Week 7 Seminar: The Multiverse Solution

If two facts cannot both be true, put them in different universes. The repair that fixes everything, and what that costs.

21 April 2027

The technique

The multiverse solution declares a second universe, so that a contradiction stops being a contradiction and becomes two Earths. It can absorb any failure. That is the problem with it.

The case: three Spider-Men

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) brings back Tobey Maguire’s and Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Men, from five films made outside the MCU between 2002 and 2014, as visitors from other universes. Films that could never be reconciled with the MCU are reconciled in one move: they happened, somewhere else. Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) does the same for the Fox X-Men films. The Arrowverse ran on this solution for years before Crisis collapsed it.

In the seminar

We run the Retcon Proposal’s cost test on the multiverse. Once any contradiction can be moved to another Earth, what stops meaning anything? Deaths usually go first. Bring the one you think goes next.

Learning outcomes

This seminar works towards:

  1. Design a repair (retcon, reboot, multiverse or recast) and argue what it costs.

What to bring

Have these done before the seminar starts.

Teaching team