Ben 10’s Multiverse Beat Marvel to the Punch

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The multiverse – the idea of multiple alternate realities – has become a huge trend in media throughout the 2020s. We’re seeing it everywhere, from blockbuster movies to video games like Mortal Kombat 1. Using the multiverse as a story element allows writers to explore different sides of characters by imagining how they’d be in other worlds. And from a business perspective, it’s a great way to bring together different versions of popular franchises.

The idea of a multiverse isn’t new, but it’s recently become incredibly popular, largely thanks to a 2014 Marvel comic event. However, a month before that comic, Spider-Verse, was released, an episode of the popular Cartoon Network show Steven Universe explored the same concept, becoming the show’s highest-rated episode and arguably starting the multiverse trend in mainstream media.

Ben 10 Explored the Multiverse Long Before the MCU

The first Ben 10 series premiered in 2005 and followed Ben Tennyson, a boy who discovered the Omnitrix. This special device let him transform into various aliens using their DNA. The original series lasted five seasons, concluding in 2008, but the story didn’t end there. It continued with three more series – Ben 10: Alien Force, Ben 10: Ultimate Alien, and Ben 10: Omniverse – before being completely reimagined in 2016.

Even though the look and feel changed over time, all the Ben 10 series before the reboot shared a single, continuous storyline, picking up directly where the previous series left off. The creators marked the 200th episode of the entire Ben 10 franchise – which happened to be the 50th episode of Omniverse, titled “And Then There Was Ben” – with a big, special event.

As a big Ben 10 fan, I always loved how the show would sometimes play with the idea of alternate realities. Even in the original series, there were a few episodes that weren’t considered part of the main story where things happened differently – like that one where Gwen, not Ben, found the Omnitrix. But it was the Omniverse episode “Store 23” that really blew my mind. Seeing Ben meet another version of himself, one who’d used the Omnitrix to become famous and rich, was just a brilliant twist!

Even so, “And Then There Was Ben” marked the first time the series truly explored multiple universes. The story actually started in the previous episode, “And Then There Were None,” which was entirely set in a different reality. That episode featured a Ben who never discovered the Omnitrix and was living a normal, uneventful life – until he was targeted by a team of evil versions of himself.

The group gathered, not knowing his real intention: to wipe out all universes except the one where a weak version of Ben lived. This would eliminate any potential resistance to his plan to take over the galaxy. He managed to do it, but luckily, that Ben was saved by Professor Paradox, a time traveler, who sent him back in time before the bomb detonated.

Ben 10’s 200th Episode Was a High Point of the Franchise

In the “And Then There Was Ben” storyline, the heroes journeyed through different universes, collecting heroic versions of Ben to fight their evil counterparts and alter the past. The evil Bens were mostly created for these episodes, but the good Bens were all based on characters from previous seasons.

The team included Ben 23, a famous version of Ben, and another Gwen who discovered the Omnitrix. They were also joined by Ben 10,000, an older Ben we’d seen before, and the original Ben – the main character audiences had followed throughout the series.

This episode explained a surprising twist: the seemingly helpless Ben was actually the reason the original Ben found the Omnitrix. It cleverly mixed mind-bending ideas with callbacks to earlier parts of the series, effectively connecting all four Ben 10 shows into one unified story.

The Ben 10 episode “And Then There Was Ben” is a huge hit with fans. It has an impressive 9.7/10 rating on IMDb – the highest score of any Ben 10 episode ever! This is even higher than popular movies like Into the Spider-Verse (8.4), Spider-Man: No Way Home (8.2), Everything Everywhere All at Once (7.7), and Deadpool & Wolverine (7.5). Interestingly, when the Ben 10 reboot attempted a similar story in its finale, it only received a 7.7 rating.

The ‘And Then There Was Ben’ episode was a uniquely brilliant moment in Ben 10 that the show never quite managed to repeat, particularly as the idea of multiple universes became more common by the time the series concluded in 2021. While some viewers have grown tired of the multiverse idea, the show’s most popular episode serves as a reminder of what initially made Ben 10 so beloved.

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2026-01-14 07:13