The One MCU Movie You Need To Rewatch Before The Marvels - And Why
Contains spoilers for "The Marvels"
At this point, it's very difficult for a Marvel Cinematic Universe project to be completely self-contained. There are simply too many familiar characters, organizations, and even civilizations at play in any given movie or TV show. Nia DaCosta's "The Marvels" is a prime example of the situation. Two of its main characters' superhero origin stories happen in the Disney+ shows "WandaVision" and "Ms. Marvel." Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) has a cameo that may have people who aren't familiar with her promotion to the sovereign ruler of New Asgard in "Thor: Love and Thunder" scratching their heads. Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) even pays a visit to "Hawkeye" star Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) and mentions Scott Lang's (Paul Rudd) daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton), of "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" fame.
Despite all this, the movie manages to keep things pretty tight by focusing on the central trio of Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), and Kamala — along with a supporting cast of Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), Kamala's family, and several entirely new characters. "The Marvels" also does a good job introducing Kamala and Monica to the viewer, so even if you haven't watched their Disney+ shows, they don't exactly arrive out of the blue.
The end result is that you can easily watch the movie with very little idea of what else has been going on in the MCU's Phase 4 ... that is, except for one film. The multiversal elements "The Marvels" introduces late in the game — particularly in the post-credits cameos by Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch) and X-Men mutant Beast (Kelsey Grammer) — virtually beg the viewer to refresh their memories of alternate universe concepts that are best explained in "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness."
Multiverse of Madness explains things that The Marvels assumes the viewer already knows
The MCU is very fond of the multiverse these days, but no other movie has embraced it quite like "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness." It devotes plenty of time to explaining the concept and illustrates the idea by taking the viewer to several curious alternate-universe locations. These include Earth-838, where we meet the Illuminati — a team consisting of veritable Marvel all-stars like Reed Richards (John Krasinski) and Captain Carter (Hayley Atwell). The Illuminati also gives us the first MCU movie appearance of X-Men founder Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), who also gets a name-drop in "The Marvels" mid-credits scene.
If the viewer is familiar with "Multiverse of Madness" and the ground rules of the MCU multiverse, they have a much easier time understanding the ending of "The Marvels." After all, knowing about the Illuminati and various alternate versions of folks like Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) makes it far easier to understand that the place Monica becomes stranded in after closing the hole Dar-Benn (Zawe Ahston) tears in time and space is simply another universe.
Granted, "Multiverse of Madness" is far from the only MCU project that references alternate universes. Disney+ shows "What If...?" and "Loki" are all about the multiverse, and it also features heavily in both "Spider-Man: No Way Home" and "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania." However, the "Doctor Strange" sequel is the only MCU movie that devotes its entire runtime to different universes and the many versions of well-known Marvel characters they contain. Since this is incredibly important for the current MCU and "The Marvels" doesn't really bother explaining it, this makes "Multiverse of Madness" essential viewing before watching the movie.