SPOILER ALERT: Some of this information may be considered SPOILERS for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, so if you haven’t seen it yet, either turn back now or proceed with caution!
One of the highlights of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was the appearance of The Illuminati, a powerful cabal of super-beings that have appointed themselves as the monitors of all superheroic activity on Earth. In the comics, the original Illuminati consisted of Iron Man/Tony Stark, Doctor Strange, Namor the Sub-Mariner, Black Bolt of the Inhumans, Professor Charles Xavier, and Mr. Fantastic/Reed Richards.
In the film, the roster consisted of Professor X (Patrick Stewart, reprising his role from the 20th Century Studios X-Men franchise), Mr. Fantastic (fan-casted John Krasinski), Captain Carter (Hayley Atwell, reprising her role from the Disney+ animated series What If…?), Captain Marvel (in this version, Lashana Lynch, a.k.a. Maria Rambeau from Captain Marvel), Black Bolt (Anson Mount, who played the same character in the poorly-received ABC miniseries Inhumans, but this time wearing a comic accurate costume), and Baron Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor, now the Sorcerer Supreme, an alternate reality version of his character from the first Doctor Strange).
Of course, they don’t last long. Completing her villain turn, the Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) promptly slew them all.
But before that, there was an extra, seventh chair that remained empty. Who was supposed to be sitting there? Could it have been a symbolic chair for Prof. X who spent all of his time in the famous orange hoverchair from the ’90s X-Men cartoon?
Don’t look to screenwriter Michael Waldron to clear that up much. As he stated:
“That’s also an unanswerable question, but we talked about that a lot, though. Maybe that was just a mistake. Maybe the set [decorator] guy had one too many chairs. (Laughs.)”
When asked if Marvel Studios knew who was supposed to be in the seventh chair or if it was “open-ended,” Waldron replied “a bit of both.”
However, it seems that the writers did converse with Marvel about including an Illuminati member from the comics — Namor the Sub-Mariner.
According to Waldron:
“[We] talked about him, because he’s certainly an original member of the Illuminati. But I think Marvel has other plans for him in the MCU. And so he didn’t make his way in this particular movie.”
Though no one from Marvel has commented on the matter, there was a line in Avengers: Endgame, spoken by Danai Gurira’s Okoye, referencing an undersea earthquake that many inferred to be a reference to Namor and Atlantis.
There was a RUMOR last summer that Tenoch Huerta had been hired to play the character in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, although that has not been confirmed. Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige has previously stated that it wasn’t as “clean or clear” for Disney to use Namor, due to Universal and Legendary (who made the original Hulk movie) having licensed the character prior to the launch of the MCU. That’s the same reason why Disney can’t make another solo Hulk movie.
At the time, it was also RUMORED that Marvel was looking to cast Namora and Attuma. But take all of that with a grain of salt.
But it sounds like Marvel may have worked out a deal to use Namor (maybe), but they want to save him for a bigger role in the future as opposed to callously killing him off in the Doctor Strange bloodbath.
What do you think? Are you looking forward to seeing Namor in a Marvel movie? Who do you think should have been in the seventh chair in Multiverse of Madness?
