Avengers: Endgame - Every Mystery The Russos Have Answered (So Far)

14. Strange's Alternate Realities

The Question

While it wasn't widely explored as a question hanging over from Endgame and Infinity War, there was definitely a mystery surrounding the nature of Doctor Strange's foray into the 14 million or so alternate outcomes that would see his side victorious over Thanos.

Was he merely looking in on other universes? Or did he experience every single one of them from his own point of view?

The Answer

Rather grimly, it seems that Doctor Strange continued his penchant for dying repeatedly after trapping Dormammu in a timeloop by having to live through and die in every single one of the "simulations" in which Thanos won, as the Russos revealed in a Twitter Q and A:

"Strange has to exert an immense amount of energy to go into this state. He goes in there for who knows how long. He has to physically live and die in them. Right before he dies he has to reset it, and do it again, taking copious notes each time he does it."

That's pretty dark. It still doesn't answer the mouse conundrum though, because unless Strange was somehow able to steal the consciousness of the mouse (and how the hell would he do that?) there is no way he could possibly have found out how Ant-Man ended up freed. And even if he could, there was no way for him to then consciously affect the mouse doing what it did.