Is The Multiverse Lazy?

THE MULTIVERSE! Has lately become popular, what with the Marvel Cinematic Universe now calling Phase 5: The Multiverse Saga featuring Kang The Conqueror as its main villain, many are touting the concept of a "multiverse" as lazy writing but is it? In this article I'm gonna discuss the "multiverse" and why I don't think the concept in and of itself is lazy.

Let's start with the obvious, the concept of the multiverse in fiction isn't a new concept and despite the idea of multiple universes existing, variants of established characters have existed for a while as well, going so far back as "Star Trek" with their "Mirror, Mirror" episodes that feature evil versions of established characters like Kirk and Spock. Since its conception "multiverses" or "parallel universes" as they've been called have always been in fiction and have usually been a way to shake up an established sandbox of ideas without disrupting said sandbox. Basically, multiverse stories were used as fun "What If..." stories that would make good stories in a temporary sense but not in the long haul; a way to recognize how much a character's life would change IF a certain event did or did not take place.

In "Star Trek" the idea was "What if Kirk and Spock were evil?" and from that idea, the Mirror Universe was born, and considering how many episodes the concept continued it's fair to say it's pretty popular.

Also this began the whole Goatee = Evil Trope...

Not only "Star Trek" but many TV shows used the idea of the multiverse, from recent examples such as "Fringe" and "Once Upon A Time" to older ones such as "Sliders". TV shows where the premise wasn't so much about the people but rather world events that went differently than what we know in our reality, "The Man In The High Castle" as an example (which is a Philip K. Dick novel about what would happen if The Nazi defeated The Allies in WW2) or moving characters from one reality into another. There's an entire anime genre based on the multiverse called "Isekai" which features a character being transported from their reality into another (usually a fantasy reality). "Dragonball" recently dipped its toe into the multiverse pool by introducing the Saiyajins from Universe in the forms of Kale, Cabba, and Caulifa and other beings in the form of Jiren. There are also movies prior to the multiverse boom we've had recently which showcased the concept, namely "The One" featuring Jet Li, which much like today featured various versions of Jet Li's characters from different universes and two of my personal favorites "Another Earth" and "Coherence".

This movie owes me royalties and I won't explain why...

And then comes comic books and one of the most famous what-if comic book stories is of course Alan Davis's "JLA: The Nail", a mini-series that features an alternate story of Superman's origins in which Jonathan and Martha Kent aren't the ones to find baby Kal-El because a nail in the road blew out their tire. The title comes from the proverb "For want of a nail" which details missed opportunities that spiral out of one minor inconvenience. DC's brand of multiverse stories was titled Elseworld, stories that featured scenarios that while featuring established DC characters would take place outside of DC canon. While there were many "imaginary stories" during DC's infancy one of the main titles under the Elseworld imprint was "Gotham By Gaslight" a story that featured a Victorian-Era Batman chasing after Jack The Ripper. And while The Elseworld titles were considered fun stories they were largely ignored by mainline DC continuity, that is of course until recently.

During the early days of DC, the company managed to acquire several comic book companies thus adding new characters to their roster to be utilized, one of my favorites being Captain Marvel (now called Shazam) from Fawcett Comics and Blue Beetle from Charlton Comics. But with adding all of these new heroes with established continuities to their roster DC had a problem of having to integrate new properties with established ones and thus "Crisis On Infinite Earths" was born, a 12-part max-series that featured the characters of Fawcett and Charlton comics interacting with DC characters and their stories being recognized as happening but within a separate world from the established DC world and thus by the end of "Crisis On Infinite Earths" Fawcett and Charlton and DC characters now shared one Earth and one continuity and it's been that way from the late 80s to the early 2000s. Sure, DC continued to make Elseworld titles but those were never meant to be anything more than fun "what if" stories...UNTIL "Infinite Crisis" reintroduced the multiverse back into DC continuity and thus stories that featured Terry McGinnis's Batman and Kamandi became mainstream DC canon. However, now these stories were still recognized as "what ifs" but now they were potential worlds in which DC characters could and would interact with. After all one of the most common multiverse characters to appear in DC canon would be The Crime Syndicate, who are basically evil versions of The Justice League led by Ultraman, Superman's evil counterpart.

So with all of this history of the multiverse being an established force in not only comic books but television, why now is the concept suddenly looked upon with such scorn? Well for starters let's answer the question we didn't ask before but should have, what is the multiverse for? The multiverse is a way to recognize how much a character's life would change IF a certain event did or did not take place, to alter a key piece of history in an established character's life to see what would have changed. The multiverse is NOT for creating a multitude of Spider-Men as Marvel is currently doing. Marvel has recently released several versions of Spider-Man, one of the most glaring is Sun-Spider, a gay disabled Spider-Woman who shoots webs out of her crutches...I wish I made that up...the point is we now have an entire Spider-Verse of Spider-Men out there that are only versions of a character we know and love, Peter Parker and is ultimately missing the point of a multiverse.

Also, just a side note but how can you be a superhero and be physically disabled at the same time? I mean when Peter Parker got bit by the spider his strength increased drastically, his vision improved and he was more able-bodied than he had ever been, did the same not happen to her OR is she just pretending to remain physically disabled to throw people off the fact that she's actually able-bodied? Make it make sense! And no I will not be reading the book to find the answers because I honestly doubt there would be any available...

Granted, there's nothing wrong with a multiverse in which each universe has its own "main character" after all Jiren is his universe's answer to Goku, and as previously mentioned Ultraman is his universe's Superman, however in the case of Ultraman both of them are Clark Kent just different versions, in the case of the Spider-Verse all of them are different people who just so happen to have the same powers as Peter Parker....which...no. In "Spider-Man: No Way Home" we got 3 different versions of Peter Parker who were all Peter Parker in their respective universes and became Spider-Man, because they were Peter Parker, but Billy Braddock could've been his own character, and as much as I love Ghost Spider, she could've been her own character as well, none of them had to be Spider-Man variants and making them all Spider-Man variants while giving them their own unique names and backstories is in fact lazy. Why both if you're just going to make them a derivative of an established character. You could have a Peter Parker, Pete Parker, Peety Parker, all of whom are various Spider-Men with various personality traits the only common thread being that they're all Spider-Man, I mean maybe Pete Parker's Uncle Ben didn't die, maybe Peety Parker was raised by his actual parents and not his Aunt and Uncle, see what I mean? I don't know squat about Billy Braddock and how he relates to the Peter Parker story for him to be a version of Spider-Man.

Needless? Yes. Hot? Absolutely!

I've always joked that in another universe I have a dad, maybe I'm married to someone different, maybe I'm single, maybe my name is different because my mom won the name battle (may God have mercy on that variant of me), but ultimately all of those Ugos are still Ugo, not someone else. That's a multiverse. Or to summarize, Pete Parker the Spider-Man whose Uncle Ben is still alive is a multiverse, Billy Braddock is a new character that didn't have to be a different version of Spider-Man. So no, The Multiverse in and of itself isn't lazy, how you use it is lazy. Now there's an argument out there that the multiverse can undo character deaths and to that, I say the answer to that is both a "yes" and a "no". In the case of "Loki" our Loki is in fact dead at the hands of Thanos, this current Loki is NOT our Loki but a variant of our Loki. This is where things get crazy because we're talking about timelines as opposed to a multiverse. A multiverse is an entirely separate universe, and a timeline involves characters altering their own timeline (similar to The Flash). For example, the famous Ray Bradbury story "A Sound Of Thunder" involved time-traveling hunters who would go back in the past to kill already dying dinosaurs, accidentally killing one butterfly ended up altering the entire world, this didn't create a multiverse rather it simply changed the universe as they knew it, it's a bit confusing but a very important distinction to make.

So this Loki is a Loki out of his original timeline, a Loki that branched out of time. I understand the TVA explained that that is in fact how the multiverse came to be, but I doubt very much that every single universe in the multiverse is the result of a time-traveling accident. But I digress. Loki's death isn't undone because Loki is dead, the Loki with all the development and knowledge is dead, this Loki has new knowledge and new wisdom, and new experiences the previous Loki does not, enough for them to be different characters. Anyway, lemme know what you guys think and I'll catch you guys later!