What if things could turn out differently? How the multiverse got into our heads and never let go

“Let’s do things differently this time.”

Those are the first words you’ll hear at the beginning of this month “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” a otherworldly meditation about diverse realities and how our lives could develop. The message is clear from the start: we have a choice. Things could be malleable. You are you for sure. But wait – you could also be you and you and you.

the world is stressful sometimes lonely place – and all the more so at a time when “It shouldn’t have been this way” has become a not uncommon mantra. But what if things could turn out differently? What if they did it somewhere? Enter the realm of the multiverse and alternate realities, one of the most glorified paintings in popular culture in recent years – and a repository of the pain and longing of living in a time of uncertainty.

Alternate universes are everywhere these days, such as Long-delayed The Flash opening weekend bears witness to this with its regret-tinged, history-changing storyline (and its numerous variations on Batman). There seems to be a great hunger to explore possibilities – to see what could have been if just one thing had turned out differently.

“There used to be a cultural assumption that the world we live in is the way it is and that it can only be that way,” he says Douglas Wolkwho read 27,000 Marvel Comics from all decades for his book “All of the Marvels”.

“What’s happened in the culture,” Wolk says, “is people are like, ‘Well, no. This consensus reality is not how things need to be.’”

THE MULTIVERSE HAS A RICH HISTORY – OR STORIES

The idea of ​​exploring life’s twists and turns through alternate timelines has been around for a while, albeit in different forms.

“It’s a beautiful life,” The quintessential 1946 Christmas movie had the affable George Bailey plunged into a timeline he was never born in to reveal his true impact. “You’ve been given a great gift, George – a chance to see what the world would be like without you,” his would-be guardian angel, Clarence, tells him.

In the decades that followed, this notion accelerated – a proliferation of stories that consider both fictional and real events and derive different choices.

What if the South had won the Civil War (“CSA: The Confederate States of America”)? What if Germany and Japan had won World War II ( “The Man in the High Castle” )? What if John F. Kennedy had not been assassinated ( “11/22/63” )? What if the Soviets beat the Americans to the moon (“For All Mankind”)? What if 9/11 had been very different (“The Mirage”)?

However, fictional worlds are more malleable and can yield more content. This is why books, TV shows, and movies play with imaginary characters—especially loved ones with established stories—that transport them from one life to another. It’s a genre-bending concept, ranging from romantic comedy (1998’s Sliding Doors, in which missing a train splits a young woman’s life in different directions) to almost musical comedy (2019). “Yesterday,” in which a budding musician falls into a universe where the Beatles never existed).

You have the reality where Spider-Man never married Mary Jane Watson (Marvel Comics’ “Brand New Day”); the universe where a variant of Doctor Strange went insane ( “Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness” ); the universe where a Ben Affleck Batman never existed, but the Michael Keaton Batman stayed here and grew old ( “The Lightning,” which we don’t want to reveal since it was in the trailers).

And you have the “mirror universe” of “Star Trek”, whose dark and aggressive Terran Empire reveals the baser instincts of beloved characters. Not to mention the recent spate of Trek movies taking place in yet another realityshattered when an aging Spock traveled back in time.

“It’s a way of exploring a problem that never really came up in the main story,” summarizes Nic Lemire, 13, a California teenager who occasionally hosts a show podcast called “Marvel Mondays” with his mother, former Associated Press film critic Christy Lemire.

A crowning example of Multiverse success: last year’s “Everything everywhere at once” That showed all the different lives that Michelle Yeoh’s main character could have lived – the point is that her family remains family throughout the multiverse. It won seven Academy Awardsincluding the best picture.

Whatever the subject, these works are united by one theme: there are always opportunities, for better or worse, and exploring them is entertaining, insightful, and escapist. This is no small thing a post-COVID world in view of the devastating consequences of extreme climate events, persistent racism, the resentment of political polarization and the Rise of artificial intelligence – a planet where frantic change can be the only constant.

“Fictions have implicitly done what alternate universes seem to be doing lately: they have allowed us to explore a reality that isn’t real in order to learn about the actual world,” he says Hannah Kiman assistant professor of philosophy at Macalester College who has researched why the multiverse resonates.

“We’re bombarded with things that seem random and random,” she says. “The many difficult developments of recent years – the pandemic, political unrest, the impact of climate change, etc. – leave an anxious individual with a nagging feeling that things could have been different.”

It’s also a lucrative business move

Exploring the question “what if?” continues to be lucrative — to the point where there’s an entire Marvel show called “What If…?” exploring alternate realities. And while multiple universes seem to be beginning to blast each other as a plot device, this trope isn’t going away anytime soon in our only world, where reality is constantly questioned.

After all, what’s there to lose by being able to reshuffle popular characters across multiple traits while still retaining the potential for a “Primary Universe” reset? Well, there’s one thing: if, unlike real life as we know it, everything is reversible, then how much can really be at stake?

“Narratively, it allows you to have your cake and eat it too — you can kill the character, have an emotional death scene, and then bring the character back from another universe,” he says Matt Ruff, whose 9/11 novel The Mirage posits an alternate universe that turns attackers, victims, and prejudice on its head. In reality, it was Christian extremists who attacked the twin towers of the “United Arab States” in Baghdad.

“When everything is possible, the decisions are less interesting. The consequences don’t matter that much,” says Ruff. “Part of coming to terms with the real world is coming to terms with the fact that there is no magic fix.”

But maybe that’s exactly why the idea is so popular. People have always wanted to try on different outfits, different outcomes, maybe even different lives. That’s what stories are about. Could we be heading towards a narrative age – that? immersive equivalent of adventure stories where you can choose your own adventure – where all the possibilities are on the table?

Technology has made it possible for people to get almost anything from the global supply within 48 hours, customized. In the days of network television in the 1980s, who would have imagined that streaming would bring thousands of TV shows and movies to our eyes at the touch of a button? So why not thousands of stories with thousands of possible endings for characters and storylines? What does that do to our relationship to our stories?

“You’re looking at part of a larger cultural picture that provides a constant flood of cultural images that reinforce the idea that we can be a better version of ourselves,” says David Newman, a sociologist at Colgate University who wrote A book about second chances. “People want to believe that if we have a problem, it can be solved.”

There is an offshoot of Marvel Comics called “Marvel 1602” that tells a universe where the most powerful superheroes on earth existed at the beginning of the 17th century. In it is Reed Richards, the leader of the fantastic Four, suggests something.

“I assume we’re in a universe that favors stories,” he says. “A universe where no story can ever truly end; in which there can only be persistence.”

Whatever the outcome, this is a universe of possibilities. And considering the past two decades in people’s popular culture, it’s also good business to keep asking: What if?

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Ted Anthony, director of new storytelling and newsroom innovation at The Associated Press, has been writing about American culture since 1990. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/anthonyted