Who Is That ‘Iron Man’ In ‘Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness’ – Cracked.com | Articles

The Illuminati: Marvel’s Secret All-Star Think Tank

In the Multiverse of Madness trailer, Doctor Strange is seen being marched into a room where a man who sure sounds like Patrick Stewart says “We should tell him the truth.” The situation reminded a lot of fans of the Illuminati — no, not the real-life secret society that sends out cryptic messages via Super Bowl half-time shows and One Direction music videos. We’re talking about Marvel’s foremost super supergroup, which usually includes Strange himself, Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Professor X, Namor of Atlantis, and Black Bolt of the Inhumans (though we’re guessing Marvel Studios won’t want to remind people of that mess, so they’ll probably replace him with Deadpool or whoever). 

The Illuminati came to be when Marvel’s heroes failed to prevent a space war from spilling over into Earth and Tony proposed creating a superhuman police force to deal with situations like that. The other superhero influencers he invited to the first meeting said nah, but they still thought it’d be a good idea to secretly share information and preemptively deal with threats. For instance, one day they decided it’d be a good idea to send Hulk into outer space where he won’t bug them anymore, because there’s no way such a plan would ever backfire! 

What’s interesting is that the group in the trailer seems to deal with matters related to the multiverse, and so did the Illuminati in the comics. When the Illuminati discover that other universes are crashing into theirs, they feel like they have no choice but to destroy the other universes to survive. Of course, not all Marvel heroes agree with this decision.