The Multiverse Myth

Over the last few years, I’ve heard different people in the entertainment industry say something along the lines of “because of Marvel, people get what a multiverse is.”? This is always in the context of speaking about another brand with multiple worlds, storylines, and lots of characters, and they say it as though Marvel has cut through a Gordian knot for their tangled intellectual property.

Whenever I hear it, I know I’m talking with someone who misunderstands what the Marvel cinematic universe did, how they did it, and how it does or does not apply to other brands. Also, I suspect they don’t see that Marvel’s recent string of wobbly releases is partly because Marvel seems to be forgetting what it did and how it did it.

Multiverse = X

If you look up the definition of multiverse, it’s pretty loose. Even in the context of cosmological science, there’s varying interpretations of what the term encompasses. (Is it all possible universes? Only the observable universes? Does it mean infinite possibility, even extending to the uncredible?) For the purposes of entertainment brands, it’s any intellectual property with lots of characters, lots of storylines, lots of settings, lots of genres, lots of worlds, lots of universes, and/or multiple alternative timelines.

There. I hope that cleared things up.

I could tell you what I think multiverse should mean, but that won’t change the fact that the entertainment industry uses it in all sorts of ways. The problem created by that diversity of meaning and complexity is precisely why some folks in the entertainment industry want Marvel to have solved it for them. Marvel solving the problem means you can just lay out your messy, complex IP, and consumers will understand it. They’ll even like it! They like the Marvel cinematic universe, and therefor they like multiverses, right?

Cinematic Universe ≠ Multiverse

Dissecting the mechanisms of success behind Marvel’s cinematic universe and why recent releases fail to follow through on that strategy is the subject of multiple dissertations and whole books. For this essay, it’s only important to establish one fact: The multiverse ain’t it.

Nope. Marvel found success with its cinematic universe because it followed the tried-and-true strategy of making a good story about a single character, and then building the next great story. Remember, Marvel’s cinematic universe started with Iron Man, not with Guardians of the Galaxy, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, or The Marvels.

Also, it’s important to note that this wasn’t Marvel’s first bite at the apple. There were plenty of Marvel movies before Iron Man started the process of creating the Cinematic Universe.

I’d argue that some of Marvel’s recent stumbles are in part because it’s been relying too much on audiences understanding its interconnected stories. Yes, a teenager sitting down to watch the next Marvel movie or TV show can go back and watch everything, but Iron Man might be a movie that came out before that teenager was born. Easter eggs for the super fans are fine, but if a consumer must grasp the totality of the cinematic universe to have a compelling experience, that’s a mistake.

But that’s just the cinematic universe! The multiverse is a concept within Marvel’s cinematic universe that there are multiple timelines and therefore many alternate universes. Marvel’s Cinematic universe has used this concept only in a few places, with varying degrees of success. Most of Marvel’s multiverse lives in its various comic-book incarnations.

So, if Marvel has trouble storytelling with its multiverse and is struggling to navigate its cinematic universe, why on Earth would Marvel’s multiverse be the silver bullet for a wildly different brand with a different fanbase?

Making Your Multiverse Work

If it’s a new intellectual property, the problem created by the “Marvel solved it” thinking quickly sorts itself out.

“Hey consumer, I’ve got a new IP for you with multiple characters in different storylines on different worlds—and even different timelines—only held together by the thin veneer of being in the same multiverse under a single brand name!”

Sorry, friend. You’ll be lucky if your new brand survives six months. And RIP to your marketing department. Let me know where to send the flowers.

Most brands that have a multiverse have been around for more than a decade. They probably got a multiverse by accident; it was something that accreted onto the brand as successive generations of creators and company leadership came and went. Brands like this can have wildly divergent fanbases for different parts of their IP.

A lot of brands that have multiverses got their start in the sixties or seventies. They’re now about half a century old. The brand might be twice or three times as old as people in its target market—all while still having fans who are a decade or two older than it. Some small fraction of that consumer base (largely its eldest members) are fans of its multiverse. They stuck by the brand through all its shifts and weird additions. But a lot of the long-term fans fell in love with some sliver of the brand. Their entry window was one character or one story, probably set in just one world and one timeline. Through it they might have become a fan of a larger slice of the multiverse pie. But the vast majority of the gnarly history of the brand (fifty years of content!) is completely foreign to them. Your younger consumers—the crucial next generation of fans—might be wholly new to the intellectual property besides basic brand identity and being able to identify a few of its most famous characters.

What happens when you give this diverse group of consumers the whole multiverse?

That’s a mistake, but it will probably take a few years to learn the lesson. Initially, the “Marvel solved it, here’s the multiverse” strategy will seem to be working. You’ll hook a lot of those long-term fans, and they’ll create buzz that gets new consumers curious. But you’ve fundamentally broken the mechanism that sustains the brand for the long term.

People don’t fall in love with multiverses. They fall in love with characters in compelling stories that they can comprehend. They become fans of the multiverse in the way people always have: a compelling experience with one character and one story that expands, and then another compelling story gets told in the same world, and so on.

If you’re not attempting to grab people on that human level—if all you’re selling is the multiverse—you’ll eventually scatter your fanbase to the winds. The multiverse-first strategy gives people a whiff of what they want, but it leaves them hungry. Eventually, they’ll go look for a meal elsewhere.

I mean, I get it. Attempting to continually hook fans with something new seems scary and hard. What’s compelling to a 70-year-old and a 7-year-old are usually very different, so what do you make for your decades-old brand? ?Plus, you’re sitting on decades of content. Why take risks? Why not just throw open the doors to that vast media cabinet and let them consume whatever they like from the nose of your most recent releases to the tip of the long tail? Give them the multiverse, right? Marvel has made it easy, right?

No. But don’t give up on your multiverse!

Most brands that have one have had it for years. And it’s no use trying to get rid of it. Retconning your multiverse away is a decision later creators will inevitably undo, effectively adding another layer of complexity to your multiverse.

The key to continued growth and maintaining the fanbase for a brand with a multiverse is leaning into the characters and their stories and into the distinctions between the brand’s disparate parts. If your brand has different worlds, alternate timelines, or sub-brands for different groups, you must figure out the characters and stories that are the audiences’ windows into them.

Try to make people fans of some thing, not everything.

Then, as you’re doing that, keep the multiverse in mind: If characters are windows, then the multiverse is a building with all those windows.

If you want your multiversal stories to combine into something like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the rooms we see through those windows need to feel like they’re in the same building. The life and stories of your individual characters should be unique and fascinating, but if you zoom out, it should be clear that we’re looking at a building that represents a home, or an office, or a museum—some greater place that has an overarching theme.

That’s the key difference between the DC and Marvel strategy for movies. Marvel had a chief architect trying to keep the whole structure in mind. DC didn’t.

Even something as gnarly and complex as a multiverse can set a tone and have a theme. Star Wars and Star Trek are very different brands. Both have extremely gnarly multiverses: in Star Trek’s case, there are literally alternate universes and timelines; Star Wars has various retcons and storylines that operated independently for years before the recent spate of films and TV shows ditched its Expanded Universe and chucked a bunch of the canon. But fundamentally, Star Trek is about exploration and empathy, whereas Star Wars is about conflict and morality. (It’s in their names!) Star Trek can do war stories. Star Wars can explore new cultures. But when either brand has a story that diverges too far from its core theme, it loses its way.

So, zoom way out to look at your multiverse and try to come to grips with the message it’s sending. Then zoom way back in to the life and story of one character and build the compelling experience from there.

Heads Up, General!

If you’re one of the creators in the trenches, all this advice might not mean much for your work. There are generals at the executive level who are giving the orders. You might have a general whose decisions seem tactical rather than strategic. They’ve seemed focused on quarterly results rather than long-term plans that would benefit the brand or company for a decade. Well, the truth is that most folks in leadership don’t have an incentive to look beyond the next quarter or the next rung in the corporate ladder, which is oftentimes at another company.

If you can, help your general to look not to Marvel’s multiverse as a solution but to Disney as a whole.

Disney bought Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion on 2009 and Lucasfilm for $4 billion in 2012. The company did not make those investments to boost just the next quarter’s profits. Those were huge bets designed to pay off for years to come. Recent data suggests they’ve made Disney about $12 billion, each. I’d critique some of the creative choices of those brands, but there’s no denying that Disney is looking for long-term sustainability with both. And that long-tern view is paying dividends—quite literally.

If your brand already has a multiverse, then you don’t need to invest $4 billion dollars, but you do need to invest thought, time, and yes, money in developing your strategy for long-term health. Those costs are an investment in your future. It’s not a strategy without risk. Yet, Disney didn’t know when their bets would pay off, but do you think Disney regrets taking the chance?

Throwing open the doors to the multiverse without a plan can result in a quarterly boost (or several), but if you focus on the human level of compelling characters in quality stories, it opens the door to greater profits over time.

But What About Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse?

That’s a movie that plunged the audience into a new-to-them multiverse, and its plot hinged on the audience understanding and liking the concept. So, what about that?

Well, you got me there. All I can say is this: If you can make your brand new multiverse concept as compelling as Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, I think you’ll find success.

But What About Fortnite?

I’ve also heard Fortnite held up as an example of the popularity of multiverses. I struggle to express just how wrongheaded that is, but I’ll give it a shot.

Fortnite is a very popular game that was hugely popular before it allowed players to play in skins from their favorite IPs. Yes, there is a narrative that ties together characters from Stranger Things, Bad Boys, Ghostbusters, and the X-Men. And yes, it hinges on the idea of a multiverse. But the whole point of putting all those IPs into the game is that players can express their fandom of outside IPs to other players, not engage with the Fortnite IP. Its multiverse is a fig leaf covering the naked commercial reasons to change its gameplay and introduce already-popular characters from other IPs.

And it only works because Fortnite itself is popular. Put all those IPs into a less successful game with a similar veneer of story, and you might sink it under the burden of those licensing agreements rather than buoy its profits.

Funko used a multiverse story for its Funkoverse game. The concept of a multiverse was so key to its concept that the game’s name smashed the company’s name and multiverse together. I worked on it. It was a good game. The whole point was the giddy fun you could get from having Harry Potter face off against Thanos or the shark from Jaws. Yet even with all of Funko’s marketing muscle behind its multiverse, not enough consumers wanted to play battles between the Batman and Robin and the Golden Girls. There are all kinds of reasons why comparing Fortnite to Funkoverse isn’t apples to apples, but my point is that Funkoverse had a multiverse—one made up of hugely popular characters from all over pop culture—and it did not thrive.

The mere existence of a multiverse in your IP is not a panacea, and it is not a marketing asset. Consumers can comprehend the concept of a multiverse, but it doesn’t mean they want it. Don’t let Fortnite’s or Marvel’s successes make you believe in the mythical popularity of multiverses.

If you liked this, you can see more like it on my website.

?

?

?

?

?