Earth 838 and the Illuminati was freakin' awesome (yet also kinda pointless? the movie would've been just fine without them in it, unlike NWH where the Spider-men have large roles in the film), but wow do I have questions. I mean we knew about Professor X, but freaking BLACK BOLT from the ill-fated Inhumans show?!? I actually think this is the first time someone from an ABC show actually crossed over into an MCU movie. Captain Carter was cool and of course John Krasinski as Reed Richards was VERY fan service-y.
So Mordo, Maria, Peggy, all look like that in 616. Peggy may not be Captain Carter and Maria may not be Captain Marvel, but they physically look like that. So that leads me to the question of Is John Krasinski Reed Richards in 616 (and will he direct the F4 film)? What about Anson Mount as Black Bolt or Patrick Stewart as Professor X?
As I was saying in the non-spoiler part of my review, there's a lot of references in this movie and I thought maybe they would at least show a quick flashback to the end of WandaVision to catch the audience that hasn't seen it up to speed, but this movie progressed as if you were already supposed to know why she was so obsessed about getting her non-existent kids back. I feel like if you didn't watch WandaVision, you very well may have been lost. I liked the stuff from What if as you didn't need to see that show to appreciate it, it was more just a part of the movie between Captain Carter, Sinister Strange, and Marvel Zombies.
I do feel like as a movie that is supposed to be a direct follow up to No Way Home, it feels like the movie barely acknowledges the events of that film, which is weird. Now that's probably because Strange was originally scheduled to come out before No Way Home, so this wasn't the intended release order. I also wasn't a big fan of how it ended tbh. I mean, I guess it set up the future in some ways, but it made it seem like there wasn't proper closure to the movie, even after that beautiful scene where Scarlett Witch finally came to grips with reality and realized she couldn't have kids in her universe, but at least there's a universe where Billy and Tommy love Wanda.
I am left disappointed in how they basically just used America Chavez as a McGuffin and not much more, despite the main the entire movie centering around her. Hopefully she gets a Disney+ show or something so that her character can be fleshed out because she was actually very similarly used and abused like Wanda in Age of Ultron where a lot of the plot surrounds her, but there's not much that she actually got to do herself.
