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The latest episode of What If…? is called ‘What If… Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands’ and it shows a level of destruction we’ve only technically seen in Loki (as in that show multiple universes are destroyed instead of just one). There aren’t a huge cast of characters this time, only really the Dr. Strange movie cast reprising their characters, with the primary focus on Dr. Strange himself and his need to ‘fix everything’.
The funny thing is that by the end of things, although of course Strange is at fault for making the choices he made, it does seem that the Ancient One is directly responsible for splitting Strange in two and thus providing enough magical ‘juice’ to screw everything up. Of course, she made plenty of terrible choices in the movie, so I suppose it’s in character, it’s just interesting that the episode kinda muddles the ‘choices have consequences’ message.
The divergence seems to be that Stephen and Christine drive together to the conference, the same drive where his need to find a ‘cool’ surgery to do led to his distraction of the road and the accident that ruined his hands. Which led to his desire to do anything to cure his injuries, thus the magical arts and saving the world from Dormammu. But here, it is the death of Christine that sends him down that path, and suddenly the episode is saying something very odd about destiny.
Strange uses the Eye of Agamotto to try and redo the night that Christine died, but instead of things changing, she keeps dying, over and over — because she is an ‘Absolute Point’ in time, as per the Ancient One’s explanation, and that terrible scenario is necessary to save the world. Except … that we already know it isn’t! In the movie version of this story, it was a different driving factor to get Strange to a point to save the world. So perhaps the only necessary thing is some sort of trauma, which is dark, but it feels more haphazard and needlessly cruel.
Still, the actual storyline is pretty interesting, with Strange finding the lost library of Cagliostro and having a few conversations with the librarian O’Bengh (voice of Ike Amadi). It’s one of those things that feels not entirely fully fleshed out either. I would’ve liked to see more with this new guy, as unlike the other characters, we’ve never seen this guy before. O’Bengh is also partially responsible for the end of the universe, if we’re honest, because he’s the one who tells Strange that there’s another version of himself out there.
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The montage of Strange absorbing increasingly more monstrous and dangerous beings was fun, for as troubling as it was — starting off with an evil garden gnome and iterating through many sorts of demonic creatures, birds, dragons, goats, bats, etc — until we finally get back to the giant tentacle being that also was in the first episode with Captain Carter … is it the same creature shared between universes? It certainly could be.
But the biggest break in the show is the Watcher showing his face to us, something very vaguely like Jeffrey Wright, albeit with glowing eyes and a giant, bald head. At first he tells us that he could interfere and warn Strange of his terrible idea, but after all, would he even bother listening? But then it gets interesting, as Strange, with his new powers, is actually able to notice that the Watcher is around, even if not entirely at first.
But at the very end, as the universe has collapsed into a singularity prism of something unknown, the Watcher stands there and Strange begs for help — saying he’s read about him and calls him a god. The Watcher denies this description, which is interesting — we don’t really know the true extent of his capabilities.
So overall this does seem more like setting things up, introducing more possibilities for universes that could be linked together — maybe this Strange Supreme will be a common antagonist or maybe he can still be redeemed? It’s certainly an entertaining episode, despite some of the underlying narrative muddiness — I feel like this is where the show becomes something new.
New episodes of What If…? stream Wednesdays on Disney Plus.
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