The Illuminati, a hidden council of superheroes that operate behind the scenes, is currently active in the MCU. 

The Marvel Cinematic Universe now has an Illuminati. 

It’s not a matter of whether or whether the secret council of Marvel superheroes will appear in Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness, but of who will be on it. 

And if you’ve watched the movie, you’ll recognize them. 

We won’t disclose those surprises here and now since the film hasn’t even been released yet, but suffice it to say that Marvel Studios included Patrick Stewart’s voice in the trailer for a purpose. 

And we’ll leave it there (for now). 

But, for the time being, we can discuss the Illuminati’s Marvel comic book history and what the arrival of the Illuminati may signify for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 

In the actual world, the word “Illuminati” has come to refer to any number of ostensibly powerful secret organizations that, according to many popular conspiracy theories, govern parts of global society from behind the scenes. 

However, in the Marvel Universe, this conspiracy theory is taken to a whole new level, first by making it a concrete part of Marvel continuity, but also by elevating the group from a secretive cabal of shadowy figures to a conglomeration of six of Marvel’s most powerful heroes who secretly undertake dangerous and world-threatening missions to ensure the stability of their reality. 

There are five other original Illuminati members in comics, and their concealed acts in the Marvel Universe range from acquiring the Infinity Stones to taking on the cosmic entity the Beyonder – which may eventually be part of the key to determining what role the Illuminati may play in the MCU. 

What exactly are the Illuminati, and how have they influenced the Marvel Universe? Who are the secretive supervillain gang known as the Cabal, the Illuminati’s nemesis? And what does any of this have to do with the most life-altering incident in Marvel Comics history? 

It doesn’t take the world’s finest telepath to answer these questions; all you need is a few minutes to join us as we delve into Marvel’s Illuminati’s history and probable future. 

What exactly are the Illuminati? 

Iron Man brought together the original Marvel Universe group known as the Illuminati in the aftermath of the ‘Kree/Skrull War’ storyline, first as a sort of ‘think tank’ composed to try and form what Tony Stark calls a kind of “superhero government,” based on his realization that the heroes of Earth could have done much more to prevent the Kree/Skrull War’s impact had they been more communicative about their collective encounters with the Kree and 

This inaugural meeting has Stark, Xavier (X-Men leader), Reed Richards-Mister Fantastic, Doctor Strange (Sorcerer Supreme), Namor the Sub-Mariner (King of Atlantis), Black Bolt (King of the Inhumans), and Black Panther (King of Wakanda). 

Though the group rejects Stark’s idea of a superhero bureaucracy (which he later partially implements in the story ‘Civil War’ as the Super-Human Registration Act), everyone present except Black Panther agrees that they should keep in touch in order to exchange information and coordinate their actions. The Black Panther Party disagrees, claiming that such a group is likely to swiftly overstep its intended limitations in possibly damaging ways. 

Unfortunately, T’Challa is proving to be partly correct as time passes. Throughout the New Avengers: Illuminati limited series, the group first meets to trade intelligence, but they swiftly begin carrying out their own missions and activities in secret – with most of the organization’s major machinations ultimately backfiring on them. 

Though a complete catalog of the Illuminati’s attempted – and failed – manipulations of the Marvel Universe would take an inordinate amount of time, their ‘best hits’ demonstrate the type of influence they’ve had on Marvel continuity events. 

• Following a botched mission among the Skrulls, the Skrulls gain the ability to shape-shift covertly, leading in the narrative Secret Invasion. 
• In the narrative Planet Hulk, Hulk is banished to the planet Sakaar, only to return to Earth and wreak devastation in his quest for revenge against the Illuminati in World War Hulk. 
• The Illuminati seeks to re-empower the hidden hero the Sentry while cleansing him of his malevolent dark side, the Void, instead exposing him to Norman Osborn’s manipulation and the devastation of Asgard (more on that momentarily). 
• Reed Richards gathers the Infinity Stones in an effort to destroy them, but instead earns the wrath of the Watcher, compelling the Illuminati members to each guard one of the stones (Stark gets the Reality Stone, Xavier gets the Mind Stone, Namor gets the Time Stone, Black Bolt gets the Space Stone, Strange gets the Soul Stone, and Reed himself takes the Power Stone). 
• The Illuminati intervenes in both the first Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars and its sequel Secret Wars II to attempt to destroy the all-powerful Beyonder while the other heroes are unaware. Though they fail the first time, they are slightly successful the second time. 

That last scene with the Beyonder, although featuring some strange plot beats that violated known continuity and were subsequently revised or disregarded, really sets off a series of events that leads to nothing short than the complete death and rebirth of Marvel’s entire cosmos. 

But, before then, the Illuminati would go through a kind of death and rebirth, with the original organization disbanding during the events of the Civil War, and members of the organisation being divided amongst the many factions of the fight and its aftermath. 

The Illuminati would not remain dormant – or hidden – for long, as their past error with the Infinity Stones would be the trigger for their return and the exposing of their secrets to the rest of the Marvel Universe. 

The Marvel Universe’s Illuminati 

As many of Marvel’s Illuminati’s great scientific minds can testify, one of the basic principles of physics is that for every action, there is an equal and opposite response – and that philosophical concept holds true in the case of the Illuminati. 

Following the one-two punch of Civil War and Secret Invasion, Norman Osborn becomes the leader of a new SHIELD-type agency dubbed HAMMER, which he swiftly begins utilizing for his own malicious purposes. 

In addition to becoming the head of HAMMER and adopting the persona of Iron Patriot to organize his own Dark Avengers squad, Osborn establishes his own secret society of supervillains (DC, please don’t sue me!) Doctor Doom, the Hood, Loki (then disguised as a woman), Emma Frost, and, bizarrely, Namor – who was still theoretically a member of the shrinking Illuminati at the time. 

The plot of the so-called Cabal leads to the narrative Siege, in which Loki is installed as king of Asgard, which is thus hovering high above the town of Broxton, Oklahoma as its own sovereign city-state rather than being on its own distinct plane of reality. Instead, when his conquering plans fail, Osborn deploys his Dark Avengers, notably the Sentry (who, as previously stated, was mistakenly pulled into Osborn’s fold by the Illuminati themselves), to destroy Asgard and bring it tumbling to the earth. 

Some of the Illuminati’s shortcomings begin to resurface at this point, and the society is compelled to re-unite in order to overcome the civil war-induced schism. 

Following the disbanding of Osborn’s Cabal, the Hood (a villainous mobster who wears a demon-possessed cloak) started assembling the Infinity Stones originally concealed by the Illuminati into his own Infinity Gauntlet utilizing the demonic power of his cloak. Naturally, this compels the Illuminati to reassemble – and, more importantly, forces them to disclose not only their presence but also their machinations to the rest of Marvel’s heroes. 

Though the Hood is defeated, the Illuminati’s mistakes resurface, with the rest of the heroes mistrusting the group members for new reasons – while Black Bolt, then presumed dead, is replaced in the Illuminati by his queen Medusa, and Captain America is welcomed into the fold as the new guardian of the Space Stone. 

This sets off a new round of macrocosmic issues for the Illuminati, beginning in Avengers vs. X-Men, in which Namor, along with numerous other mutants, is possessed by the Phoenix Force, resulting in the murder of Professor X and fresh fissures among the Marvel Universe’s heroes. 

Meanwhile, the metaphorical cracks in the Marvel Universe begin to become tangible, as a series of events known as ‘Incursions’ lead the many worlds of Marvel’s Multiverse to clash and be destroyed. 

To examine possible answers, Black Panther forms a new Illuminati, this time including Captain America, Iron Man, Black Bolt, Namor, Doctor Strange, and Beast of the X-Men, who took Xavier’s position on the team following his death in Avengers vs. X-Men. 

The Illuminati ultimately manages to halt one of the occurrences when Captain America uses the Infinity Gauntlet to divide the worlds before they clash, after a series of unsuccessful efforts to prevent these ‘Incursions’ between other planets before they reach the Marvel 616 Universe. However, this comes at a high cost, since the Infinity Gauntlet and Infinity Stones are shattered. 

With no other options, the Illuminati begin working on a doomsday device that can destroy other realities before they collide with the core Marvel Universe – though Captain America objects to any plan that involves being directly responsible for destroying an entire Universe, even if it means saving their own. As a consequence, the gang briefly mind wipes Captain America, erasing all of their previous acts from his recollection. 

Cap ultimately remembered everything the Illuminati had done to him, including mindwiping him. And, although this rekindles tensions among the Avengers, it’s too late to prevent what’s to come. The Illuminati eventually fail to halt the Incursions, which are revealed to be the work of an omnipotent species known as the Beyonders, which is linked to the Illuminati’s ancient opponent of the same name. 

Only Doctor Doom is capable of preventing the annihilation of every single Marvel reality by assembling Battleworld, a conglomeration of the scraps of numerous Marvel realities that Doom was able to save, using his combined mastery of science and magic, as well as the reality manipulating power of Owen Reese the Molecule Man. As a consequence, in the 2015/16 Secret Wars revival arc, Marvel’s whole Multiverse is destroyed and recreated – the aforementioned ‘death and rebirth of the Multiverse.’ 

Since then, the Illuminati hasn’t reformed (as far as readers and individuals in the Marvel Universe are aware), but there’s always the possibility that fresh secret adventures and manipulations have happened behind the scenes, like with the group’s first introduction. 

The Illuminati in the Marvel Cinematic Universe 

Given that the film is focused with the Multiverse, the greatest issue now that we know the Illuminati will make its appearance is what the group’s reach will be. 

Is it a specific Earth’s Illuminati, or a governing body from numerous Earths? 

And if they are from other realities and their purpose is, as implied, to monitor and preserve the order of the Multiverse (similar to how the Time Variance Authority’s job was to preserve a specific timeline), it could mean that the versions of the Illuminati who come to the MCU are survivors of dead realities or those who have learned what kind of mistakes can be made when the Multiverse is breached. 

Speaking of mistakes, in the aforementioned Spider-Man: No Way Home, we saw what could happen when the Multiverse is tampered with, as beings from other realities began entering the MCU, and the thinning barriers between worlds threatened to destroy the entire 616 universe – much like the Incursions faced by the second version of the Illuminati prior to Secret Wars in the story ‘Time Runs Out.’ 

Strange Doctor In the Multiverse of Madness appears to take those ideas of characters crossing realities and the resulting weakness in their boundaries to the next level, similar to how the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s ‘Infinity Saga’ consistently escalated the crossover between heroes leading up to the first Avengers film, and then kept inflating that idea through Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, in which nearly every MCU character came together. 

Could Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness be a stepping stone in Marvel’s newest meta-arc, which is more focused on the Multiverse and various forms of well-known heroes? And, if that’s the case, might it all point to a massive Secret Wars film in which any and all iterations of every Marvel movie and TV character are on the table? 

The filmmakers of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, Joe and Anthony Russo, have indicated their intention to helm a Secret Wars adaptation that expands on the themes of their previous Avengers films – and we may be on the verge of seeing that happen. 

Do you want to learn more about the characters and plot aspects in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness? Then have a look at our guides to: 

America Chavez is the Marvel Comics origin tale of Doctor Strange 2’s formidable new adolescent hero, America Chavez. 

Clea – Doctor Strange’s wife and the next Sorcerer Supreme in Marvel history 

How the Marvel Universe evolved into a Multiverse and received the moniker “Earth-616” 

Wanda Maximoff, often known as the Scarlet Witch, has a new Marvel comic book status quo. 

The best Wanda Maximoff – Scarlet Witch story ever told 

The Darkhold – An explanation of Marvel’s book of black magic 

The convoluted Marvel history of Gargantos, the Doctor Strange 2 monster, is revealed.