Avengers: Endgame will give us the pay-off to the cliff hanger that Doctor Strange left us on right before he got literally dusted. He did many crucial things to ensure that the Avengers were on the winning timeline, but apparently, we saw only two of them. Tony’s survival and Thanos getting the time stone were crucial to the plot of the next film, but there were some other aspects that we may have totally missed.
Reddit user dat__dan713 proposed that Doctor Strange created multiple Time Loops on Titan while he was busy searching for a future alternative where the Avengers actually won. Now the Time Loop was pretty evident and crucial in the first Doctor Strange movie as that is how the Wizard was able to beat the ruler of the Dark Dimension, Dormammu. So a massive power like that can be used more than once in the MCU, and apparently, it was.
The Reddit user proposed his theory that dived into the relevance of multiple time loops, where he took into consideration the whole Thanos pulling a moon onto Titan. His theory said:
“The moon of a planet has a great effect on a planets gravitational pull, as seen on earth for example with the moons effect on tidal patterns. What we know about titan is limited to Thanos’ description. From what we can gather you could make the assumption that Titan had some form of nuclear weapons, and most likely entered nuclear warfare fighting over resources. However it would take an unfathomably large amount of force to effect a planets tilt which weaponry like that could not do. Now a moon crashing into a planet however, that might do the trick. Ok. So what I’m getting at is that Dr Strange began his spell before star lord started measuring, and as he was doing so Strange creates a time loop of sorts that has clearly already taken effect, where the repercussions of the moons impact are already seen before it actually happens.”
Now, this theory could have some precedence in Avengers: Endgame and the evidence for that comes from an old Doctor Strange interview by The Hollywood Reporter, conducted with screenwriter Jon Spaihts. The writer revealed the fact that Marvel President was behind the whole “I’ve come to bargain” sequence. He said:
“It’s one of the sequences I’m most proud of and there was a version not very different from what you see in the first draft. I was able to come back at the end of the project and do some more work to help bring the movie home and refine that still further. But I think the seed of the idea actually came from Kevin Feige in the room. We were trying to figure out how that final battle could go, and Kevin was focused on his long play with the Eye of Agamotto and the role it’s going to play in his grand design in the cinematic universe — very focused on Strange’s manipulation of time. It was Kevin Feige in the room who said, ‘Could he trap him in time?’ And that led me to write the sequence that you see.”
If you read the writer’s statement carefully, you’d notice a line which says that the Time Manipulation by Strange was used for a long play which would affect that grand design of the MCU. Now, this here could either be about Doctor Strange 2, or the writer could be talking about the relevance of time loops in the next Avengers movies.
To be honest, Doctor Strange is still pretty far away, and the development of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame was in playback when Marvel was developing Doctor Strange, so it could mean that the writer is talking about the Time Loops in the Avengers movies.
We will only know for sure once Avengers: Endgame arrives on April 26.
