meet the heroes of Earth-838, including John Krasinski’s Reed Richards, Patrick Stewart’s Charles Xavier, Haley Atwell’s Captain Carter, Anson Mount’s Black Bolt and Maria Rambeau as Captain Marvel but it was actually that world’s Christine Palmer, played by the always lovely Rachel McAdams, sho raised our collective eyebrows.

You see, in the movie, this version of Palmer was an expert on the multiverse as their world had already reached out to other worlds and she told Doctor Strange that the MCU prime universe is Earth-616 – the same world name that the prime comic universe has.

Now, this may mean that in live-action, the prime universes are 616 as this is definitely not the same earth as the comics as the characters and stories vary so much, so it’s likely that’s the case and yes, we know Kevin Feige had previously called the MCU Earth-199999 but he later joked that he called it that because that’s how long the movies will go on for.

Daniel Craig was cast in Multiverse of Madness but couldn’t make it… but as who?

So, if the MCU is indeed Earth-616, that leaves the question… how did Jake Gyllenhaal’s Quentin Blake AKA Mysterio know it was Earth-616 in Spider-man Far From Home?

You will recall that Blake claimed to be from a different Earth in that movie and to be aware of the multiverse, which would explain why he knew this… but he wasn’t; he lied. He was from the same world as everyone else.

So how did he know?

Well, there are three possibilities.

1. It was a coincidence – nothing more than that, a simple fluke that he landed on the right designation.
2. It was a multiverse dream – In Multiverse of Madness it’s established that if you have a dream or nightmare about yourself that isn’t actually based on something that happened to you, then it’s likely a multiverse dream – that is, a dream of something that hs happened to one of your other selves from an other world. Som Blake could have had a dream about Earth-838’s version of him who may well have been a multiverse traveller or just knew that the MCU earth was 616 and Blake believed he just made it up but actually learned it from an alternate version of himself. Oh, and in Far From Home Blake says he’s from Earth-833 which is very close to Earth-838, lending further fuel to this being how he acquired the information.
3. He read Erik Selvig’s notes – We know Blake worked for Tony Stark and resented him, hence why he tried to take over Stark Industries in Far From Home and, to do this, he likely did extensive research into Stark and what he knew, which leads to Erik Selvig. Selvig, played by the great Stellan Skarsgård, was researching Thor and the Bifrost/magic rainbow bridge and all things Asgardian and, in Thor: The Dark World, we clearly see his work on a blackboard, below, with ‘616 universe’ written on there. Stark was almost certainly aware of Selvig’s work and it’s possible the two had even done more work into the multiverse together; if this was the case, then Blake may have learned it this way.
   Of course, that leads to us pondering… how did Selvig know? But that’s for another day, perhaps.

In a new interview, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness writer Michael Waldron addressed this very issue and admitted he didn’t know: “I guess it begs the question, what did Quentin know? He was a smart guy. Um, is it just a coincidence? That’s… I don’t know…”

Of course, it could all – and likely is – be just an oversight on behalf of the writers, after all, even the MCU makes the odd mistake, but we love that even the mistakes can have fun reasons.

What do you think? Does any of this seem likely? Let me hear your thoughts, guys…

Source: Rolling Stone