Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, Nerds of all ages; things in the Marvel Cinematic Universe are about to get weird. What Guardians of the Galaxy did in 2014 by turning our expectations of superhero movies into a funky mix of space pirates and '70s pop songs, Doctor Strange is going to do by feeding our superhero movies a big gob of LSD and sending them on Mr. Toad’s wild ride.

Let’s just take a look at the trailer:

Weird, cool, intriguing and a little bit scary, right? But here’s the great thing about Doctor Strange: he could introduce some amazing new possibilities into the world of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Here’s 5 things we think the film franchise's newest protagonist is going to bring to the table.

He Could Connect the Netflix and Movie Universes

In Matt Fraction’s amazingly surreal, and all too short, run on The Defenders in 2012/13, Doctor Strange was a core Defender (The Avenger-esque crescendo of the Netflix series). He fought alongside Iron Fist—who just so happens to be the last puzzle piece in the Netflix/Marvel saga. While that little fact may not be enough to cement their entanglement, the idea of where Iron Fist gets his powers from is.


Danny Rand (Iron Fist...keep up), grew up in the ancient city of K’un-L’un—a place of mystical power that exists in a pocket dimension next to earth that occasionally collides with our dimension and allows people to travel back and forth. It’s also the kind of place where you might have to punch a dragon to death and steal its heart to become a great warrior. It’s kinda like rushing Bruce Lee’s fraternity in Hell. But it says, right there in the trailer, “That reality is one of many.” And one of those many will probably be the place where little Danny Rand superpunched a dragon right in its stupid dragon face!

The Next Big Bad Guy Could be His Fault

I would say it’s pretty safe to say that Doctor Strange will be a part of one super team or another as the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to expand. With a roster of ever stronger and weirder super heroes start filling up the screen, it’s going to be harder and harder to find a force that is capable of challenging them...unless it comes from a magical fear reality like the Dark Dimension.

Captain America ain't gonna be able to punch that.

Dormammu is a legacy bad guy of Doc Strange—and maybe his Uncle-in-law (comics are weird). What Thanos is as the big bad of space, Dormammu is as the big bad of the mystic realm. With Doctor Strange opening the door to the wider realms, it’s very likely that something is going to walk through those doors. Something big and ugly and maybe with a head made pure evil.

Officially Introducing The Multiverse!

In the Marvel comic book world there are an innumerable number of parallel universes that exist right alongside the one that we’re all used to. In one Peter Parker is a noir, Batmanesque, vigilante...in another he’s a pig (seriously). But the most important of these parallel universes is The Ultimate Universe. In the early 2000s, as a means of refreshing older ideas and characters, Marvel created an updated version of their universe. The Ultimates characters were largely the basis for what has become the cinematic universe.

That means somewhere out there we could have another Captain America, a drinkier, playboyier Iron Man and even though we just got Spider-Man back in the fold, it opens up the possibility of Miles Morales making an appearance. Also if you introduce the multiverse you have to introduce the protectors of the multiverse: The Captain Britain Corps. They’re a lot like Green Lanterns except lacking all of the scenery chewing that Ryan Reynolds did in that film.

INCURSIONS

Remember all that stuff I said up there about alternate universes and multiple version of characters? In the comics Marvel just blew all of that up in a multiyear, intricately interwoven story where a bad guy started smashing together the worlds of the multiverse like an angry toddler smashing together trucks. In this most dire of situations all of reality was at stake and what came out the other side is easily identified as the Marvel universe, but everything is very different from where it started.

Leo Decaprio wants his gimmick back

What if that’s the plan all along for filmbending movie nerd Kevin Feige? What if after nearly 20 years of building up an intricately layered, beloved universe, he uses the bad guys that Doctor Strange brought into their reality to destroy it? This would let them recast all of their major characters (Robert Downey Jr can’t play Iron Man forever) without losing any of their continuity and without alienating their long term audience that will hold these movies as dear as some folks hold Star Wars.

The Illuminati

In Johnathan Hickman’s epic dual run on Avengers and New Avengers, he introduced a new version of Marvel’s Illuminati—a group of the smartest, strongest, most capable super beings in the comic book universe. This group consisted of Iron Man, Namor, Doctor Strange, Black Panther, Mister Fantatstic, Black Bolt (coming to a theater near you in The Inhumans) and Beast. While there’s a few characters here who are locked up in studio rights purgatory, we clearly have the foundation of Marvel’s great secret society.

Could the events of Civil War lead to Tony Stark and Black Panther realizing that Government agencies aren’t the answer because maybe Cap’s right (he usually is) and they can change their agendas? But maybe he doesn’t think that Captain America’s morals are flexible enough to do the bad things that it might take in order to save the world (like making an omnipotent murder-bot called Ultron).He needs people who have the ability to do what The Avengers can’t and won’t. He sees the threat of Thanos on the horizon and gathers together the people that he thinks could help protect the world. We’ve already seen that Civil War will make call backs to Phase I; maybe it ends with a stinger similar to Iron Man’s? Instead of Nick Fury walking into Tony’s house, we see Stephen Strange in his Sanctum Sanctorum as Tony and T’Challa walk in and say to him, “Doctor Strange, you’ve just become part of a bigger universe, you just don’t know it yet.”

Actually, yeah, do that.