Whether by accident or design, Michael Waldron has become the gatekeeper of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s latest storytelling device after serving as the lead writer on Loki, before penning the screenplay for Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
As the man with the keys to the mind-melting kingdom, the scribe’s knowledge and input will continue to become increasingly valuable as Phase Four progresses, even if he isn’t heading up the writers’ room for the next set of episodic adventures featuring Tom Hiddleston’s trickster.
The next overtly multiversal project to emanate from the MCU will presumably be Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which we’re basing entirely on the involvement of Jonathan Majors’ Kang the Conqueror. Waldron isn’t involved in that project, though, but he did discuss his love of a fractured timeline in an interview with Discussing Film.
“Well, I had come off Rick and Morty, that’s what I was doing right before Loki and that was a multiverse show. Maybe doing the multiverse before it was even the “hip thing”… I just think it’s a cool way to force self-reflection out of characters that might resist that sort of thing on their own, you know? Characters like Loki or Stephen Strange, they’re not typically the type of folks that want to look inward, they got too much stuff going on around them to spend time thinking about who they are.
But when they’re suddenly confronted with alternate universe versions of themselves – who might be a better version, might be a worse version – it makes them really reckon with who they are, and why they are the way they are. It’s just a cool bit of science fiction. So, it’s been fun! I don’t know, I’ve been working on multiverse stuff for a long time now, maybe I should chill out with it?”
Based on his recent credits putting him three-for-three when it comes to the multiverse, questions will naturally be asked if Waldron is planning to head down the same route when he writes Kevin Feige’s Star Wars movie. It’s unlikely, but Loki and Doctor Strange 2 have warned us to expect the unexpected.