What if…? Episode 4 Review: A Faustian Groundhog Day Serving As A Dark Appetizer For Dr. Strange in The Multiverse of Madness

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Episode 4 review of the series’ What if …? ‘(What if …) is out now on Disney +, continuing his dissection of the Marvel Universe with a fresh look at the paths that would open in the MCU if the movies had taken a different path. This time, the episode focuses on Dr. Strange, the supreme sorcerer, with Benedict Cumberbatch reprising his role by putting his voice on.

Here we will see a different version of the Doctor, one in which he is still happily in love with Christine, although this happiness does not last long either, as the episode quickly turns into a desperately tragic love story that leads the wizard down a dark path with horrible results that serve as a moral lesson about what could have happened with a more selfish sense of responsibility, the classic superhero dilemma.

Trapped In The Multiverse

Up to this point, the series has displayed a healthy sense of fun, good action management, and a sense of belonging to the world of comics that live action can never simulate. The great success of ‘What if …? It is its design, with drawings that emulate the line of classic comics with a solidity that is not too common in the current panorama, perhaps the biggest problem is the animation with 3D movement.

A strange move that can be misleading, but one gets used to, maybe a minor issue but not one that doesn’t share this episode as well. However, this variation on the Doctor Strange story takes a surprisingly dark and unapologetic turn, not only for what the series is used to, but for what we have seen so far from the MCU.

Here we witness a similar fate of the iguana Stephen Strange, however instead of losing his hands, he attends the death of his love, Christine Palmer. In this universe, Strange cannot get over his loss and is determined to bring her back from the dead. But it is useless even with the newly acquired Time Stone, and through a brutal montage of death scenarios between ‘Final Destination’ and ‘ Trapped in Time ‘ we see the character walk down an unexpectedly dark path.

Doctor Orpheus And The Monkey Paw

To alter the Absolute Point of Christine’s death, Strange must absorb the powers of countless mystical creatures to constantly grow in power, in a central stretch of lovecraftian invocations typical of weird literature, filled with monsters, creatures and beings reminiscent of traveling portraits. horror comics from the 70s to which the best years of the character’s original comics resembled on many occasions.

The plot shows variants and struggles in vain to prevent the universe from collapsing around him, when the descent into hell of the superhero to rescue his beloved ends in a dead angle that seems to recreate The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice but with a surprising twist dark, almost a joke of fate that humbles the more selfish side of the character played by Cumberbatch, great here portraying different visions of it.

We can’t say that such a nihilistic coda on a Disney product is not surprising, but at the root of the comics there were those crazy possibilities where nothing turns out right. Another episode that brings the set closer to a kind of version of ‘ The Twilight Zone ‘ or ‘Amazing Stories’ by Marvel, which here is crowned with many terrifying details, nods to ‘The monkey paw’ by WW Jacobs and a small indication of the worlds that Doctor Strange will move through in the Multiverse of Madness, and something like this in the hands of Sam Raimi promises.