Weirdworld Theory

**This post contains spoilers**

Marvel’s epic Secret Wars event has come to an end, and if you happened to read the exciting book you’ll also know that means so too does the chaotic Battleworld. Doom has fallen from God status and the Marvel universe has been rewritten and recreated in “others visions”, strangely Weirdworld still exists. Why? This is where my theory comes in.

Let’s cover the non-fictional aspects of Weirdworld first, Weirdworld was written by Jason Aaron with art from the very talented Mike Del Mundo in 2015, it’s now continuing under Sam Humphries but still receiving brilliant pencils by Del Mundo. It’s a book I highly recommend, if you’ve missed it you can pick up its which covers its entire first storyline.

Now that we have that covered let’s dig into the fun fiction of Weirdworld. Weirdworld followed the warrior Arkon in his search to return to his homeland of Polmachus. His journey was treacherous, battling dragons, magma men, ogres, man-things, and many other crazy things and in the end Arkon was no closer to his home then when he started, discovering Weirdworld was an island he couldn’t escape. Weirdworld confirmed again as an island later in the newest 2016 series of Weirldworld as our “heroes” Goleta the Wizardslayer and American teen Rebecca Rodriguez when Earth can be seen as a distant planet.

So, here’s my theory, Weirdworld is not real, it’s a completely fictional place that lives in peoples imaginations and is created and played over and over again with different heroes. To be more specific, it’s a tabletop Role-Playing Game.

I hadn’t given this theory much thought at all until I was reading Radioactive Spider-Gwen #4 when it was literally shoved right in my face. In a time before Battleworld was destroyed, Peter Parker, Gwen Stacy (Spider-Gwen), and Harry Osborn were playing an RPG where Peter Parker was the Dungeon Master. I don’t believe this is a coincidence, It isn’t referenced as a game called Weirdworld but during the conversation Harry was upset he couln’t use his hero “Arkon: Thunder King of Polemachus” but instead was forced to wander weirdworld as the Green Goblin looking for a way to buy back his soul because of his refusal to pay the toll troll.

There’s not much more after that, just Harry refuses to use his Green Goblin character, breaks its head off and Peter goes off and probably cries somewhere, but the point is, Harry had used Arkon before and I believe it’s safe to assume he’d used him in Peter’s Weirdworld. In many tabletop RPG’s it isn’t uncommon to continue to level up and use your hero until his death or ultimate demise.

If you think of it that way, Weirdworld starts to feel like an RPG, a hero on a quest (or mission) is joined by different people on their quest whatever it may be, they have smaller battles here and there that are then followed by boss battles. The theory also explains why Weirdworld is forever changing. In Weirdworld #3 Arkon is given a map that is completely different than the map he had been making out of memory. How was that possible? It’s because Weirdworld changes as the Dungeon Master sees fit, there doesn’t have to be a rhyme or reason to it, it’s fantasy.

Obviously the one gigantic flaw in my theory is that Weirdworld was included in the Battleworld map, somehow Doom placed it in his personal Pangea. The only saving grace is the fact that Arkon proved it was an island and no other book references any ability to get onto or off of Weirldworld. People made it over The Wall from the Deadlands to Arcadia and so forth but there was never any mention of crossing Weirdworld from Utopolis, Arachnia, or Marville.

Peter stormed off before Harry could finish is Arkon story, Weirdworld volume zero was left like an open book not really knowing what happened to Arkon, now we’re introduced to Goleta and Becca, a wizardslayer and a normal teenage girl. Sure Becca could have really been transported through some strange portal while flying through the Bermuda triangle, but something tells me she’s a teenage girl being introduced to role-playing games by her friends. Goleta is obviously high level and I can only assume Becca didn’t use her imagination when filling out her character card and her Dungeon Master friend let her role with it. Earth is seen as an obtainable goal in the distance, but Becca has no real powers to return to it, if only a quest was given to her to find a wizard, return his powers, and then be transported back to Earth. Hmmm, sounds like a fun RPG plot to me.

I know it’s a wild theory and the internets are full of them, but it’s one I would love to see come to fruition. Either way, Weirdworld is a fantastic book that I’m sure will prove me wrong in the end, but I’ll believe a Dungeon Master is in complete control of it until then.