Embracing the Multiverse

 Some spoilers, will be mentioning the new Flash movie and Spider-Verse.

The TVCU was created based on the idea of a shared reality based on crossovers.  And it still is.  

However, in recent years, films and television have been embracing the multiverse concept.

From the beginning, the TVCU has used the multiverse concept.  We had the Looniverse for cartoons that don't fit in a "real world", like funny talking animals.  We had the TVCU-2 for reboots.  We had a mirror universe.  

The TVCU has also had a concept that it happens the way we see it on the screen.  So when things are shown to be in the same reality, we accept that.  

And I tried to cram things in sometimes, like putting all the versions of Superman in one timeline.  

But the film and television industry have shown me a new way.  

We know now that Ghostbusters and Real Ghostbusters are alternate timelines.  We know that every version of the TMNT have their own universe, and the same goes for He-Man.

And now we know that every DC and Marvel adaptation exists within the multiverse.  

With Marvel, it's more straightforward.  Marvel Comics has for a while labeled pretty much every television and film adaptation with a universe designation within the Marvel Multiverse.  They even had some non-Marvel properties in their multiverse, including a Doctor Who Universe and a universe where Evil Dead/Army of Darkness takes place (which also includes Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Hack/Slash, Child's Play, Hellraiser, Re-Animator, and more). 

Recently, the new Spider-Verse film has confirmed this, bringing in virtually all of Spider-Man adaptations, including the MCU, Sony versions, and comic book versions.  (Note the MCU is labeled Earth-616 internally but according to both Marvel Comics and Spider-Verse, it is Earth-199999.  It's not uncommon for a universe to have more than one designation.)

DC is a bit more complicated, with it's constant reboots, but it eventually comes to the same conclusion.

The Arrowverse crossover Crisis on Infinite Earths connected many DC adaptations from film and television together, including comic book universes.  Though the crossover destroys the multiverse, it remains intact, recreated and slightly changed, in the post-Crisis era.  

Included in the Arrowverse multiverse were the pre-Crisis comics DCU (Earth-1 in the comics and Earth-85 in the Arrowverse) and the New 52 universe (Earth-0 or Prime Earth in the comics and Earth-N52 in the Arrowverse).  

This means that the multiverses attached to those comics universes are also part of the same multiverse seen in the Arrowverse.  

The DC Comics have shown the Looniverse (from Looney Tunes), Star Trek and He-Man to be part of their multiverse as well.

The Arrowverse crossover includes Titans as Earth-9, and the DCEU, not labeled.  

Titans has also had a multiverse episode, that included Teen Titans Go.  Teen Titans Go is part of the Scooby-Doo Team-Up Universe, and includes Super Friends as well.  This universe has been established in the new DC Comics Multiverse.  Teen Titans Go also showed that in their multiverse were DC Super Hero Girls and Powerpuff Girls, as well as the other animated Teen Titans series.  They also connected to the pre-Crisis comic book Earth-1.  

In the newly released Flash movie, spoilers, spoilers, spoilers, other universes in the multiverse were shown, though none labeled.  This included universes that included Adventures of Superman (which in comics was shown to connect to Batman'66, aka Earth-66), the Christopher Reeve film franchise (in comics labeled Earth-789), a universe of the unfilmed Superman Lives (with Nicolas Cage as Superman), and Batman (from 1966, also Earth-66). 

The DC and Marvel multiverses also connect to other comic book universes, but also to each other.  DC and Marvel characters have crossed over in multiverse stories, but there are also two universes that seem to co-exist in the DC and Marvel universes, Earth-Crossover (or Crossover Earth), and the Amalgam Universe.  

So everything happens somewhere, and we don't have to struggle with cramming it all into one universe.  Getting back to the TVCU, though, there must be multiple TVCU's.  

If the TVCU starts with I Love Lucy, using the six degrees method of using crossovers to create a shared reality, many of these universes can be called the TVCU.  The Arrowverse connected to Breaking Bad.  The MCU connected to Arrested Development and the Buffy-verse.  The original Incredible Hulk series from the 70s and the Batman series from the 60s connect to the TVCU.  The post-Crisis DCU connects to the TVCU.  The Marvel Comics Universe connects to the TVCU.  So either we cram all these versions together in a very messy way, or we accept that there are multiple TVCU's.  Earth-66 is TVCU 66 and Earth 616 is TVCU 616.  

I've already embraced this concept with my revisions of the Scooby-Doo and Superman posts, and will continue to do so in other revisions.  

We're still doing our best to work on a shared universe called the Television Crossover Universe, but when certain multiply rebooted and readapted properties constantly do crossovers with television and film, we will accept that those are alternate universes within the greater Television Crossover Multiverse.