A new trailer for July's Spider-Man: Far From Home dropped this morning. Don't read any further if you haven't seen Avengers: Endgame yet. The trailer contains huge spoilers about where the latest Avengers movie leaves several major MCU characters. It even kicks off with a warning from Spider-Man actor Tom Holland to avoid watching this trailer until after you've seen Avengers: Endgame.
The trailer shows us what Peter Parker is up to since the end of Endgame. He's fighting crime and mourning the loss of his mentor, but excited to be going on a European vacation with his classmates. As usual, Spidey can't catch a break and Nick Fury shows up to recruit him for a mission. Peter is introduced to Quentin Beck (Jake Gyllenhaal), who Fury says is from another Earth. He goes on to explain that "the snap" tore a hole in our dimension. We also see Peter excitedly ask, "You're saying there's a multiverse?!"
This isn't the first time the multiverse has been mentioned in a Marvel movie (the Ancient One references the multiverse in Doctor Strange), but it seems like the concept might be moving to the forefront if it's being included in trailers and discussed by relatively street-level characters rather than sorcerers and their students. The idea is that there are many Earths like ours (mostly) existing in parallel universes. The alternate Earths have numbers in the comics. The main Marvel Comics timeline is Earth-616, for example. In comic books, characters sometimes cross over from one Earth to another, meaning characters might team up with (or fight) an alternate version of themselves, jump into a reality where they're supposed to be dead, or get a chance to see how differently events might have played out if one factor had been changed.
Here's a quick list of possibilities this could open up:
Characters killed off in previous MCU movies could come back as parallel Earth versions of themselves.
Marvel could bring in the Squadron Supreme, Earth-712's barely disguised analogs for Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman and the rest of DC's Justice League characters.
Filmmakers could use this as a device to make movies or Disney+ streaming shows in wildly different genres than we're used to seeing in MCU projects up to this point. Comic book stories have included a horror-themed Earth struggling with a super-powered zombie apocalypse, a world populated with funny animal versions of the Marvel heroes (Spider-Ham, Captain Americat, Iron Mouse)...plus, you've got the Marvel Noir Earth, the Mangaverse Earth, the Avengers Next Earth, the House of M Earth, a world that re-imagines the Marvel characters in the year 1602, all kinds of crazy stuff.
Speaking of the Disney+ streaming service, we already have confirmation that Marvel Studios will be playing with alternate Earths for at least one of their shows there. There are plans for an animated version of Marvel's "What If" comic book series. "What If" tells stories of alternate versions of Marvel history...What If Peter Parker Became The Punisher, What If Wolverine Was The Lord Of The Vampires, What If The Avengers Had Never Come Together, etc.
Not to mention, this could be used to bring in characters that only recently became available to the Disney-owned Marvel Studios. Disney purchased Twentieth Century Fox, the studio that has held the movie rights to the X-Men and the Fantastic Four for decades. It's unlikely, but they could use the multiverse concept to bring in the existing Fox versions of Deadpool, Wolverine, Cable, etc. Or they could use the same idea to bring in their own versions of these characters and explain where they've been all this time.
This has all been a really long way of saying that a few seconds of dialogue in the trailer below could have huge implications for the future of these Marvel movies.