S01.E04: What If...Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?

[formerlyfreedom]

Quote

A grief-stricken Doctor Strange uses the Eye of Agamotto in a dangerous effort to change the past.

Dropping Wednesday, September 1, 2021.

[vb68]

Fantastic voice work by Benedict Cumberbatch in this one. I know the voice acting has been inconsistent in other episodes (looking at you, Renner), but I thought Cumberbatch was exceptional here.  He really sold it.

Also, cool that he got to actually interact with The Watcher at the close.

[phalange]

This was definitely the bleakest scenario of all the episodes so far. No hope to fix anything, just, poof, end of the world. I can see Dr. Strange going off the deep end if he lost Christine and stealing power from others, including himself, to save her. And all for nothing because everyone ceases to exist anyway.

The Watcher actually speaking with someone in one version of the multiverse was a nice touch and it makes sense that it was with one of the few people who could sense his presence.

Agreed that the voice work was really well done in this one. 

[paigow]

Evil Strange sounded like Smaug  The Kraken is 0 - 2 vs Superheroes  

[arc]

The Ancient One said Christine's death is an "absolute point", that it had to happen to inspire Doctor Strange to study magic. But if she'd just told this one "you can have Christine back but the universe will take most of the use of your hands", he'd probably have taken that deal.

Then again, I never really felt there was an all-consuming love thing between Christine and Stephen in their movie. So maybe the divergence point wasn't just her coming along on the drive but them being in love, which would have started much earlier?

Cumberbatch was great in this but weirdly the cartoon version of him didn't look that much like him. Might be the first time all series where the voice acting (original actor or soundalike) was spot on but the look was off.

[Spartan Girl]

And I thought last week was dark. This was just bleak. I need a cookie.

3 hours ago, vb68 said:

Fantastic voice work by Benedict Cumberbatch in this one. I know the voice acting has been inconsistent in other episodes (looking at you, Renner), but I thought Cumberbatch was exceptional here.  He really sold it

He is a wonderful voice actor. He was nearly recognizable in that crappy Grinch cartoon remake—I never would have known it was him if it hadn’t been advertised. Cool that they got the OC cast back for this one.

I hope next week is a little more fun. It has to be if it’s 

Spoiler

Party Thor

 

[cambridgeguy]

So this Strange is from earlier than when he was introduced in the movie?  Because he didn't really have that arrogant asshole vibe.  Movie Strange would have bitched about having to give a speech or just talked about how awesome he was.  Of course, movie Strange also wasn't nearly as into Christine as what we saw here. 

Someone also really likes our tentacled buddy from the first episode.  They must have played Marvel vs Street Fighter back in the day

[Kate47]

Whew, that was dark but the animation was top tier amazing. I actually felt like this was a story worth exploring to gain a better understanding of Strange's character in a way that couldn't be done in live action or shoehorned into a movie. This one was really good.

[Cobalt Stargazer]

2 hours ago, Spartan Girl said:

And I thought last week was dark. This was just bleak. I need a cookie.

It really was, especially the part where Strange actually gets Christine back, and she returns to find him a monster. Literally, since he was manifesting parts of all the things he absorbed in order to get so much power. I was wondering why Wong had no idea of what was going on, since he's the one who said Stephen should join him in the kitchen before he did something stupid. But why would the Ancient One split him if she could have just stopped him in some other way? Even dead, she seemed to have power and abilities at her disposal. Maybe she could only do so much? I don't know.

[tv echo]

I agree that Benedict Cumberbatch did a great job voicing Doctor Strange.  I also agree that I never got the impression that Christine was his great love from the movie.

So this What If story is basically another use of the already overused trope of killing off the hero's wife/girlfriend, thereby fueling the hero's character journey/hero saga (or villain saga, in this case).

However, the twist of the split timeline and two Doctor Stranges in the same universe, causing a broken reality, was interesting. In a way, evil Doctor Strange took the place of the villain Kaecilius, who had been motivated by the loss of his wife and child.

I was shocked that this episode ended with Doctor Strange bringing back Christine, but becoming a monster and destroying the world in the process. Remorseful, he cannot change the ending. 

So... a really dark and depressing episode.

Returning talent: Benedict Cumberbatch, Rachel McAdams,* Benedict Wong, Tilda Swinton and Leslie Bibb.
New talent: Ike Amadi (as O'Bengh).

(* It really did not sound like Rachel McAdams. I was positive it was a "sound-alike" actor until I saw the cast credits.)

Edited September 1, 2021 by tv echo

[paigow]

4 hours ago, arc said:

Then again, I never really felt there was an all-consuming love thing between Christine and Stephen in their movie. So maybe the divergence point wasn't just her coming along on the drive but them being in love, which would have started much earlier?

They had already broken up when the movie started. She still had keys to his apartment and she was dating the orthopedic surgeon who did the hand surgery.

[thuganomics85]

Man, depending how things play out in Spider-Man: No Way Home, 2021 is shaping up to be the year of Doctor Strange fuckups!

So, in this universe, Strange and Christine are actually an item and are in the faithful car ride together, but instead of Strange losing the use of his hands in the accident (or was it an accident?  I swear, I was thinking someone or something was out to get him/them), Christine dies in the car wreck instead.  Strange proceeds to still go through with the magic training, but now his main goal is to bring Christine back to life despite it being a "set" point.  Naturally it ends with him absorbing the essence of a whole bunch of magical creatures which make him go crazy and pretty much destroy the planet, time, and reality.  Whoops!  The Ancient One's idea to somehow "split" Strange and have a good one try to take him on was a solid idea, but it seemed clear that the other one was just too powerful after everything.

Figured Benedict Cumberbatch would do fairly well here since he has some experience doing voice work before.  The rest of the cast did pretty well too: Rachel McAdams did sound a little different compared to the film version, but i could still tell it was actually her.

Even when he's slowly fading away into black, gooey nothingness, Wong still finds time to help Strange with spell work.  Respect!

Liked how Strange was the first one to sense the Watcher and even have a conversation with him.  But the Watcher sure is taking his job seriously!

Two kind of bleak episodes in a row.  I wonder if they'll lighten things back up next week.

[Cobalt Stargazer]

18 minutes ago, thuganomics85 said:

Two kind of bleak episodes in a row.  I wonder if they'll lighten things back up next week.

Somebody on my MCU Facebook group said the show was just softening us up with the first two fairly light-hearted episodes. Then  it was like, "Hold my beer."

[benteen]

I wasn't a fan of this episode.  I liked Doctor Strange but his film doesn't open itself up for an interesting What if.

[Sakura12]

So in our universe Steven and Christine broke up and he destroys his hands. Then in this universe they stayed together and Dr. Strange destroys the world. That's not s a good endorsement for their relationship. Lol

This one was okay. I wasn't a huge fan of his movie either. So I wasn't that interested in this episode. I figured BC would be good with the voice work since he's done it before. But it is weird when the actors voicing their character don't sound at all like the character. I saw Rachel McAdams in the credits but she sounded nothing like her character in the movie. 

[blugirlami21]

This one felt like it wasn't based in reality. I never ever got the sense in the movies that Stephen and Christine were that much in love. Nor was Stephen Strange the nice charming guy we see here lol.

And what the ancient one said isn't true. He wasn't even with Christine in the movie and she didn't die either.

Reminds me of the Charmed episode where Phoebe kept saving her boyfriend from dying. 

I just wasn't invested in this one at all. The other ones seemed like a true point of divergence this one seemed like fanfiction.

Edited September 1, 2021 by blugirlami21

[ursula]

I loved it! I kept rooting for Strange to get more and more evil and destroy the world in the hope of saving Christine and the episode delivered. 

If "What if"s won't explore "rocks fall, everyone dies" endings, then what will?

[swanpride]

Honestly, this episode was just p.. me off on every level. For starters: Apparently it wasn't enough to fridge Christine multiple times, they also basically declared all the help she gave Dr. Stange in the original timeline meaningless. To be completely clear here: If Christine had died, Dr. Strange wouldn't have survived either, because there wouldn't have been anyone to electroshock him back to live. She isn't just a tool to motivate him, she is someone with important skills needed to aid him. 

Second: Levi would have never stayed with him if he had acted out that much! Way to dismiss a great character just because it is a cloak! But then, they discriminated against pretty much everyone in the franchise....

Third: If you want to tell such a bleak story, fine, but then don't announce the fact at the start of the episode. I was so bored because I knew that would end up in the destruction of the universe. 

Oh, and fourth: It is not really convincing that Christine dying is an "unchangeable event" because she clearly didn't in the timeline we know. If you do time travel, you need to set rules and stick to them, no rewrite them whenever you are in the mood. 

[arc]

I figured it just meant the Ancient One was talking out her ass again. She was as confidently wrong in Endgame as she was here.

[Zuleikha]

I wish the Watcher would stop emphasizing "one choice" when it's not one choice. The point of divergence here must have been multiple choices that all led to Christine/Strange having a happy, meaningful, healthy-seeming relationship. 

Then on top of that, we see that any choice Strange/Christine made on the fateful night still resulted in the same outcome. 

I don't mind this per se, but it seems inconsistent with everything else we've been shown or told. It also doesn't make sense given that the MCU verse had a completely different set of events. How does the creation of the multiverse lead to the establishment of a branch with an Absolute Point? 

I thought it was good as a self-contained alternate possibilities episode, though. There's the possibility something in the future will reconcile the discrepancy of the Absolute Point concept with the existence of the MCU verse's events.

[Cobalt Stargazer]

3 hours ago, swanpride said:

Oh, and fourth: It is not really convincing that Christine dying is an "unchangeable event" because she clearly didn't in the timeline we know. If you do time travel, you need to set rules and stick to them, no rewrite them whenever you are in the mood. 

Isn't this a different timeline, though? Because Christine dying in the car crash isn't what happened. Stephen's hands were wrecked instead, damaged so badly that he could never operate again, even with reconstructive surgery.  I mean, he and Christine broke up in the original timeline, so just that makes this some alternate version of what took place.

 

2 hours ago, Zuleikha said:

I don't mind this per se, but it seems inconsistent with everything else we've been shown or told. It also doesn't make sense given that the MCU verse had a completely different set of events. How does the creation of the multiverse lead to the establishment of a branch with an Absolute Point?

Except the existence of variants proves that there can be multiple outcomes, even for only one character. In the first series of events, Strange loses the ability to be a surgeon, so he takes on the study of the mystic arts instead. If we think of this Strange as a variant, their lives diverge either at the point where he walks away from the car wreck mostly unscathed, or even at the point where he and Christine are still romantically involved. There's the chance that the Ancient One was full of it, since she had enough power and/or foresight about what was coming that she probably could have done more to stop him and just didn't for some some reason. Even without time travel, it's pretty well-established that the dead should be left alone, that Stephen would violate the natural order of things by bringing Christine back to life. In the best case scenario, he'd have ended up with a zombie or something, that's just not what happened here.

[Spartan Girl]

I do hate how this was another example of the MCU fridging nonsuperpowered female characters. Even in an A/U. Love interest or not Christine was a cool character in the movie, and here she’s just another vehicle for the hero’s suffering and/or heel turn. I get that it was the point of the episode but still.

[benteen]

Watched the last half again as I was prettytired while watchingit originally.  Strong ending.  BC delivered and it was cool to see The Watcher interact in the story but still my least favorite episode thus far.

Edited September 2, 2021 by benteen

[Enigma X]

I did like this and the previous episode, but my biggest personal takeaway is that I like my Marvel superheroes good and alive even if arrogant and jackasses.

[paigow]

8 hours ago, Zuleikha said:

I thought it was good as a self-contained alternate possibilities episode, though. There's the possibility something in the future will reconcile the discrepancy of the Absolute Point concept with the existence of the MCU verse's events.

In the "Sacred Timeline" TVA regarded Endgame events as points that had to be protected, if not labelled as Absolute.

[tennisgurl]

Alright, so this is actually the darkest timeline. I thought this episode was awesome, the animation and voice acting in particular really stepping it up several notches. Dark Strange absorbing all of the magical creatures and monsters from different realms while he himself becomes basically a eldritch nightmare, culminating in him absorbing the tentacles of the creature that Captain Carter fought, was beautifully and horrifically animated, as was his reality slowly disappearing into melting shadows. This version of Strange, driven to madness in his obsessive desire to save Christine, seemed horribly plausible given his obsessive tendencies that already exist in prime Strange, and the story was a dark and deeply tragic tale. I kept waiting for something to make things better, to give us at least a glimmer of hope like lasts weeks outing, which was also a big downer but at least with a possibility for things to get better, but that never happened. Strange accidently destroyed his entire universe in his desperation to save Christine, who was horrified by him and was destroyed along with her universe anyway, and Strange was left alone in a pocket dimension sobbing in horror, left with only his regrets. Damn Marvel, I need a slide of cake after that. Or a drink. 

The Watcher actually interacting with the story was really cool to see, and it makes sense that Strange of all people was able to sense and then actually talk with him. Even if it was just to give his "well I think we've seen how things go when you meddle with time and space, huh Steven?" mic drop. 

Interestingly, I think the story can be read as a bit of a deconstruction of the "stuffed in the fridge" narrative device where a female character is killed to drive a male character, in a sort of meta way. In the main timeline, Christine was just fine and was able to be a grounding influence on Strange which led to a positive outcome where Strange was able to get over himself and save the universe, but in this universe, where her only function was to die, everything went to hell as Strange's obsession with saving her, often treated as a noble thing by narratives, was shown as dark and self destructive and ultimately led to the destruction of the universe. I could be reading too much into this, but its could be read as having a message of "killing off female characters for cheap pathos just makes your story worse than if they're actually around to do things and contribute to the plot as a real character." 

It seems like, as much as The Watcher says that all of these alternate universes are based on one change, they are actually built on several changes, with this one not so much being that Strange wasn't texting while driving that night, but that he and Christine were still a couple in this universe, whereas in the main universe they were broken up, although they did still care about each other a lot (even if Strange didn't always show it, being a pretty massive prick at the time) and Christine was still one of the few consistent people in his life. Sort of like how the point of divergence last week seemed to be the Avengers dying, it was actually Hope joining SHIELD in the past at some point. So while the point of divergence seemed to be the wreck, the actual point seemed to be that Christine and Strange never broke up and that made him less of a jerk and he fell more in love with her.

I loved how Strange really quickly asked if the caretaker at the library was actually the wizard because that was my first thought as well. And he groaned about this guy was another cryptic person he would have to deal with. You know, if the Ancient One had just said "hey, if you absorb the dark powers of the universe to try and save your girlfriend, this is basically going to become Revenge of the Sith except even worse" instead of being all vague about the rules of the universe and fixed points in time, Strange might have stopped what he was doing. Although maybe he was too obsessed by that point to listen to reason until the very end when it finally hit him how badly he messed up.

[Spartan Girl]

57 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

Interestingly, I think the story can be read as a bit of a deconstruction of the "stuffed in the fridge" narrative device where a female character is killed to drive a male character, in a sort of meta way. In the main timeline, Christine was just fine and was able to be a grounding influence on Strange which led to a positive outcome where Strange was able to get over himself and save the universe, but in this universe, where her only function was to die, everything went to hell as Strange's obsession with saving her, often treated as a noble thing by narratives, was shown as dark and self destructive and ultimately led to the destruction of the universe. I could be reading too much into this, but its could be read as having a message of "killing off female characters for cheap pathos just makes your story worse than if they're actually around to do things and contribute to the plot as a real character."

Excellent point. Unfortunately the MCU has yet to learn its own lesson.

[Bruinsfan]

Wait, was the Christine who kept dying in the wreck Christine Palmer, Rachel McAdams' character from the Doctor Strange movie, or Christine Everhart, Leslie Bibb's reporter character from the first two Iron Man movies? Articles about the episode made it seem like it was Bibb who was the female lead, but her character has never met Strange in a live action film so far as I know.

[Zuleikha]

Except the existence of variants proves that there can be multiple outcomes, even for only one character.

Yes, I know. That undermines the concept of Absolute Points, though.

The previous explanation for paradox was that it doesn't happen because of timeline branches. So let's say (under previous explanation) Dr. Strange successfully went back in time and changed events with Christine. Time would branch. The original branch would continue on with a dead Christine and a Dr. Strange motivated to study the mystic arts. There's no paradox because he does the things he needs to do to lead up to the point where he hops back in time and then onto the new branch. The new branch would continue on with a revived Christine and a variant Dr. Strange-from-the-future-and-also-a-different-branch going about their life. There would probably also be a second Dr. Strange, not studying mystic arts.

But now all of a sudden, we have this new concept of Absolute Points. In this branch of the multiverse, for some reason, Christine has to die. But why? Why wouldn't we just have branches and variants?

It can't be because certain things just are Absolute Points across all branches of the multiverse because we know factually that the Sacred Timeline branch did not require Christine's death. It can't be because once the car wreck happened and Strange's hands aren't injured, Christine's death is the only way to motivate him (because we see that time can make things happen in very different ways). So why couldn't time just make Strange's hands be injured in a different way? Why does Dr. Strange even need to study mystic arts given that in this universe, it led to the literal destruction of everything? 

 

[ursula]

2 hours ago, Bruinsfan said:

Wait, was the Christine who kept dying in the wreck Christine Palmer, Rachel McAdams' character from the Doctor Strange movie, or Christine Everhart, Leslie Bibb's reporter character from the first two Iron Man movies? Articles about the episode made it seem like it was Bibb who was the female lead, but her character has never met Strange in a live action film so far as I know.

Both actresses voiced the characters they had portrayed in the live action movies. Bibb voiced Christine Everhart and MacAdams voiced Christine Palmer.

[shrewd.buddha]

16 hours ago, Zuleikha said:

I wish the Watcher would stop emphasizing "one choice" when it's not one choice. The point of divergence here must have been multiple choices that all led to Christine/Strange having a happy, meaningful, healthy-seeming relationship. 

Yes.  This Dr. Strange had a completely different personality: caring, considerate, not obsessed with his career. A lot of things must have happened differently long before the car crash.

[Guest]

On 9/2/2021 at 12:42 PM, Bruinsfan said:

Wait, was the Christine who kept dying in the wreck Christine Palmer, Rachel McAdams' character from the Doctor Strange movie, or Christine Everhart, Leslie Bibb's reporter character from the first two Iron Man movies? Articles about the episode made it seem like it was Bibb who was the female lead, but her character has never met Strange in a live action film so far as I know.

The Christine who kept dying was Christine Palmer. Leslie Bibb’s part was when Christine Everhart reported that Palmer was killed the time Strange didn’t spend the evening with her. 

On 9/2/2021 at 12:47 PM, Zuleikha said:

But now all of a sudden, we have this new concept of Absolute Points. In this branch of the multiverse, for some reason, Christine has to die. But why? Why wouldn't we just have branches and variants?

Maybe because the time stone was involved. It was written as though the time stone was literally rewriting that timeline over and over again rather than branching the way Endgame time travel did. Which is mostly consistent with in Dr. Strange where he used the stone to rewind time and actually changed the past. 

On 9/2/2021 at 12:47 PM, Zuleikha said:

It can't be because certain things just are Absolute Points across all branches of the multiverse because we know factually that the Sacred Timeline branch did not require Christine's death. It can't be because once the car wreck happened and Strange's hands aren't injured, Christine's death is the only way to motivate him (because we see that time can make things happen in very different ways). So why couldn't time just make Strange's hands be injured in a different way? Why does Dr. Strange even need to study mystic arts given that in this universe, it led to the literal destruction of everything? 

It’s seems more like there are absolute points within a single timeline. Strange was unraveling time two years after the fact to change one moment. Then when time started going forward again it self corrected to minimize the damage. 

Edited September 4, 2021 by Guest

[swanpride]

One thing for sure: There is apparently nothing more dangerous to the MCU than heroines/love interests of heroes dying too early....

Gamora dying lead to the snap (both because Thanos got his hand on a stone and Quill loosing his temper)

Hope dying lead to all Avengers getting killed by Hank Pym.

Christine dying lead to the destruction of the universe. 

It is really a good thing that Peggy died of old age....

 

(Frankly, those stories say a LOT about the mind of the writers and how they see the relation between men and women...apparently it is impossible for men to stay sane without some women holding their hand in their mind). 

 

 

[Chicago Redshirt]

On 9/2/2021 at 12:36 AM, swanpride said:

Honestly, this episode was just p.. me off on every level. For starters: Apparently it wasn't enough to fridge Christine multiple times, they also basically declared all the help she gave Dr. Stange in the original timeline meaningless. To be completely clear here: If Christine had died, Dr. Strange wouldn't have survived either, because there wouldn't have been anyone to electroshock him back to live. She isn't just a tool to motivate him, she is someone with important skills needed to aid him. 

Second: Levi would have never stayed with him if he had acted out that much! Way to dismiss a great character just because it is a cloak! But then, they discriminated against pretty much everyone in the franchise....

Third: If you want to tell such a bleak story, fine, but then don't announce the fact at the start of the episode. I was so bored because I knew that would end up in the destruction of the universe. 

Oh, and fourth: It is not really convincing that Christine dying is an "unchangeable event" because she clearly didn't in the timeline we know. If you do time travel, you need to set rules and stick to them, no rewrite them whenever you are in the mood. 

It is certainly possible for two people to be in the same car wreck and for one of them to be killed and the other to escape without a scratch. Odds may be against it, but it happens in real life without the concept of an absolute point or fates intervening and all that (as far as we  know).

That Christine was not around to electroshock Strange as seen in the movie does not mean that no one would be around to electroshock Dr. Strange. He simply could have appeared to anyone capable of using a defibrillator. Indeed, we don't know if Strange needed to be electroshocked at all in this What If? version of reality. The fact that his search was to save Christine would have shifted a ton of points in his own personal history, including when he began his study of the mystical arts, how he approached his study, etc. etc. We know that eventually he confronts Dormammu as in the main reality. But the granular details of how he got to that point need not have been the same. He almost certainly started his mystical arts journey sooner than in the main reality because he didn't have to wait for his hands to heal and exhaust all conventional medicine techniques before turning to the mystical arts. Presumably he started his search for mystical solutions shortly after the accident since it was clear nothing conventional science could have done would have brought her back.

Strange seemingly took the cloak he had at the end from one of the beings that he siphoned power from. So it seems to me it's not the movie cloak of levitation.

I don't think that the concept of absolute/fixed points is very compatible with the concept of the infinite prism of possibilities that is the premise for the show. But if there has the be the concept, it is feasible that something only becomes an absolute point under certain conditions. It is the very fact that Strange is inspired to become a sorcerer because of Christine's death that makes Christine's death an absolute point. 

 

On 9/2/2021 at 1:22 AM, arc said:

I figured it just meant the Ancient One was talking out her ass again. She was as confidently wrong in Endgame as she was here.

I don't think she was wrong in Endgame, or at least she was not shown to be wrong. She stated that removing the stones would disrupt the flow of time. Hulk came up with a solution of the stones getting returned to exactly where/when they were taken from, which presumably Steve did off-screen. 

In terms of the What If? everything we were shown here suggests that it was an absolute point. Strange tried numerous times and in numerous ways to avoid Christine's death and she kept getting killed no matter what he did or didn't do. The Watcher also seemed to maintain that he literally did not have the ability to change things even if he was not bound by his non-interference oath. 

[cambridgeguy]

4 hours ago, swanpride said:

(Frankly, those stories say a LOT about the mind of the writers and how they see the relation between men and women...apparently it is impossible for men to stay sane without some women holding their hand in their mind). 

And Vision dying led to Wanda snapping and hijacking an entire town of innocents.  While she did let them go in the end, she also headed off to study the Darkhold, something I doubt she'd do if Vision was there for her.  It's standard comics storytelling and the quickest way to have a hero go rogue - yeah, it's easy to spout platitudes about doing the right thing and not giving in to revenge, but what if it's your loved ones who suffer/dies? 

[Cobalt Stargazer]

4 hours ago, cambridgeguy said:

And Vision dying led to Wanda snapping and hijacking an entire town of innocents.  While she did let them go in the end, she also headed off to study the Darkhold, something I doubt she'd do if Vision was there for her.  It's standard comics storytelling and the quickest way to have a hero go rogue - yeah, it's easy to spout platitudes about doing the right thing and not giving in to revenge, but what if it's your loved ones who suffer/dies? 

Kind of, but not really. What Wanda did was the result of repeated loss, a lifetime of having things taken away from her. Not really the same thing, since even with the horrifying ending here, Strange was warned to leave off what he was doing. I guess once they decided to let Steve screw the timeline without consequences, that opened the door for everyone else (Wanda, Sylvie, Strange, maybe Peter) to get involved.

Edited September 3, 2021 by Cobalt Stargazer

[swanpride]

Yeah, Wanda didn't do it

Spoiler

just because Vision died, she did it because learning about the future he planned for them was basically the last straw which broke the camel's back after a live time of loss, rejection and grief. Never mind that she didn't even do it intentionally, nor did she did it in direct reaction to losing Vision, but because nobody was there to help her through the five grieving stages. Wandavision is a show about grief and how to deal with it, not a show about a character obsessing over revenge or rewriting reality because a loved one died (never mind that Visions didn't die to make the show happen, he died because it fit into the plot of infinity war and Wanda grieving over him was just the logical consequence of that). 

There is a difference. A pretty huge one. Especially since you could have told the very same story, but with Dr. Strange just not being ready to give up his hands. Though, really, it would have been a way more interesting what if. if Dr. Strange used all of his powers to make his hands work again, just like this other guy did with his legs. Why not tell a story in which THAT was his decision, with all the consequences. 

 

[johntfs]

3 hours ago, swanpride said:

Yeah, Wanda didn't do it

  Hide contents

just because Vision died, she did it because learning about the future he planned for them was basically the last straw which broke the camel's back after a live time of loss, rejection and grief. Never mind that she didn't even do it intentionally, nor did she did it in direct reaction to losing Vision, but because nobody was there to help her through the five grieving stages. Wandavision is a show about grief and how to deal with it, not a show about a character obsessing over revenge or rewriting reality because a loved one died (never mind that Visions didn't die to make the show happen, he died because it fit into the plot of infinity war and Wanda grieving over him was just the logical consequence of that). 

There is a difference. A pretty huge one. Especially since you could have told the very same story, but with Dr. Strange just not being ready to give up his hands. Though, really, it would have been a way more interesting what if. if Dr. Strange used all of his powers to make his hands work again, just like this other guy did with his legs. Why not tell a story in which THAT was his decision, with all the consequences. 

 

Because that just makes him an entitled dick.  And the end consequence is Dormammu eats the universe, the end.

The thing here is that this Dr. Strange, was, in many ways, a better person than Strange Prime.  He opened his heart to another person, Christine, whom he loved.

However, in the movie, Strange lost his hands (or at least his ability to do surgery) .  Because of that he lost his sense of self.  He had to absorb the idea that some things couldn't be fixed.  That he couldn't fix them.  He became Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme, taking up the skills of magic to replace his skills as a surgeon.

That didn't happen here.  Here, Strange lost Christine and he simply augmented his amazing skills as a surgeon with his amazing skills as a sorcerer.  He never had to accept the idea that some things couldn't be fixed.  So he kept "fixing" Christine's death until he broke/destroyed the universe.

[swanpride]

So...he isn't an entitled dick for risking the whole universe for his personal desires? 

[festivus]

Dr. Strange stuff is always trippy dippy but yet I still find the character boring. Benny D Cumberbunny did a good job with the voice acting though and I thought the animated version looked just like him. I did love the way they did the reality breaking animation with the black smoke string like stuff. Well done and creepy.

[arc]

19 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

I don't think she was wrong in Endgame, or at least she was not shown to be wrong. She stated that removing the stones would disrupt the flow of time. Hulk came up with a solution of the stones getting returned to exactly where/when they were taken from, which presumably Steve did off-screen. 

No, Hulk came up with that and she still shot it down because she couldn’t trust him/them to return the Stones. She only changed her mind because Hulk said this must have been Strange’s plan.

[Chicago Redshirt]

29 minutes ago, arc said:

No, Hulk came up with that and she still shot it down because she couldn’t trust him/them to return the Stones. She only changed her mind because Hulk said this must have been Strange’s plan.

Which doesn't meaningfully change anything I said. She was not shown to be wrong that removing the stones would disrupt things. Hulk came up with a solution that addressed her concern and showed she could risk things. 

[Chicago Redshirt]

8 hours ago, swanpride said:

So...he isn't an entitled dick for risking the whole universe for his personal desires? 

He's just a boy in love. He can't be held responsible for his actions.[/Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Shout-out]

This Strange was in disbelief/denial that what he was doing was risking the whole universe until it was too late. 

And his wanting Christine back is one of those things IMO can be viewed as selfish and not exactly selfish at the same time. I would bet that if it could be the case that he could revive her on the condition that he never got to see or speak with her ever again, he would have done it in a heartbeat. It isn't just about what he could get out of having Christine back, but also that she deserved to live. YMMV. 

[johntfs]

17 hours ago, swanpride said:

So...he isn't an entitled dick for risking the whole universe for his personal desires? 

Sure, but it's an "entitled dickdom" with which we can empathize.  Over in the MCU TV thread on Something Awful, a couple of people have chimed in how this was a hard episode to watch because they'd lost people (a wife and a fiance).  And one of them noted that:

Quote

I mean, I get it, Insane Dr Strange. I totally get it. There are days when I, too, would be willing to burn the universe to ashes for just one more minute.

 

[Spartan Girl]

I too can empathize with why Strange (and Wanda) did it. There’s a difference between losing your loved one in a such a horrific and untimely way then, shall we say, wanting a do-over even though said person lived a full and happy life without you.

[Morrigan2575]

I didn't think I'd like this one, I'm not a huge fan of Doctor Strange and put his origin movie in the bottom of the MCU list. That being said I ended up enjoying it because it was so bleak and dark. I liked that they ended the episode with a giant L. In his arrogant belief that he could do anything, Strange destroyed the world to save Christine only to lose her again. 

The voice work was great, Cumberbatch did a wonderful job. Wong is just pure awesome, he's one of the things I liked about Strange's movie.  The other thing was the cloak. I can't be the only one to get sad when evil Strange destroyed the Cloak.

 

Edited September 5, 2021 by Morrigan2575

[Starfish35]

Meh.  I didn’t care for this one, for a multitude of reasons.  Doctor Strange is one of my least favorite origin movies to begin with, nothing in the movie made me believe that Christine was the great love of Stephen’s life, and the whole idea of her death being a fixed point is undercut by the fact that, obviously, in the main MCU ‘verse, she didn’t die.  

That said, between this week’s and last week’s, I might pick this week’s, even though last week’s ended with some hope and this one, obviously, didn’t.  I’m not entirely sure why.   Part of it is the voicework, I think.  With a few exceptions (Fury, Loki, etc), I didn’t think the voicework last week was so great.  This week it was excellent.   And somehow, weirdly enough since this one ended with the death of everything and last week didn’t, this one didn’t seem quite as dark? 🤷🏻‍♀️ I don’t even know.  

I did think it was amusing that Roku showed me an ad for The Time Traveler’s Wife with Rachel McAdams right after I watched this though. 😂

[Sandman]

On 9/1/2021 at 6:10 AM, arc said:

But if she'd just told this one "you can have Christine back but the universe will take most of the use of your hands", he'd probably have taken that deal.

Then again, I never really felt there was an all-consuming love thing between Christine and Stephen in their movie. So maybe the divergence point wasn't just her coming along on the drive but them being in love, which would have started much earlier?

The central weakness of this episode was the divergence point, for me. It might not have been an all-consuming love in the movie, but Strange did come to realize that he did love Christine -- eventually. It's just that he had to reach a certain point of enlightenment, or at least self-knowledge, to understand that. It's a bit of a bootstrap problem, for me: his love for Christine becomes the thing that drives him toward mystic knowledge, but without a driver toward mystic knowledge, he never would have realized how much he loved Christine. Having Strange start from the point of being in love with Christine seems somehow like cheating. 

That being said, I do think the voice work in this episode was excellent; a totally involving and moving episode, bleak though it was.

(What does it say about me that I was sure almost from her first syllables that Christine was being played by McAdams, but couldn't have sworn I recognized Renner right off? This isn't a knock on Renner, I don't think.)

[johntfs]

On 9/4/2021 at 8:53 AM, Spartan Girl said:

I too can empathize with why Strange (and Wanda) did it. There’s a difference between losing your loved one in a such a horrific and untimely way then, shall we say, wanting a do-over even though said person lived a full and happy life without you.

That "do-over desire" seemed like a two-way street to me.  Based on "The Winter Soldier" It seemed more like Peggy led a "good enough" life but she still always carried a "Steve Rogers sized" hole in her heart, just like Steve had "Peggy-sized" hole in his own heart.

Steve going back to her at the end of Endgame wasn't so much about him deciding that he deserved to be happy.  It was him deciding that both he and Peggy deserved to be happy.  If Peggy had described her post-Steve marriage as "the best thing ever" Steve wouldn't have done what he did because he did love Peggy and did want her to be happy.

Bringing it back to this episode, if this Dr. Strange had gone for some heavy-duty grief counseling, managed to process Christine's death in a more healthy, less universe-destroying way and maybe ended up being with somebody else, that doesn't somehow make it a good thing that Christine got killed in the first.

Edited September 6, 2021 by johntfs

[Cobalt Stargazer]

7 hours ago, johntfs said:

Bringing it back to this episode, if this Dr. Strange had gone for some heavy-duty grief counseling, managed to process Christine's death in a more healthy, less universe-destroying way and maybe ended up being with somebody else, that doesn't somehow make it a good thing that Christine got killed in the first.

No, it doesn't. But how much or how little weight should we give to what the Ancient One said? Even in the case that she was wrong about Christine's death being an Absolute Point, she ends up being right about how what Strange was doing would destroy everything. Maybe if he had seen someone, he'd have been dissuaded from going down the path he took. Even the Ancient One says (in the movie) that she'd lived for so long, she thought she'd be ready when her time came, but she was prolonging the event of her death so she could have just a few more minutes. I just think Stephen's arrogance got away from him, made him think he could not only absorb all the power from those otherworldly beings and stay sane, but bring Christine back to him.