How long did Stephen spend in the 14,000,605 futures?
So, I was doing some thinking. 14,000,605 is a big number--big enough that itās meaning sort of becomes unquantifiable, just like the blank looks you get when you try to explain how far the sun is from Earth. And remember, itās canon that Stephen didnāt just see the CliffsNotes of those timelines:
"He has to physically live them, and then die in each of them, and right before he dies, he has to reset it, as we saw at the end of Doctor Strange, and do it again. And take copious notes each time he does it." - Joe Russo
So, if every one of those timelines was a life Stephen lead, what does it translate to? What, in terms of time, is the value of all those realities?
There are two broad designations we can sort Stephenās ultimate futures into. The first are futures where Stephen focuses on preventing the Snap, and the second are futures where Stephen focuses on undoing a Snap that did happen. I can only imagine it takes a significant number of futures for Stephen to give up trying to keep Thanos from getting all the Stones. Iāll call that 3/5 of the futures; little less than half of them spent undoing as opposed to preventing.
Within those two broad designations, thereās another set of factors: the Dusting itself. Assuming the Blip is truly random, we can generalize that in 1/2 the futures, Stephen was in the dusted 50%. By definition, if Stephen (and indeed anyone) is dusted in the prevention futures, itās game over and he abandons that timeline. That leaves us with three vague situational constants:
Okay, great. Now for the part where I get to make a couple of educated guesses.Ā
How long, then, is aĀ āprevention futureā? The shortest one probably starts around the length of the battle on Titan in Infinity War. From the moment Stephen returns from the time projection to the moment Thanos supposedly kills everyone and takes the Time Stone is, by my estimation, at least 45 minutes. We all know Stephen Strange is a self-sacrificial bastard (I will cite canon for this if you truly need me to but I choose to assume you arenāt blind), so he wouldnāt have considered this a true loss until Thanos retrieved the rest of the Stones in Wakanda. (The events on Earth arenāt a variable in this; Stephen canāt influence them when heās not actually there). Letās tack on another 45 minutes for Wakanda.Ā
Shortest prevention timeline: 1.5 hours
What about the longest time, then? The longest possible situation I imagine goes something like this:
Stephen & co. leave Titan and hide in the reaches of the universe
Thanos goes to Earth, kills everyone there, and probably mind-controls Wong using the Mind Stone into disclosing who has the Time Stone and preforming some sort of tracking spell to find it.
Thanos tracks down Stephen & co.
Thanos captures Stephen (āYouāll find removing a dead manās spell troublesomeā)
Torture. Extraordinary amounts of torture.
Stephen & co. portal back to Earth and collect all the remaining Infinity Stones
The Guardians help them hide the Stones amongst various parts of the universe, in pocket dimensions, behind containments, etc.
(Now I think this is a great plan, but canon dictates it has to fail so:) Thanos eventually finds the Stones.
Pain, suffering, death of Stephen & co.
Now, Stephen spent a whole other blog-post worth of time repeatedly dying inside a time loop to save the dimension as we know it, so weāve got to assume he doesnāt break quick under torture. Therefore, Iām going to call the longest prevention future 7 years.Ā
Longest prevention timeline: 7 years.
Thatās quite a difference! Iām going to assume that most of the futures fall on the shorter side, and these higher futures are outliers. By standard distribution and some rather arbitrary bounding of graphs, I find the average time spent in these futures to be about 10220 hours, or approximately 1 year and 2 months. (Thereās 8760 hours in a year, and in favor of underestimating instead of overestimating, I chose to assume that very few futures drifted in the 7 year direction.)
Alright, so, Stephen spends an average of 1 year and 2 months in each of the the prevention timelines. Remember, we decided about 3/5 of the 14,000,605 futures are prevention futures. Thatās 8,400,363 futures. 1 year and 2 months in those futures means Stephen livedĀ 9,800,423 years and six monthsĀ in just the prevention futures. Thatās a hell of a long time.Ā
But now, letās do the undoing futures.
So, in 50% of these, Stephen gets dusted. He has to stick around these futures a while after that before abandoning them as failures--and a really long time to be sure, as well. So depending on how long it takes him to realize the consistent factors that lead to undoing a snap (Tony being alive, Scott coming back from the Quantum Realm, Nebula in general), heād have quite a long time to wait in these. Heād only know to abandon them when those critical factors were undermined/killed/prevented by Thanos or other means.Ā
Ā In the One Future, he wouldāve had to stick around for 5 years because of that stupid rat. But Scottās escape from the Quantum Realm could have been hurried by Stephen mentioning that fact to Tony or somebody before Thanos Snapped. Remember, though, that Stephen would have had to live out timelines, probably a good number of them, where the rat thing happened all on its own to even know it was important.Ā Letās say, then, that the One Future was on the higher end of the spectrum for the length of this type of future (undoing: Stephen dusted). On average, the length of the dusted undoing futures was about 2 years.Ā
Blah blah blah, math math math. 2/5 of 14,000,605 isĀ 5,600,242, and half of that isĀ 2,800,121. 2 years in each of those futures gets us right back to 5,600,242, but years this time.Ā
So what about the timelines where Stephen lived? Since he knows the way the future will play out, itās safe to assume his existence speeds those futures. I would say the longest of these (undoing: Stephen lives) is around a year. Giving up the Stone means Tony doesnāt trust him and hesitates at the wrong moment, etc. etc. etc. Stephen is killed by other factors besides the Snap in some. Thanos still has the Stones when they try and kill him to take them. On and on and on and on.Ā
The shortest ones would probably be no longer than a month--those Infinity Stones can really do some damage. Which means the average time in the non-dusted undoing futures is around 6.5 months.
14,000,605 * (2/5) * (1/2) =Ā 2,800,121.Ā 2,800,121 * 6.5 = 18,200,786.5. 12 months in a year means approximatelyĀ 1,516,732 years.Ā
Adding all those sections up gives usĀ 16,917,397 years.Ā
That is 208,857 lifetimes. Thatās longer than humans have existed on earth. Thatās about 84.6 times as long as humans have existed on Earth. If Stephen truly lived through all those futures, heād be 1/250 the age of planet Earth itself.
Even if we take the very bare minimum and say Stephen spent only a day, on average, in those 14,000,605 futures, thatās stillĀ 38,357.8 years. If we say he only spent an hour in each of those futures THATāS STILLĀ 1,598.2 YEARS!!! WHAT THE FUCK????
*a series of deep breaths*
And in every single one of those futures, in every one, Stephen fought and died and killed and lived beside Tony Stark, Peter Parker, and the Guardians of the Galaxy. In every single one, he got to know them, got to understand them. Thousands upon thousands of lifetimes, and Stephen Strange grew to know the Avengers like he knew himself.Ā
Think about that, and think about the look on his face when he kneels to Tonyās dead body, mmhmm?Ā
(Thanks, Iāll just be crying for 14,000,605 years).
Tl;dr: 16,917,397 years is a reasonable, even low estimate for the years Stephen Strange lived while viewing ultimate futures. Give my sorcerer the recognition he deserves.
