The totality of Evil Strange’s failure comes crashing down on him when The Watcher (Jeffrey Wright) finally reveals himself, which we get a tease of earlier on when Strange hears him through whatever cosmic noise cancelling The Watcher uses to narrate to the viewer.
Despite the Ancient One’s distracting involvement, the story sticks its landing, taking one of the darkest turns in MCU history going into the final moments. In fact, most of this episode’s strongest visual moments are the more emotionally evocative ones, like the shadows of Strange’s new horde of inner demons giving way to his new gaunt appearance. The MCU is getting a little too obsessed with these mirror grudge matches, and all the glowy ropes and portals in the multiverse fail to make the whole “you’re literally your own worst enemy” bit feel fresh. Strange being “half a man, living half a life” is distracting, an unnecessary development that feels engineered just to give us a Strange vs. The episode does occasionally strain itself explaining the temporal shenanigans going on, overcomplicating the story by revealing that the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) used the power of the Dark Dimension to create two versions of Doctor Strange in the same reality. Rachel McAdams has a thankless role as little more than the source of Strange’s grief, but she does get time to bring some intensity to her performance in her final scene. What If is a great vehicle for these morality plays when it can avoid dipping too much into the fan service well for easy thrills.Ĭumberbatch turns in a good vocal performance, especially when Strange’s inability to save Christine is turning the screws in his mind. There’s an element of Gothic horror to the whole episode, with Strange positioned as both Doctors Jekyll and Frankenstein as he learns the cost of his meddlesome hubris. With each creature (or evil garden gnome) absorbed, Strange literally becomes more of a monster. Strange’s centuries-spanning marathon of summoning monsters to absorb their power is a great illustration of this, evoking his intense focus on bargaining with Dormammu at any personal cost. While our understanding of a nexus event’s importance to the MCU’s plot going forward is still growing, the concept is used wonderfully in this episode to represent the effects of tragedy, of loss so painful we’d unmake the world to reverse it. While Strange is able to time travel back to the night of the accident, nothing he does saves Christine from dying: it’s a nexus event, or an “absolute point in time” as this episode refers to it.
He’s still able to defeat Dormammu and become Sorcerer Supreme, but the Time Stone around his neck hangs heavier and heavier as Strange’s power grows. Strange losing the use of his hands was already an understandable motivator for his journey to Kamar-Taj in his solo film, but Christine’s death puts him in an even more desperate state of mind by the time he gets there. Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams) in the passenger seat. And that ending!Įpisode 4 takes the foundation of Strange’s (Benedict Cumberbatch) mystical journey - the car accident that took his hands - and twists fate by putting Dr. The Sorcerer Supreme’s descent into grief-stricken madness is an effective cautionary tale about what loss can do to a person and furthers the argument that these more mature stories are What If’s bread and butter. As the guardian of our reality, Strange’s cosmic perspective and access to the Time Stone has mostly been a blessing up to this point - the upcoming events of Spider-Man: No Way Home notwithstanding - but here, the consequences of Strange obsessing over his great power with no thought to the great responsibility that follows it are dire. Doctor Strange, with his limitless magical potential, has always felt like one the MCU’s most dangerous wild cards, and What If’s fourth episode makes clear why.
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