Marvel’s ‘What If…?’ Episode 4 Break Down: The Darkest Side of Doctor Strange
The latest What If…? story has Doctor Stephen Strange facing another side of himself.
The fourth episode of Marvel’s What If…? tells a very dark alternate story– but is it starting to weave pieces of the series together? One question it does answer: what if Stephen had lost Christine in that car accident instead of his hands?
The episode begins with the gut punch– but don’t worry, you’ll get used to it. Stephen greets Christine and the two head to an awards ceremony in Stephen’s car. Much like the cinematic timeline, Strange’s showboat driving causes a crash, and when he regains consciousness, Christine is dead.
Stephen travels all over the world to assuage his grief, landing in Kamer Taj and becoming a master of the magical arts. Using the Eye of Agamotto, he discovers that he can travel through time. But his friend and resident Judge-Judy Wong advises him against meddling with time.
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But of course, Stephen ignores his advice and goes back in time to save Christine– only to watch her die over and over again. No matter what alterations he makes, it seems like she has to die. And in fact, she does. The Ancient One comes to him and explains that he has to lose her to defeat Dormamu and become the Sorcerer Supreme. This is what is referred to as an Absolute Point in time.
In his denial, he escapes the Ancient One and sends himself to the lost library of Cagliostro. There, he meets O’Bengh, the librarian. He finds a book that teaches him to absorb the powers of other mystical beings. After his first confrontation with one of them, O’Bengh nurses him back to health, and dispenses some advice about the difference between devotion and delusion.
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But Stephen’s determination leads him to start absorbing powers from these powerful creatures, resulting in the most breathtaking animation of the episode. Uatu watches on as he fuses with some pretty nasty-looking monsters.
Elsewhere, another version of Stephen Strange is being told by Wong not to tinker with time– because the Ancient One split his mind and spirit in two. She sends him to save reality from his darker self, and soon after, the two face off in the Void. After the battle, Dark Stephen absorbs the more self-aware Stephen and uses his collected power to prevent the Absolute Point of Christine’s death. When she comes to, she’s horrified by the monster Stephen has become. She disintegrates as reality collapses around him, leaving him alone in darkness… for now.
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Episode 4 Highlights
O’Bengh gave some pretty sound advice, but he’s a character from the comics who’s often a Doctor Strange villain. The character was originally an ancient sorcerer who used the powers of the Darkhold to become immortal. Throughout history, he would kill men and take their names as his own, including the French alchemist Cagliostro.
Stephen also gains so much power that he’s able to sense Uatu. I’m curious if this will come up in the MCU timeline as a skill Strange has already acquired or one that he will down the line.
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This episode explored the idea of death acceptance in a really powerful way. As the two halves of Stephen fight, it’s as if his acceptance is fighting his denial. Soon after Dark Stephen absorbs the version of himself that has accepted Christine’s death, he brings Christine back, but he almost immediately recognizes that he was wrong. It wasn’t enough to prevent reality collapsing, but perhaps it was enough to keep him alive in his reality-pod now floating in the Void.
Regardless, the duality of Stephen in this episode is a theme. He and Christine are going to celebrate performing a successful hemispherectomy, a surgery that involves separating one half of the brain from the other. One can’t help but think of his comment to Peter about trying to live two lives in the No Way Home trailer…
What This Means for No Way Home & Multiverse of Madness
For those who saw the No Way Home trailer and said “That’s can’t be the real Doctor Strange, he’s too reckless,” I would like to gesture to this episode. Many have speculated that the Stephen Strange in the trailer is actually Mephisto, which is a stretch– but there is a moment in this episode when Stephen is absorbing magical monsters and his face becomes that of a devil, leaving us to wonder if Stephen absorbed the powers of the devil.
Many are seeing this presence of the tentacled monster in this episode as confirmation that the Elder God and monster Shuma Gorath is not only the same monster from the Captain Carter episode, but that he will be the main villain in the Multiverse of Madness, but I have no intention of upsetting the Old Gods by suggesting that all extra-dimensional tentacles belong to one monster.
Nonetheless, I can’t deny that this episode seems to clarify one thing: that these stories will interconnect. In the trailer, we see glimpses of Doctor Strange meeting Captain Carter and fighting alongside one another. Am I excited to hear the pep-talk Peggy has in store for the Sadness Supreme in his little bubble of darkness? Yes. Do you think he’ll make an appearance in Peggy’s timeline?
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