Doctor Strange 2 Theory: Nightmare's Secret Plan Revealed?

1. WandaVision Is A Dream

What we know of the Disney+ show suggests we’re in for a ride no MCU fan has quite experienced before. So what’s so different?

Well, for a start, the show will blend traditional MCU storytelling with a 1950s sitcom vibe. The only image we have so far paints a picture of a sort of Stepford Wives’ ideal world - similar to the dream life Harley Quinn dreamy for herself and the Joker in Suicide Squad.

That’s a pretty pertinent parallel to make too, because in both cases, those worlds are projections of an unattainable ideal. A dream world.

Fundamentally, WandaVision is going to take a lead from the comics and we’re going to see inside Scarlet Witch’s head to a world created out of emotional self-preservation that just doesn’t exist. Famously, the comics version of the character changed reality to get rid of mutants when she perceived a threat to her and her family’s well-being. She projected her existing instability into a safe, comforting world.

So, what if that’s what she’s doing again here? What if the 1950s world in which Vision is mostly human, she is his housewife and they live in a sitcom idyll is her mind using her powers to create a world she fails less destroyed in? Her literal escape.

Wanda should be at breaking point and as the comics have already shown us, when she breaks, reality breaks with her. If she allows Nightmare to feed into her deepest desires - of happiness and normalcy with Vision - who knows what sort of cost that will come with to the rest of the multiverse.

There are two possibilities here, depending on when WandaVision happens: if it is released before Doctor Strange 2, these dreams will be what Nightmare uses to try and turn Wanda to his side. The honey he pours in her ears - "remember how happy you were there with him..."

Or, if WandaVision comes after, it's because Nightmare has successfully used her and her dream world with Vision is his "gift" to her, a prison of everything she wants that she will have to escape through realising that it's not real during the Disney+ show's run. It's probably more likely that it comes before - or at least it would be BETTER that way - but it doesn't change the fact that the entire show is probably no more than a dream.

Instead of her creating children for herself as she did in the comics, what if Wanda creates her idea of a perfect life and a perfect marriage with Vision? What if Strange does what the Avengers did with her when they found out about the children being illusions, seeking to "fix" her and unwittingly causing the "ground zero" reality changing event that opens the multiverse irreparably and brings mutants, vampires and everything else into the MCU timeline? Instead of an apocalyptic event as in Avengers Disassembled, we could have a means for new life, even if it came at a cost.

The key part of this theory is that Nightmare could unwittingly turn Wanda into a weapon of unimaginable power even beyond his reckoning. We’ve seen flashes of that power and the confirmation that she can harness power equal to an Infinity Stone and if she’s encouraged to lose herself, she may lose control. That would fit with how many times we’ve been primed so far to consider her loss of control a very real threat to the MCU.

And if she breaks reality, she could end up being the key to creating rifts between different realities - different branches of the multiverse that we already know exist thanks to Captain America’s trips through time and space. And what if that’s how we end up with vampires, mutants, Galactus and the Fantastic Four all suddenly thrown into the existing timeline?

What if instead of "No More Mutants", Wanda’s break with reality leads to their arrival? Wouldn’t that be a hell of a way for Marvel to subvert an already iconic comics storyline in a way that actually serves the franchise’s future expansion?

In The Multiverse Of Madness could show Wanda the reality that she desires, while Nightmare tries to use her to destroy Doctor Strange and while she will no doubt be turned back against Nightmare to thwart him, it wouldn't be before she's altered reality for him and that would allow her to then escape into the illusion world she created where she and Vision could live together.

Ultimately, either way that would suggest that WandaVision will go from being a sitcom to a tragedy when Wanda realises it is not real and has to choose to leave the dream behind, but all of a sudden that makes that story sound an awful lot more appealing, doesn't it?

What do you think of this theory? Share your reactions below in the comments thread.