The defining irony of Earth-838’s Illuminati in ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ isn’t that they defeated Thanos, but that they had to sell their souls to do it. Behind their pristine, high-tech citadel and self-righteous demeanor lies a deeply cynical cover-up: Doctor Strange surrendered to the Darkhold.
That triggered a catastrophic Incursion that destroyed an entire universe, and they used forbidden magic to slaughter the Mad Titan.
A Legacy Written In Blood And Betrayal
Rather than confront the horrifying reality of their failure, Reed Richards, Black Bolt, and Professor X executed Strange on Titan, swept the collateral damage under the rug, and erected a majestic bronze statue back home. They recast a desperate, corrupt mass murderer as a heroic martyr, wrapping their own moral cowardice in a convenient lie disguised as a grand legacy.
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This hypocritical dynamic draws heavily from Jonathan Hickman’s seminal 2013 New Avengers run, where comic book readers saw the Illuminati walk the same dark path. In the comics, Strange similarly abandons his code, sacrificing fragments of his soul to study the forbidden Blood Bible and ultimately summoning the Great Destroyer.
In a horrifying display of cruelty, Strange single-handedly massacres the Great Society just to buy his team a few more hours of survival. The Illuminati’s arrogance knew no bounds. Rather than executing Thanos, they secretly imprisoned him in a subterranean vault beneath Wakanda, using him as a living textbook of cosmic knowledge until Namor’s inevitable betrayal released him back into the cosmos.
The Illuminati Believed in Absolute Power
Earth-838’s gruesome annihilation at the hands of the Scarlet Witch wasn’t a flaw in storytelling or a sudden drop in tactical IQ; it was the ultimate narrative justice. The Illuminati were never the noble, infallible geniuses they pretended to be.
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Instead, they were a secretive cabal of egomaniacs who repeatedly crossed every moral boundary, buried every messy consequence, and believed their own manufactured hype. They built a throne on top of silent sacrifices, lies, and rewritten history.
When Wanda tore through their marble halls, she didn’t just break their ranks; she shattered the fragile, self-serving illusion of their untouchable legacy.
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