Buzz
One of the most meme-worthy moments in Avengers: Infinity War features Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange gazing into the future 14,000,605 times to uncover every possible outcome of the Avengers' battle against Thanos. From these visions, Strange revealed to Iron Man that only one scenario led to the heroes' victory. This has sparked numerous fan theories about the exact nature of this scenario. But have you ever wondered why Strange specifically examined 14,000,605 futures? What significance lies in this particular number? A Reddit user has a theory, as reported by Screen Rant.
ArenLuxon shared on Reddit that Strange likely used a specific combination of characters surviving both the battle against Thanos and his infamous snap. This formula includes 21 characters from the film, such as Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Captain America, Black Widow, War Machine, Falcon, Spider-Man, Black Panther, Scarlet Witch, Winter Soldier, Drax, Groot, Nebula, Star-Lord, Rocket, Shuri, Okoye, Gamora, and Vision. With Avengers: Endgame adding Hawkeye, Captain Marvel, and Ant-Man, the total number of heroes becomes 24. Each character’s fate is binary—alive or dead—resulting in two possible outcomes per hero.
This leads to 2^24 combinations, which equals 16,777,216.
The theorist posits that Vision should be considered as uncountable in this scenario, since he perished only when Thanos reversed time. This adjustment leads to 2^23, or 8,388,608 possible outcomes. However, there's a chance that Vision could survive, so the Redditor assigns him a one in three likelihood of living. This adds another 5,592,405 potential futures, bringing the total to 13,981,013, which is very close to 14,000,605.
If you're skeptical about the validity of this theory because of the other characters in the film, such as Loki, the theorist has an explanation. 'Of course, you can argue about who is a 'hero' and who isn’t, but what matters is who Strange considers to be heroes, as those are the futures he will observe,' they explain. 'If he doesn't see someone as significant, he might not explore the consequences of their survival or death.'
Though we may never get a definitive answer as to why Strange looked into the future exactly 14,000,605 times, this theory seems plausible. At the very least, it gives us a topic to discuss until Avengers: Endgame premieres on April 26.
