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

[johntfs]

On 9/6/2021 at 3:29 PM, Cobalt Stargazer said:

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.

I think we should give considerably weight to what the Ancient One said.  For the universe to survive Dormammu, Stephen Strange needed to be the Sorcerer Supreme.  In our universe that was accomplish by the damage to his hands.  But why?  Because the loss of his ability to do surgery, to be Doctor Stephen Strange, exploded the foundation of Strange's life and sent him spiraling into despair and desperation.  Strange needed to arrive at the Ancient One's door desperate and broken, with no other place to go.  And that's what happened in the main MCU.

Here things were a little different.  Here, Strange saw he was pushing Christine away  and presumably decided to work on that, to work on their relationship so they could stay together.  So, if he crashes and loses his surgeon's skill... it'll be tough, but with Christine's love and support he'll get through it.  Maybe end up teaching at a medical school.  Maybe meet with Tony Stark to get some new robot hands.  What he won't do is launch a crazed, desperate search into every more weird. esoteric treatments that lead him to the Ancient One in a state of mind that would allow for him to become the new Sorcerer Supreme.

So, since he was happy and fulfilled with Christine, she had to die.

But she didn't necessarily have to stay dead.  If Strange had pursued a course of trying bring her back to life, that would have been okay.  I mean, yeah, it could also lead to some creepy, fucked up stuff (Christine as a vampire or Frankenstein monster or zombie-thing), but it probably wouldn't have destroyed the universe.

The point is that Strange wasn't attempting to bring Christine back to life, he was trying to undo her death.  If Christine doesn't die, then Strange doesn't become the Sorcerer Supreme then Dormammu eats the universe.  So, yeah, Christine's death really was kind of a "load-bearing wall" of the universal house.  When Strange destroyed/undid that wall, the house/universe collapsed.

[Zuleikha]

But why does it matter if Dormammu eats the universe when the universe is just going to break and be undone anyway? 

[Guest]

21 minutes ago, Zuleikha said:

But why does it matter if Dormammu eats the universe when the universe is just going to break and be undone anyway? 

Without Dormammu eating the universe Dr Strange’s actions wouldn’t have created a paradox and the universe wouldn’t have been undone. 

[silverstream]

Pet peeve time - I liked the episode in general but I hated that once again, there's a plot of "if you save your loved one, the world will end" where nobody points out that, if you save your loved one and then the world ends, that loved one is still dead! I realise Evil!Strange might have been too far gone for that to compute, but somebody at least could have pointed it out.

On 9/13/2021 at 3:21 AM, johntfs said:

So, since he was happy and fulfilled with Christine, she had to die.

But she didn't necessarily have to stay dead.  If Strange had pursued a course of trying bring her back to life, that would have been okay.  I mean, yeah, it could also lead to some creepy, fucked up stuff (Christine as a vampire or Frankenstein monster or zombie-thing), but it probably wouldn't have destroyed the universe.

The point is that Strange wasn't attempting to bring Christine back to life, he was trying to undo her death. 

This makes me wonder if the Ancient One's trick might have worked here as a workaround to the "fixed point" problem - split Christine in two, one Christine dies in the accident and the other lives on with Strange (possibly unbeknowst to him until after Dormammu is defeated). Not ideal, but it would probably have mollified him enough to not cause the end of the world.

[johntfs]

On 9/24/2021 at 10:39 AM, silverstream said:

Pet peeve time - I liked the episode in general but I hated that once again, there's a plot of "if you save your loved one, the world will end" where nobody points out that, if you save your loved one and then the world ends, that loved one is still dead! I realise Evil!Strange might have been too far gone for that to compute, but somebody at least could have pointed it out.

This makes me wonder if the Ancient One's trick might have worked here as a workaround to the "fixed point" problem - split Christine in two, one Christine dies in the accident and the other lives on with Strange (possibly unbeknowst to him until after Dormammu is defeated). Not ideal, but it would probably have mollified him enough to not cause the end of the world.

He was too far gone into his obsession to listen to those objections.

And the trick wouldn't have worked.  Christine "needed" to die to break Strange loose from his mooring and inflict him with the desperation necessary to seek out the Ancient One and become the Sorcerer Supreme.  If she lives at that point in time, no Strange Sorcerer Supreme and Dormammu eats the universe.