Why Do Some Multiverses Work While Others Don't?

gamespot.com:

In another version of our universe, you're reading this same article, but the headline is «When will pop culture embrace the idea of a multiverse?» Michael Keaton is still playing Batman, Tobey Maguire is still Spider-Man, and Adult Swim's hit show is Doc and Marty, a Back to the Future spin-off about time travel hijinks.

But you're in this universe, and we're drowning in multiverses, from television to streaming to blockbuster and indie cinema alike. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Everything Everywhere All At Once are Academy-Award-winning movies that took Best Animated Film and Best Picture respectively--some of the most prestigious awards available for each of the movies. In the last few years, we've seen DC embrace the multiverse at all levels, with the Arrowverse as perhaps the most prominent and now the upcoming The Flash potentially breaking it all to pieces.

A few years in, though, it seems like everyone is getting exhausted with the concept. For good reason, too. It's a lot of work keeping mental track of which characters are from which universe, what happens when someone travels between universes and all of that. And yet, multiverse movies keep winning awards.

So what makes one multiverse tick and another fall apart? What gives one meaning and makes the other meaningless? When we stand back and look at how each piece of media is using its multiverse, we can start to see what's going on.

While this writer is still on-board for Marvel movies, many people claim to have left the chat entirely, and there's a simple reason for this: It all feels like homework. Once, many years ago, the MCU was an experiment. The idea that the standalone Iron Man movie could connect to the Avengers was exciting and fresh, and