Worlds and entire universes were crashing into one another, and Reed Richards was convinced that there had to be someone, or something, behind it all. He was right. There was a force manipulating events from the shadows, and unfortunately, no one was able to stop the Beyonders’ seemingly flawless plan to annihilate the Multiverse.

In Marvel Comics, an incursion is one of the most catastrophic phenomena ever to threaten the Multiverse. The concept became central to Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers and New Avengers stories and eventually formed the foundation for the 2015 Secret Wars event. Marvel itself describes the story as beginning with Earth-616 entering a catastrophic collision course with other realities, with dimensions breaching their boundaries until contact between two worlds results in their destruction.

The origins of the incursions can ultimately be traced back to the Beyonders, a mysterious and immensely powerful race that exists beyond the conventional Marvel Multiverse. Their objective was to bring about the end of everything that existed across the Multiverse. To accomplish this, they conducted an enormous experiment in which they created a version of Molecule Man, Owen Reece, in every reality. Each Molecule Man was effectively designed to function as a living bomb capable of destroying his respective universe. The Beyonders intended for these Molecule Men to eventually die and trigger the destruction of their individual realities, with all of them ultimately contributing to the simultaneous destruction of the Multiverse. Marvel's own retrospective on Secret Wars confirms that the Beyonders placed a Molecule Man in every universe as part of their plan to create universe-ending living weapons.

The Molecule Men were originally intended to remain in place for approximately twenty-five years before their deaths triggered the next stage of the Beyonders' plan. However, Doctor Doom and the Earth-616 Molecule Man discovered what was happening and attempted to interfere. Doom, whose secret identity as Rabum Alal had been hidden for much of the story, joined forces with Owen Reece and embarked on a mission through time and across realities to eliminate the other Molecule Men before they could be activated. They also established the Black Swans, who assisted them in their efforts to locate and eliminate these living bombs.

Unfortunately, the Beyonders had designed their creation far too effectively. Killing the Molecule Men ahead of schedule did not prevent the destruction of the Multiverse. Instead, it set the Multiverse on another road toward the same inevitable destination. The deaths of the Molecule Men caused reality itself to contract, reducing the distance between universes and altering the relationship between their timelines. As a result, different realities began moving toward one another until their respective Earths started to collide. These catastrophic encounters became known as incursions. The first incursion occurred seven years after the death of the first Molecule Man, and it happened at Earth because that was where the first Molecule Man had died. The Beyonders had anticipated this outcome, making the incursions another component of what Doctor Strange ultimately recognized as their “perfect annihilation plan.”

This is what made the situation so terrifying. The heroes were not dealing with a random cosmic accident or an unstable multiverse. The collapse had been engineered. The Beyonders had effectively created a chain reaction in which every attempt to stop their original plan could still lead to the destruction of everything.

Onset of the Incursions: The Molecule Man's Death

The death of the Molecule Men caused the Multiverse to contract, bringing separate universes progressively closer together. Eventually, the Earth belonging to one reality would come into contact with the Earth belonging to another reality, creating an incursion. Each universe's Earth effectively became the point where the collision occurred.

An incursion was not an instantaneous event. Once two Earths began overlapping, the situation entered an approximately eight-hour window. During the early part of this period, a brief state of harmonic alignment allowed the two Earths to exist close to one another without immediately destroying everything around them. To anyone outside the affected region, the world could appear almost completely normal, which made incursions particularly unsettling.

The danger, however, was increasing with every passing minute. Once the eight-hour period ended and the two Earths fully collided, both planets and the universes connected to them would be destroyed. Marvel's Secret Wars material presents the incursions as a steadily escalating crisis in which alternate realities are eliminated one after another until the entire Multiverse is placed on the brink of extinction.

According to the Black Swan, there were at least eight possible ways to avert an incursion, although virtually all of them involved making an extraordinarily brutal choice. One method was to destroy at least one of the two Earths before the collision occurred. Doing so could prevent the incursion from destroying both universes immediately, allowing one reality to survive.

This created the moral nightmare that defined Hickman's Avengers and New Avengers. The heroes could potentially save their own universe, but doing so might require them to deliberately destroy another Earth populated by people who were just as innocent as those they were trying to protect.

Worse still, destroying one Earth did not solve the larger problem. Every incursion shortened the lifespan of the Multiverse itself. As more realities disappeared, the remaining universes were pulled closer together and the frequency of incursions increased. In other words, every victory was temporary, and every solution merely bought the Multiverse a little more time.

Mechanics of the Incursions

Every incursion featured an incursion point, a specific location on each affected Earth from which the inhabitants could see the other Earth approaching. These locations were usually surrounded by unusual red skies, although some incursions produced blue skies instead.

Outside the incursion point, conditions could appear completely ordinary. The rest of the world might continue functioning as normal while, somewhere else on the planet, another universe was literally approaching from beyond reality. This localized nature made the phenomenon even more difficult for ordinary people to understand.

The blue incursions were particularly significant because they were associated with the Mapmakers, entities that exploited the phenomenon for their own purposes. The Mapmakers would drain a targeted Earth of its resources and then use the incursion to move toward another reality. Once the resources of the old Earth had been exhausted, they would destroy it and repeat the process elsewhere.

There was also an unusual phenomenon known as Simtum Tapputu, in which a single Earth could become involved in incursions with two different realities simultaneously. Rather than being caught between just two universes, the affected world could therefore become the meeting point for multiple realities at once.

The existence of incursions forced Earth's greatest minds to confront an impossible question: How far would you go to save your own universe if saving it meant destroying another? This dilemma eventually brought together the secretive Illuminati, a group of some of Earth's most powerful and intelligent figures. Their response was horrifying but practical: they developed methods, including an antimatter weapon, capable of destroying alternate Earths before those worlds could collide with Earth-616.

Marvel's official Secret Wars material confirms just how desperate the situation became. The final incursion eventually involved Earth-616 and Earth-1610, the Ultimate Universe, and neither reality could ultimately survive the collision.

The tragedy was that even destroying an opposing Earth could not permanently save the Multiverse. A universe whose Earth had been destroyed could continue to exist temporarily, but it was still dying because the incursions were shortening the lifespan of the entire Multiverse. One example involved Earth-1120006, whose Earth had already been destroyed by the Mapmakers while the stars of its universe continued collapsing.

By the time the final two realities remained, the Maker, the alternate-universe Reed Richards from Earth-1610, and the Cabal understood that the situation had gone beyond any conventional solution. Every simulation indicated that destroying one Earth would not ultimately prevent the death of everything. The Multiverse had reached the point where there was effectively nowhere left to run.

The Illuminati and the Moral Cost of Survival

The incursions transformed the Illuminati from a group of powerful individuals into one of Marvel's most controversial alliances. Characters such as Mister Fantastic, Black Bolt, Doctor Strange, Iron Man, Namor and Beast were forced to consider decisions that no superhero should ever have to make.

The central problem was brutally simple. If another Earth was going to collide with Earth-616, someone had to decide whether that alternate world deserved to live. The Illuminati attempted to find solutions that would avoid killing entire worlds, but as the number of incursions increased, their options became increasingly limited.

The antimatter injection system became one of the most infamous tools associated with this period. By destroying an alternate Earth before the collision, the heroes could theoretically prevent both universes from being destroyed at once. Yet the emotional and ethical consequences were enormous.

This was one of the reasons Hickman's New Avengers became so important to the eventual Secret Wars storyline. The story was not simply about superheroes punching cosmic villains. It asked whether morality could survive when the universe itself was dying. Namor, in particular, became willing to make decisions that other members of the Illuminati could not accept, ultimately contributing to the formation of the Cabal, a group prepared to destroy worlds to preserve their own reality.

The incursions also fractured relationships between heroes. Friends and teammates who had fought together for years began disagreeing over what survival actually meant. Namor's willingness to destroy alternate Earths eventually placed him directly at odds with Black Panther and Wakanda, while the escalating crisis pushed the Avengers and Illuminati toward increasingly desperate choices. Marvel has noted that these events ultimately led into Secret Wars and profoundly affected the relationship between Black Panther and Namor.

The Final Incursion and the End of the Multiverse

Eventually, there were only two realities left: Earth-616 and Earth-1610, the home of the Ultimate Universe. Their collision became the final incursion.

The Future Foundation, anticipating the destruction of the Multiverse, constructed a Life Raft designed to protect a select group of people from the coming collapse. Mister Fantastic and his allies hoped that those who survived could eventually rebuild reality after the Multiverse died. The Maker and the Cabal constructed a separate vessel for their own survivors.

When the final incursion occurred, Earth-616 and Earth-1610 were destroyed. The Marvel Multiverse, as it had existed, was effectively gone. Marvel's official synopsis describes this moment as the destruction of both the Marvel Universe and the Ultimate Universe, leaving behind a single enormous patchwork world assembled from fragments of devastated realities.

That world was Battleworld.

Before the final destruction, Doctor Doom, Molecule Man and Doctor Strange had confronted the Beyonders. Doom had eventually abandoned his original strategy of simply killing the Molecule Men and instead kidnapped many of them so that he could use their combined power as a weapon. This led to the confrontation with the Beyonders in which the Molecule Men helped Doom destroy them and seize their power.

With the Multiverse collapsing around him, Doom used that stolen power to create Battleworld from the remnants of destroyed realities. The resulting world was a patchwork of countless universes and timelines, with Doom ruling over it as its god-emperor.

The survivors who had escaped aboard the Life Rafts eventually awakened and discovered what had happened. Doom had not simply preserved reality; he had rebuilt what remained according to his own design and positioned himself at its center. Marvel's official account of Secret Wars explains that Doom saved what remained of the Multiverse but created a world in which its inhabitants worshipped him and had largely forgotten the existence of their previous realities.

Battleworld and the Rebirth of Reality

Battleworld became the setting for the main Secret Wars storyline. Instead of a conventional planet, it was a colossal collection of fragments taken from realities that had been destroyed during the incursions. Different regions represented different worlds, timelines and versions of familiar Marvel characters.

Doctor Doom ruled over this strange new reality as an almost omnipotent god. Yet despite possessing unimaginable power, Doom was not entirely secure in his position. His greatest weakness remained the same one he had always possessed: his rivalry with Reed Richards.

The eventual confrontation between Doctor Doom and Mister Fantastic became the emotional climax of Secret Wars. Reed challenged Doom not merely because he wanted to defeat him, but because he believed he could do a better job of preserving and rebuilding reality.

Molecule Man ultimately played a crucial role in determining what happened next. The power taken from the Beyonders was transferred to Reed Richards, allowing him to begin rebuilding the Multiverse. With the assistance of his son Franklin Richards and Molecule Man, Reed reconstructed reality and ushered in the Eighth Cosmos.

Marvel confirms that the restored Multiverse was not simply an identical reset. The events of Secret Wars produced lasting changes, including the relocation of Miles Morales from the Ultimate Universe into Earth-616. The Maker also survived and remained an important remnant of the destroyed Ultimate Universe.

The rebirth of reality therefore marked the end of the Seventh Cosmos and the beginning of a new era for Marvel's Multiverse. The Beyonders' experiment had failed in its ultimate objective because something survived and continued.

Alternate Realities

Mergiverse — Earth-616

The concept of incursions has also affected alternate realities beyond the central Secret Wars storyline. One unusual example is the Mergiverse, associated with Marvel's Secret Warps stories.

In this reality, almost everyone had been merged with another character, creating a universe filled with bizarre combinations of familiar Marvel heroes and villains. However, Zeke Stane remained the only soul in the entire Mergiverse who had not been merged.

That exception created an imbalance within the universe. As the imbalance grew, it began threatening the stability of the entire reality and eventually caused the Soul Stone to fracture. The damage continued until the Soul Stone was completely shattered.

The resulting instability caused the universe of the Supreme Seven to collide with the universe inhabited by the Defenders. One proposed solution was to destroy the Defenders' Earth before the collision could completely destabilize the reality.

However, that solution only created further complications as the Mergiverse began folding in on itself and generating new warps among its inhabitants. Eventually, Hammer Supreme understood what was actually happening. He merged his hammer, Mjolniron, with Zeke Stane, unleashing enough energy to repair the shattered Soul Stone.

Once the Soul Stone was restored, the merged characters were separated and returned to their original forms, preventing the collision and stabilizing the reality.

Marvel Cinematic Universe and Related Realities

Incursions also became part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, although their mechanics differ from the comic-book version. In the MCU's connected realities, prolonged multiversal travel can contribute to incursions. One particularly dangerous method is dream-walking, a spell associated with the Darkhold that allows a person to project their consciousness into and control an alternate version of themselves.

The events surrounding Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness established that multiversal interference can have catastrophic consequences. The Doctor Strange of Earth-838 was responsible for an incursion that destroyed an entire reality, while another version of Strange, commonly identified as Sinister Strange, caused an incursion in his own universe, although that reality was not completely destroyed.

The Earth-616 Doctor Strange also became involved in an incursion, reinforcing the idea that repeatedly interfering with alternate realities can destabilize the boundaries separating universes.

This version of the concept is particularly important because it demonstrates how Marvel adapted one of the most important ideas from Hickman's Secret Wars mythology for the MCU. While the comics portray incursions as part of a carefully engineered multiversal annihilation strategy involving the Beyonders and Molecule Men, the MCU has presented them primarily as consequences of dangerous multiversal interference.

Notes

Although the incursions were not necessarily the Beyonders' original mechanism for destroying the Multiverse, the Beyonders ultimately confirmed that the phenomenon was part of their experiment and that they were responsible for the chain of events that produced it.

Doctor Strange famously regarded the Beyonders' plan as almost “perfect” because there was no obvious way to defeat it. If the Molecule Men were allowed to die naturally, they would eventually destroy their respective universes. If Doom and Molecule Man killed them prematurely, their deaths would trigger the incursions. Either path ultimately led toward the same destination: the destruction of the Multiverse.

That is what made the Beyonders' strategy so effective. The heroes were trapped in a situation where attempting to solve the problem could itself become the mechanism that caused the problem.

Clarifications

There are effectively two plans for the Beyonders and two plans for Doctor Doom, and keeping them separate makes the entire Secret Wars storyline much easier to understand.

The Beyonders' Plan A

The Beyonders' original plan was straightforward in its horrifying simplicity: create a Molecule Man in every universe and eventually cause all of them to die simultaneously. Their deaths would destroy their individual universes and, together, annihilate the entire Multiverse.

Doom's Plan A

Doctor Doom initially wanted to stop the Beyonders by eliminating the Molecule Men before they could become active. He worked with the Earth-616 Molecule Man and established the Black Swans to assist in finding and destroying their counterparts across the Multiverse.

Doom genuinely believed this could save reality. He did not initially intend to create Battleworld or rule over the remnants of existence.

The Beyonders' Plan B

The incursions became the next stage of the destruction. By setting the Molecule Men on a path toward death, the Beyonders created the conditions that caused universes to contract and collide.

The Mapmakers were also sent into the Multiverse, where they could track potential threats and interfere with beings attempting to understand or resist the incursions.

Doom's Plan B

Eventually, Doom realized that simply killing the Molecule Men would not save the Multiverse. He changed strategy and began kidnapping Molecule Men instead of killing them.

These Molecule Men were eventually used as weapons against the Beyonders themselves. Their combined power helped Doom defeat the Beyonders and seize their immense energy. Doom then used that power to preserve the remnants of reality as Battleworld.

This distinction is important because it explains why Doctor Doom's actions can appear contradictory throughout the story. He was not initially trying to destroy the Multiverse. He was trying to save it, even if his methods were increasingly extreme. Only after realizing that his original strategy was doomed to fail did he develop the Battleworld plan. Marvel's official retrospective similarly describes Doom and Molecule Man's original actions as an attempt to save the Multiverse rather than destroy it.

Another source of confusion involves Rabum Alal. Because of the Black Swan's actions and misinformation, many characters believed Rabum Alal and the Ivory Kings were working toward the same goal: destroying the Multiverse. In reality, Rabum Alal was Doctor Doom, and Doom claimed that he was trying to prevent the Beyonders from achieving their objective.

There is also some nuance concerning what Doom and Molecule Man understood about their own actions. Later Marvel material indicates that Doom and Reece did not initially understand that killing the Molecule Men would trigger the incursions in precisely the way it did. They understood that the Molecule Men were dangerous and that their actions could cause worlds to collide, but they did not fully appreciate how rapidly and effectively the incursions would accelerate the death of the Multiverse.

Why the Incursions Matter to Marvel

The incursions are much more than a complicated piece of Marvel cosmology. They are the central mechanism that transforms Jonathan Hickman's Avengers and New Avengers stories into the massive Secret Wars event.

They also changed the Marvel Universe permanently. The 2015 Secret Wars series, written by Jonathan Hickman with art by Esad Ribić, was designed as a culmination of the multiversal crisis and fundamentally reshaped Marvel's cosmology.

The story's biggest strength is that there is no easy heroic answer. Destroy another Earth and you become responsible for billions of deaths. Refuse to act and your own universe may be destroyed. Destroy the Molecule Men and you accelerate the incursions. Leave them alone and the Beyonders' original plan continues. Even Doom, one of Marvel's most infamous villains, begins the story genuinely attempting to prevent the Multiverse's destruction before eventually accepting that saving reality may require rebuilding it in his own image.

That impossible choice is ultimately what makes the incursions such an important concept in Marvel Comics. They turn the Multiverse from an endless playground of alternate possibilities into something fragile, finite and capable of dying.

And when the final incursion finally occurred, it did exactly what the heroes had feared for years: the Marvel Multiverse ended.

What came afterward was Battleworld, Doctor Doom's reign, the final confrontation between Doom and Reed Richards, and eventually the rebirth of the Multiverse as the Eighth Cosmos. The entire chain of events transformed Secret Wars from a conventional crossover into one of the most consequential stories in modern Marvel history. Marvel's official reading guide still describes the final incursion as the collision between the Marvel Universe and the Ultimate Universe, with Battleworld emerging from the fragments left behind.

In many ways, the incursions were therefore the true beginning of Secret Wars. The war on Battleworld may have given the event its name, but the real story began much earlier, when the walls between universes started breaking down and Earth's greatest heroes realized that the Multiverse was not simply under attack.

It was dying.

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