What if things could go differently? How the multiverse got into our heads and didn’t let go
“Let’s do it differently this time.”
Those are the first words you will hear at the beginning of this month “Spider-Man: About the Spider-Verse,” An alien meditation about multiple realities and how our lives could unfold. The message is clear from the start: we have choices. Things can be malleable. You are you, sure. But wait – maybe you are you and you and you too.
The world is a stressful, sometimes lonely place – and more so at a time when “It shouldn’t have been” has become a not uncommon mantra. But what if things could turn out differently? What if they had that somewhere? Enter the realm of the multiverse and alternate realities, one of the most glorified canvases in recent years of popular culture – and a repository for the pain and longing of life in an age of uncertainty.
Alternate universes are everywhere these days, like the long-delayed opening weekend of “The Flash” testifies with its regrettable, history-altering storyline (and its multiple variations of Batman). There is a deep hunger, it seems, to explore possibilities – to see what might have been if only one thing had turned out differently.
“Before, the cultural assumption was that the world we live in is the way it is, and that’s the only way it could be,” says Douglas Cloudwho read 27,000 Marvel comic books from the past decades for his book ‘All of the Marvels’.
“What’s happened in the culture,” says Wolk, “is people are saying, ‘Well, no. This consensus reality is not how things should be.’”
THE MULTIVERSE HAS A RICH HISTORY — OR HISTORY
The idea of exploring life’s twists and turns through alternate timelines has been around for a while, albeit in different guises.
“It’s a Great Life,” the quintessential 1946 Christmas movie, sent the affable George Bailey into a timeline where he was never born to reveal his true impact. “You’ve been given a wonderful gift, George – a chance to see what the world would be like without you,” his future guardian angel, Clarence, told him.
In the decades since, that idea has accelerated — a proliferation of stories that consider events as both fictional and real, extrapolating different choices.
What if the South had won the Civil War (“CSA: The Confederate States of America”)? What if Germany and Japan had won World War II ( “The Man in the High Castle” )? What if John F. Kennedy hadn’t been assassinated ( “11-22-63” )? What if the Soviets had knocked the Americans to the moon (“For All Mankind”)? What if 9/11 had turned out very differently (“The Mirage”)?
However, fictional worlds are more malleable and can yield more content. That’s why imaginary characters—particularly lovers with established stories—are played in books, TV shows, and movies that take them from one life to another. It’s a concept that cuts across genres, from rom-com (1998’s “Sliding Doors,” in which missing a train splits a young woman’s life into divergent paths) to near-musical (2019’s “Yesterday,” where a budding musician tumbles into a universe where the Beatles never existed).
You have the reality where Spider-Man never married Mary Jane Watson (Marvel Comics’ “Brand New Day”); the universe where a variant of Doctor Strange has gone berserk ( “Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness” ); the universe where a Ben Affleck Batman never existed, but the Michael KeatonBatman lingered and grew old ( “The flash,” which we won’t reveal since this was in the trailers).
And you have the “mirror universe” of “Star Trek,” whose dark and aggressive Terran Empire reveals the baser instincts of beloved characters. Not to mention the recent spate of “Trek” movies, which are unfolding in yet another realityshattered when an aging Spock went back in time.
“It’s a way to explore a problem that never actually appeared in the main story,” sums up 13-year-old Nic Lemire, a California teenager who occasionally podcast dubbed “Marvel Mondays” with his mother, former Associated Press film critic Christy Lemire.
A crowning example of multiverse success: last year’s “everything everywhere at once”, what all the different lives showed that Michelle Yeoh’s protagonist could have lived – to the point that her family remains a family throughout the multiverse. It won seven Academy Awardsincluding best photo.
Whatever the subject, these works are united by one theme: there are always possibilities, for better and for worse, and exploring them is entertaining, enlightening and escapist. That’s no small thing a post-COVID world facing the ravages of extreme climate events, persistent racism, the rancor of political polarization and the emergence of artificial intelligence – a planet where spasmodic change can seem like the only constant.
“Fictions have implicitly done what alternate universes seem to be doing more of lately: let us explore a reality that isn’t real, for the purpose of learning more about the real world,” says Hannah Kiman assistant professor of philosophy at Macalester College who has researched why the multiverse resonates.
“We’re bombarded with things that seem random,” she says. “The number of difficult developments in recent years – the pandemic, political turmoil, climate change impacts, etc. – leave the anxious person with a nagging feeling that all this could have been different.”
IT IS ALSO A LUCRATIVE BUSINESS REMOVAL
Exploring the “what if” question remains lucrative – to the point where there’s an entire Marvel show exploring alternate realities called “What If…?” And while multiple universes are starting to thin out as a plot device, the trope isn’t going away any time soon in our single world, where reality is constantly questioned.
After all, if you can remix popular characters across multiple properties while retaining the potential for a reset in a prime universe, what’s there to lose? Well, there’s one thing: if everything is reversible, unlike real life as we know it, how high can the stakes be?
“It lets you narratively have your cake and eat it too — you can kill off the character, have an emotional death scene, and then bring the character back from another universe,” says Matt Ruff, whose 9/11 novel, “The Mirage,” depicts an alternate universe that flips aggressors, victims, and prejudices. In reality, it was Christian extremists who attacked the Twin Towers of the “United Arab States” in Baghdad.
“If everything is possible, the choices are less interesting. The consequences don’t really matter,” says Ruff. “Part of participating in the real world is dealing with the fact that there is no magic solution.”
That may be exactly why the idea resonates. People have always wanted to try on different outfits, different outcomes, maybe even different lives. That’s what stories are about. Could we be hurtling towards a narrative era – the compelling equivalent of choose-your-own-adventure stories – where all the possibilities are on the table?
Technology has enabled people to get almost anything—customized, to boot—from the world’s bounty within 48 hours. In the network television days of the 1980s, who would have guessed that streaming would bring thousands of television shows and movies to our eyes at the touch of a button? So why not thousands of stories with thousands of possible endings for characters and storylines? What does that do to our relationship with our stories?
“You’re looking at a piece of a larger cultural picture that provides a constant barrage of cultural images that reinforce this idea that we can be better versions of ourselves,” says David Newman, a sociologist at Colgate University who has written a book about second chances. “People want to believe that when we have a problem, the problem can be solved.”
There’s one offshoot of Marvel Comics, something called “Marvel 1602,” which describes a universe where Earth’s mightiest superheroes existed in the early 1700s. In it, Reed Richards, the leader of the fantastic four, represents something.
“I suppose we’re in a universe that favors stories,” he says. “A universe where no story can ever truly end; in which there can only be continuity.”
However it turns out, that’s a universe full of possibilities. And judging by the past two decades in people’s popular culture, it’s also a good thing to keep asking: What if?
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Ted Anthony, director of new storytelling and newsroom innovation for The Associated Press, has been writing about American culture since 1990. Follow him on Twitter http://twitter.com/anthonyted
