No matter how heartbreaking the win over Thanos will be in Avengers: Endgame, one thing is certain: Doctor Strange is the architect of this win. I’m not just talking about the events in Infinity War that needed to happen in a certain way in order for the Avengers to actually beat the Titan in the next movie, but of other events from all the other Marvel movies, which may have been set up in a certain way by Strange. In a somewhat apologetic tone, Strange told Iron Man at the end of Infinity War that this was the only way to beat Thanos. Strange has seen so many different outcomes that he knew the only way to win would require some sacrifice. But beating Thanos is possible.
We’ve often talked about the importance of time travel for Endgame, and about Doctor Strange’s master plan, as several fan theories tried to guess how the Avengers would win. But we now have an incredibly interesting theory that doesn’t look at what Strange did while peering through time. Instead, it gives us an approximation of the time he actually spent looking at all those potential futures.
Reddit user CleverD3vil estimated that Strange needed more than 5,000 years to look at what’s required to win. That seems like a huge amount of time, but let’s not forget that Strange looked at 14,000,605 alternate futures.
On Titan Strange sits down and actually looks at 14,000,605 alternate futures, and that looks like he just spent only a minute or two doing it, now we don’t know much about Time Stone and how it works but we know that he would have to look through time as if he is watching a movie or he couldn’t have actually experienced it with loops and stuff to save him… either way he would have spent a lot of time.
14,000,605 x 3 hours (He would definitely spend more per timeline… maybe months in some.. but like in the movie lets take the 3 hours) = 42,001,815 hours which is 4,795 years round off to 5,000 years
The theory says that Doctor Strange could have further honed his skills while analyzing events from various periods — I also think he went back in time not just forward, to ensure this timeline progresses in a certain way. A few days ago, I argued that it’s wrong to think Star-Lord is guilty of letting Thanos prevail on Titan, and that’s because it all happened under Strange’s watchful eye. Strange allowed Star-Lord to interfere with the plan because he knew that giving Thanos the Infinity Stones, and making him think he would win was the only way to beat him.
When you think about it, this is nothing new for Doctor Strange, as he did the same thing while fighting Dormammu. He created a time loop that must have ran millions of times until the Dormammu realized he couldn’t win. The Doctor Strange battle in the movie only featured some of the loops, but the director of the movie did say that Strange spent plenty of time stuck in that time loop. Meanwhile, the full theory about Strange’s role in defeating Thanos follows below:
[Infinity War] Dr. Strange spent over 5,000 years looking at the different outcomes and got better at using his powers. from FanTheories
