![[Marvel Multiverse.mov]] Saw this TikTok on May 2, 2024 and really enjoyed the explanation. Thinking I could use this as a baseline for my own multiverse story. I like it better than the whole timeline thing, where the focus is on specific actions. Instead, it focuses more on the condensing of archetypes. I plan on getting the transcript on here soon. (2024.5.2) Update: I transcribed half of the video. Ugh. (2024.5.3) ## Transcription ### Housekeeping notes The following transcript is unchanged. The format will be tweaked but the words themselves will remain intact. (5/2/2024) Update: only about half of the video would be transcribed. And a fourth of the video doesn't have audio when I bring it into Resolve. Which is weird because I looked back at the copy I downloaded and the copy I put up on this page and the audio is all there. I'll have to sit down and transcribe this myself. Although I just thought of subtitles for the video. Maybe it'll work then... (5/3/2024) ### Sir_Superhero's intro and front matter How does the multiverse of Marvel Comics work? Where did it come from? How is it structured? Does the MCU handle it the same way? The answers to these questions are complicated, complicated, and no. And I'm here to give you all the details on those answers. There are two ways I can present the topic of the Marvel Multiverse to you. The comforting way and the, um, real way. The real way is more interesting, but the comforting way is faster, so we'll do that first. Ultimately, if you're a newer Marvel fan, or just anyone who hasn't gotten into the cosmic lore of Marvel very much, it is totally okay to just accept the nature of the multiverse at face value. Doing that will not hurt your enjoyment of the comics at all. There are different universes out there, they have variations between them, that's really all you need to know. There is a lot of complicated explanation behind it that I'm about to go into detail on, but if you don't want to worry about that and just want to read Spider-Man books or whatever, go ahead, have fun. The complexity is not for everyone, it's not required reading to enjoy Marvel in any sense. Enjoy the books how you want, we're not gonna gate keep that way. But for the lore masters who are still here, let's get going, because we have a lot of ground to cover. Starting off, the current Marvel Multiverse is actually not the first one. Marvel's multiverse exists in this cycle of destruction and rebirth, kind of similar to The Doctor from Doctor Who, actually, and current comics exist in the eighth iteration of reality. We're gonna tell the story of how we got to the eighth by backtracking all the way to the beginning with the first cosmos. This was actually before a multiverse existed at all. ### First cosmos The first cosmos was a singular reality. The first cosmos wasn't really created, it was kind of just the start point of everything, and as such was a blank, unchanging, empty reality. The only being in this entire existence was one entity named the First Firmament, which was kind of like a cosmic embodiment of reality itself. Being the only thing in existence, the First Firmament eventually got lonely and decided to create some beings to populate its existence. These beings were divided into two categories, the aspirants and the celestials. Yes, those celestials. The aspirants were pretty happy with their very stable, unchanging nature of reality, but the celestials were not and wanted things to grow and shift and evolve. This led to a cosmic war between the two groups that the celestials eventually won by shattering the first cosmos into infinite pieces. ### Second cosmos This fractured reality became the second cosmos and the first multiverse, since each little piece was a universe unto itself, which means that the Marvel multiverse was created because the celestials were bored and broke everything. The celestials then colonized all the new reality they had created and found many new things, including a new embodiment of existence. Remember how I said the first cosmos had the First Firmament, which was like a cosmic manifestation of everything? Each iteration, each regeneration of reality has a new being embodying it, and for the second cosmos, that embodiment is kind of important. The second cosmos didn't last very long, I mean, not very long by cosmic standards, so still millions of years, but it eventually met its end because its embodiment became fascinated with a newly invented concept at the time, death. In the first cosmos, everything was so stable and unchanging that things never stopped existing, they were just around forever, and the second cosmos wanted to try out what non-existence felt like, so it willingly allowed itself to die. ### Third cosmos Its death kickstarted the creation of the third cosmos, the celestials moved on from the second to the third as they do, but they left some agents behind, cosmic entities that remained outside reality in the wreckage of the second cosmos. Those beings would become known as the Beyonders. Yeah, that's where the Beyonders are from, the second cosmos. Not too much happened in the third cosmos, but there is one notable aspect that we definitely need to cover, which is the conflict between these two beings. The gold entity is known as Lifebringer I, and the black entity is known as the Anti-All. They are embodiments of pure existence and nothingness respectfully, and naturally that means that they fought each other. Lifebringer I eventually came out on top, of course, but this was the first example in Marvel's reality of a hero versus villain conflict, a pattern that would become much more developed over future iterations. ### Fourth cosmos The fourth cosmos took the blueprint presented in the third and expanded upon it. Rather than two beings locked in eternal conflict, the fourth cosmos was filled with a lot of beings, all centered around a certain archetype, but still fighting each other in ceaseless combat. This is where some of you might start to notice a very cool pattern in Marvel's cosmos, being that they are refining themselves down to the stories that we know. We start with nothing, then we get things, then we get the concept of conflict, now we're getting characters in conflict, and as we continue down the chain, it will start to resemble comics more and more. ### Fifth cosmos The fifth cosmos continued this pattern by introducing the first rules and world building, in a sense. This is the reality where magic first appeared. For example, this guy is one of the first sorcerers. His name is Moradune (spelled phonetically). ### Sixth cosmos Cosmos number 6 took those flexible, subjective rules of magic and condensed some of them down into more strict science. Now, we don't have an exact explanation of what that means. But in my opinion, I feel like this is probably the reality where the rules of a lot of physics got "locked down," so-to-speak. ### Quick detour At this point we have to take a quick detour and talk about some residents of this universe. This is the Black Winter. He's actually a survivor from the fifth cosmos. And he is basically what Galactus is for planets but for entire universes. You know how Galactus flies around eating planets? Yeah! He eats whole universes. The Black Winter was first spotted by residents of an incredibly advanced planet called Ta. Ta technology was so good that it could peer out into the multiverse and see the Black Winter barreling for their reality. So they started to try to come up with some counter-measures. These counter-measures did not work. But did result in one survivor. A man named Gallun (phonetically spelled) going so far out into the universe that he actually met with the sixth embodiment of reality and was there with it in its dying moment. This resulted in Gallun being transferred over to the seventh cosmos and resurrected in a new form so that Gallun of Ta became Galactus. So yeah, this video is also going to function as the origin of Galactus. He was the last surviving being in cosmos number 6. So he got transferred into cosmos number 7. ### Seventh cosmos Now this is going to contradict something that I said earlier in the video, but bear with me here. But, cosmos number 7 is Marvel. Or at least most of it. The majority of Marvel comics that exist are in cosmos number 7. And yeah, this does mean that the Celestials in Marvel comics are the same group of entities from the first one just passing from cosmos to cosmos as they get destroyed and reborn. They are quite literally unfathomably old beings. But remember I said that current Marvel comics were happening in cycle number 8. Not cycle number 7. How did we make that transition from 7 to 8? That was because of multiversal incursions. This is where things start to tie back into each other. Remember how several clips ago I said that the Beyonders existed outside of the multiverse ever since cosmos number 2? Well they were watching the multiverse from outside of it and identified a threat so big that they had to take decisive action. This threat was a god-like being named Enigma. He's connected to Mr. Sinister of all characters. But I don't have time to get into his origin right now. The point is that he was so powerful he could destroy the multiverse as a whole. And possibly prevent a new one from being created. To prevent this from happening, the Beyonders engineered the creation of what was essentially a multiversal nuke in the form of a guy named the Molecule Man. He existed in every reality and his powers worked so strangely and on such a high level that if things went a certain way, he would just blast reality in every universe at once and kickstart the creation of an 8th cosmos before Enigma got strong enough to delete the entire process. This process began a lot of multiversal incursions. ### multiversal incursions But before the process could finish, Dr. Doom, absolute insane genius that he is, figured out a way to hijack the multiverse bomb, and recode it so rather than destroying reality it would condense the entire multiverse into one reality that he was a god in. This is the plot of the 2015 comic Secret Wars. And also possibly an inspiration for the upcoming Avengers movie. Secret Wars takes place in what is basically cosmos 7.5. It's all in this condensed reality. But then Doom gets deposed, and reality gets "fixed." ### Eighth cosmos Fixed in quotes because this is the creation of the 8th cosmos. When Battle World is expanded out into the multiverse, thanks to the help of Franklin Richards, largely. It's not expanded in the exact same way. It's very similar and still cary much of the storylines from 7 still carry over. But it's different enough that cosmically it is considered a new iteration of reality. And this, finally, is the nature of the current Marvel Multiverse. The MCU presents it very differently as a more timeline branching thing in which changes can spawn entirely new universes. That's not really what the comics do. The comics just say that universes are out there and sometimes they're different. Which I personally think is a better idea. I think trying to over-explain it with timeline non-sense just makes it not feel as right. The 8th cosmos will probably stick around for a very long time. But will there be a 9th eventually? Yeah! And some comics have shown us possible futures for the 9th cosmos. Including one where Hulk gets strong enough to punch through reality itself. Let's hope we don't get that outcome in number 9.