To me it was obvious that Disney+ and Marvel Studios’ latest show What If…? would be MCU canon. But the series’ head writer A.C. Bradley made it official that, despite its animated style and anthology premise, everything in the show is canon when she said, “the events of What If...? are canon. It's part of the MCU multiverse. The multiverse is here. It is real, and it is absolutely fantastic, people." Getting that “clarification” from the show’s brain child was nice, and it officially set my theory cap into motion. Story wise, the pilot episode wasn’t amazing, but it was definitely fun and entertaining.
Red Skull was able to tap into the Tesseract and unleashed an unnamed villain, who looked a lot like cult-favorite Doctor Strange villain: Shuma-Gorath. In the episode's climax, Captain (Peggy) Carter faces off with an alien menace summoned by Hydra in the form of a mass of writhing tentacles coming through a cosmic portal. Though the creature isn't named in the episode, it seemed to resemble Shuma-Gorath, a Marvel Comics villain dating back to the '70s who came into pop culture prominence thanks to his inclusion in several beloved Marvel video games. Though we've only maybe seen this creature’s tentacles creep their way into the MCU, I’ll take any opportunity to talk about Shuma-Gorath, one of the weirdest and most obscure characters Marvel has ever created, and with rumors that Shuma-Gorath could be appearing in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the elder evil may become more relevant than ever.
Image via: Inside the Magic
Back in May, MCU Direct revealed that Shuma-Gorath was set to appear in an unknown MCU project, ahead of the Doctor Strange sequel. The cosmic horror known as Shuma-Gorath made his debut in 1973's Marvel Premiere #10, after being name-dropped a few issues earlier. Shuma-Gorath actually takes his inspiration from two non-comic book literary sources: H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu, and Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian stories. The two writers often seeded connections between each others' ideas in their stories, something that plays in directly to Shuma-Gorath's history in the Marvel Universe.
Shuma-Gorath is one of the so-called 'Multi-Angled Ones,' a group of eldritch monsters who exist in a space outside Marvel's Multiverse known as the 'Cancerverse,' who enter different realities only to conquer them. Loki'‘s Alioth very well might’ve been one of these eldritch monsters as well. Shuma-Gorath's Marvel history plays to both of these connections from Lovecraft and Howard. And thanks to Marvel Comics licensing the comic book rights to Conan in the '70s (as well as in the present day), Shuma-Gorath's story ties directly to Conan the Barbarian's larger continuity.
Image via: Comic Vine
In Marvel Comics, Shuma-Gorath predates known history, first coming to Earth in a primordial age in which he conquered the planet as a sacrifice-hungry deity. Shuma-Gorath's time in the modern Marvel Universe began when he tried to manifest himself through Doctor Strange's mentor, the Ancient One, beginning a rivalry between him and the Sorcerer Supreme, which has gone so far as Shuma-Gorath trying to magically take over Strange's body like a parasite, and Strange being tricked into summoning Shuma-Gorath to fight other heroes in the story Infinity.
One of Shuma-Gorath's most interesting connections, especially since it’s possible that he might appear in the MCU sooner rather than later, is that one of his earliest appearances away from Doctor Strange, in which the villainous Nicholas Scratch (the son of Wanda Maximoff's comic book mentor and WandaVision villain Agatha Harkness) summons Shuma-Gorath to fight the Fantastic Four.
Image via: Marvel Studios
The easy connections are all there, from Strange and Shuma-Gorath's classic comic book rivalry, to the villain's origins as a being outside the Multiverse itself, right down to Shuma-Gorath's usual motivations of Multiversal conquest, which play right into the story set up by Loki.
There's also the fact that rumors are starting to swirl that Captain Carter could appear in The Multiverse of Madness alongside other variants of known MCU characters. We’ve actually received some evidence of Carter making a movie cameo, thanks to a quick scene from one of the What If...? trailers which sees Peggy meeting Doctor Strange in a future episode. This fuels a theory of mine that Uatu the Watcher, the big headed guy whose the narrator of What If…?, will be assembling a Guardians of the Multiverse team by the end of the show’s first season.
The Watcher’s can’t interact with that they witness, but Uatu is one of the few to break this oath and has helped out earth’s heroes many times before in the comics. Most notably during the Infinity Gauntlet storyline which saw Uatu coming to the Sanctum Sanctorum to warn Doctor Strange of Thanos. This story was recently adapted for Infinity War and Endgame.
And of course, there are the comic book ties between Scarlet Witch and Shuma-Gorath, both through the aforementioned Last Days of Magic story and through their shared connections to Agatha Harkness. With Wanda Maximoff and possibly Agatha herself set to appear in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, those comic book roots could be even more reason to bring in Shuma-Gorath.
Image via: Marvel Comics
Shuma-Gorath is an ancient force of chaos: immortal, near-invincible, and godlike ruler of nearly of a hundred alternate universes, capable of energy projection, shapeshifting, teleportation, levitation, altering reality, and sympathetic magic, among many other abilities. He is described as being vastly more powerful than other mighty demonic enemies, such as Mephisto, and is capable of automatically destroying multiple galaxies through aura-pressure alone. Something that he also likes to do is to absorb cosmic/magical beings to obtain their power to fuel his own. He’d be the perfect villain for a Doctor Strange movie, especially one titled: In the Multiverse of Madness.
Whether we've seen his nightmarish presence in What If…? episode one or not, there are more than enough comic book connections and potential stories for Shuma-Gorath to find his way into the MCU eventually, especially in the upcoming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
You can see new episodes of What If…? every Wednesday, only on Disney+.