Shuma Gorath WANTS IN on the MCU's Multiverse Saga! (VIDEO SCRIPT)

I’ll be honest with you, Readers. I wasn’t expecting to make another Marvel Theory video when Marvel Studios’ What If dropped on Disney Plus

If anything, I was gonna use this video to explain that this series isn’t the off-shoot anthology show we thought it was gonna be, but actually a connective canonical narrative that tells some important stories from the branching timelines created with the death of He Who Remains that may play a factor later on in the Multiverse Saga.

/And we know this thanks to leaks of promotional material, including Marvel Studios’ ad deal with Hyundai that has some pretty heavy spoilers regarding where the end of the season is gonna go./

So, thinking nothing of it, I watched the first episode of What If? What if Captain Carter Were The First Avenger.

/As a retelling of the first Captain America movie, it was pretty solid. Hearing Hayley Atwell, Sebastian Stan and Dominic Cooper back as Peggy, Bucky and Howard felt right at home, Josh Keaton does a VERY believable Chris Evans voice impersonation, and the action scenes I thought were pretty impressive./

But it was seeing the deviation in Red Skull’s plans in how he was gonna use the Tesseract in THIS multiverse branch other than the main one we saw that had me intrigued.

/Summon Hydra’s champion? What did he mean by that?/

Then by the end of the episode, we see what he means. Because instead of creating weapons in order for Hydra to take over the world, what What If Red Skull does with the Tesseract is open a gateway that allows a monster to come through.

/But not just ANY monster; an interdimensional monster with green tentacles/

And when I saw that happen on screen, I IMMEDIATELY went

/SHUMA?!/

Shuma, as in Shuma Gorath; who I -- and surprisingly a lot of other people -- think is going to be the main villain in Doctor Strange: In The Multiverse of Madness

-

Now if you’ve seen my theory video I posted about the end of WandaVision, then you know why I think Shuma is gonna be a major player in the Multiverse Saga despite Kang being its Big Bad.

Because the movie is directed by Doctor Strange fan Sam Raimi and is named after John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness -- which is named after an HP Lovecraft story In the MOUNTAIN of Madness that hints at a member of the Cthulhu pantheon Yog Sothoth whom the Marvel version of Shuma Gorath shares narrative similarities with...

/I theorized that Shuma is gonna be the big bad of the movie by trying to lure Wanda -- now a fully recognized Nexus being upon accepting the mantle of Scarlet Witch -- to allowing him into the multiverse by dangling physical tangible variants of her children Wiccan and Speed in her face./

And with the season one finale of Loki, this theory not only still holds up, but is better reinforced.

/Because now that Sylvie has assured that the Multiverse is in full swing by killing He Who Remains, those living and breathing variants of Wiccan and Speed now actually exist in a branching timeline somewhere./

Then we have the first episode of What If? which allows us to take a closer look at some of these branching timelines that were created after the death of He Who Remains.

/And thanks to it, we now have more concrete evidence that Shuma Gorath does, in fact, wants in on the Multiverse. And he’s willing to utilize whatever angle he can take in order to do so./

-

So, before you ask: No. What we saw in What If episode 1 was NOT a Shuma Gorath variant.

And that’s because there IS no Shuma Gorath variant; there is only ever ONE Shuma Gorath.

Shuma Gorath operates similarly to how Darkseid and the army of Apocalypse work in DC Comics from The New 52 onward.

As you can imagine if you’ve read any of the New 52 runs of DC Comics back in the early 2010’s, it’s never DIFFERENT versions of Darkseid & co. according to the universe that earth belongs to. It’s always the same Darkseid.

The same Darkseid that invaded Earth in the New 52 issues of Justice League, is the same Darkseid that set the stage for Val Zod’s Superman, Power Girl, Helena Wayne’s Huntress and Alan Scott’s Green Lantern in 2012’s Earth Two comic; same Darkseid, multiple universes.

Shuma Gorath is similar in this regard, because he exists outside of space and time. And that’s mostly due to the fact that he existed long before EITHER of them were either a construct or a unit of measurement.

After all, one of his famous lines is, and I quote...

/“Before all was, I was. Before time was, I waited. I fed on the screaming souls of universes. I drank the spoiled milk of dead stars. I am the emptiness outside all understanding. I am Shuma Gorath.” End-quote/

What he has in common with HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu deity Yog Sothoth however, is that not only is he all-knowing and all-seeing, but he’s also locked out of the very universe -- in this case multiverse -- itself. And that’s thanks to a time-traveling sorcerer from the 31st Century named Sise-Neg, who went back in time to 1 Million BC and banished him out of it.

How this translates to the MCU however -- and especially if you take into consideration his appearance at the end of What If episode 1 -- is pretty easy.

Shuma was banished from the main timeline of the MCU before He Who Remains made it sacred, and was only allowed to observe from the outside. However, once He Who Remains was killed by Sylvie, the timeline began to branch off again and become weak enough for him to possibly find a way back in.

/One of those branches was What If episode 1, where enough about Shuma’s existence before his banishment was chronicled in that timeline’s version of the church wall the Tesseract hid in, stating that only something as powerful as the Space Stone could grant Shuma re-entry into the physical plane./

And because Shuma is all-knowing and all-powerful, he was able to hop on board the moment Red Skull utilized the Tesseract in this new branch of the timeline to open a door OUTSIDE of the known universe...

/As opposed to how it was used to just grant access to places WITHIN said universe during the Infinity Saga./

That’s why I’m convinced that even though What If? is now confirmed to be way more than just a separate anthology series paying homage to the comic book series and actually has both a role in the Multiverse Saga and a season-wide narrative involving the Guardians of the Multiverse, Shuma’s tentacles at the end of episode 1 of the show is actually a LOT more than just an easter egg.

It’s setting up that just like Kang the Conqueror, Shuma Gorath is going to be just as big of a hitter in the Multiverse Saga as he is. Or, at least, TRY to be.

Switch out Sise-Neg with Agamotto being the one that banished Shuma outside the known multiverse in order to better establish him as Doctor Strange’s rogues gallery and to not make things overly complicated with casual moviegoers...

And Shuma Gorath being locked outside of the Multiverse looking in taking advantage of any and all opportunities to come back inside not only makes sense, but is absolutely 100% in character.

Then, if you take into consideration a Nexus being like Scarlet Witch coming into power with her Chaos magic in the main timeline, and then a Loki variant capable of causing Nexus EVENTS ending the life of a Kang variant and allowing the main universe to fracture and branch out into separate timelines...

Shuma is pretty much living out his White Girl Summer fantasies when he sees how weakened the fabric of reality has been thanks to the two Disney Plus shows by singing that one lyric from Natasha Beddingfield’s “Unwritten.” So close, you can almost taste it.

-

Thanks to Marvel Studios’ What If? happening IMMEDIATELY after the season 1 finale of Loki in order to better paint a picture of how quickly they grow, Red Skull’s use of the Tesseract in the weaker branch of the Sacred Timeline that is the Captain Carter one is simply one of multiple ways he’s going to try and make his way back inside reality and make his way into the previously deemed Sacred Timeline.

I say one of multiple, because I’m absolutely sure this is going to lead to him finding out ANOTHER way of entering reality in the form of sensing a Nexus being named Wanda Maximoff capable of casting powerful Chaos Magic -- which he is a deity of -- and using Billy and Tommy -- real and physical versions of them from another timeline branch now that He Who Remains is no longer keeping them pruned...

/As a way to lure and trick her into letting him in. Leading to the events of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness/

*huffs* Now watch me be absolutely wrong about ALL of this shit. Because Marvel Studios does NOT want me to feel good about how they use characters that I actually like!

But, I digress, Readers. Your homework assignment for the day:

Write in the comment section below what you thought of the first episode of Marvel Studios’ What If? if you’ve seen it.

Or, if you feel like sharing with the rest of the class, how YOU think Marvel Studios might properly introduce Shuma Gorath into the MCU if you think that what they did in What If? may be too much of a red herring for your tastes.

Whichever question you decide to answer, I’d love to know your thoughts.