What If S01E04 Review: Strange Tales

What If, Season 1, Episode 4: What If... Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?

And now we have this episode, often hailed as the episode where What If's first season started to really find its mark in actually asking intriguing 'what if' questions, and executing the episode well. It does help that the first three episodes relied a bit less on well-known MCU stories. Episode 1 was just 'what if a supporting character was the superhero instead', episode 2 was just an off-the-rails 'randomlol' concept, episode 3 relied on a big shocking twist. 

But What If's fourth episode, despite its very cumbersome title, is probably one of the main highlights of the season. Doctor Strange has always been one of those characters that is more on the 'greater good' side of things, and while the MCU version does sanitize a lot of what made his comic counterpart more on the gray side of morality, there's enough in Benedict Cumberbatch's performance that kind of lets you know that Dr. Stephen Strange is ultimately heroic, but there's a degree of coldness under it all.

And this episode takes an interesting twist on that decision. It does play into the unfortunate role of 'disposable love interest', turning Christine Palmer into the equivalent of Uncle Ben or the Wayne parents, killing her off in the car crash that in the prime timeline would've claimed Stephen's hands. This was the genesis of Dr. Strange's journey throughout the events of his titular movie in this timeline, to find a way to get her back. 

And, in a way, this is a nice way to (at least before Multiverse of Madness) show what happens when someone like Dr. Strange actually eschews all the duties drilled into his head. We see what happens when with great power, someone does not do the great responsibilities that come with it. And this is exactly the perfect story to tell in a 'What If' setting. All of these alternate realities are kind of disposable anyway, so let's take a version of Doctor Strange that isn't as ethical as 'our' Doctor Strange, and see how badly he fucks shit up. 

It also really helps that Benedict Cumberbatch is, I think bar none the best 'actor-to-voice-actor' performers to carry these What If episodes. It's not quite easy for actors to make the transition to voice acting, but I think Cumberbatch's performance was really great. Particularly his desperation as he turns time backwards over and over and over and over and over and over to try and find the exact combination of events that would make Christine survive. 

Except that time itself, the cosmic balance of reality itself, refuses to let this happen. Because of the nature of paradoxes or something, as the Ancient One explains to us, Dr. Strange will only get the Time Stone if he studies magic and saves the world from Dormammu, and Dr. Strange will only study magic if Christine dies. This is an "Absolute Point" in time, similar to the "Nexus Points" in Loki, or the "Canon Events" in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. 

But basically, the first half of the episode is easily some of the strongest that What If has ever been, with Stephen's increasing desperation as all his much-vaunted magical powers simply can't bring Christine back, as he is forced to see his love die over and over again. There's a bit of a dark comedy in some of the deaths as she gets shot by a mugger at one point, and even her house burns down if Stephen decides not to show up. 

A confrontation with the Ancient One leads Stephen on a road to search for different sources of power, leading him into the mysterious library of Cagiostro. He meets an old man called O'Bengh (who is also Cagliostro in disguise; not that this 'twist' really matters) and Stephen comes up with the idea of summoning and absorbing the power of other magical beings to gain even more power. 

And we get another montage as Dr. Strange begins to slowly work his way up from mystical garden gnomes to increasingly powerful demons (including a cameo from the tentacle monster that menaced Captain Carter) and this is framed with a lot of terrifying, creepy shot as he keeps eating and consuming more and more powers. He is no longer Dr. Strange, but... Strange Supreme. (As marketing will call this variant of Dr. Strange). In perhaps a nicely creepy effect, Strange Supreme turns out to be the first and only character in this season to be able to realize the Watcher's presence, turning to look at the corner where the Watcher is narrating to us, the audience. 

Strange Supreme finally walks out of his room to realize that the montage that he's been sucking up demons and mystical beings isn't weeks or months, but rather centuries. O'Bengh is about to die, but not before revealing to Strange Supreme that... there is another Dr. Strange. 

Which I felt is probably the big random plot twist in an otherwise pretty excellent episode. I honestly would've rather the final confrontation of this episode be between Strange Supreme against the Ancient One (perhaps with Wong and Mordo, if we need to add more characters to up the ante), because I felt like this twist is a bit distracting from the main concept. But whatever. Turns out that there's a bit of a What-If-within-a-What-If, because during the initial confrontation with Ancient One, she split the timeline and created a different Dr. Strange who didn't go to the creepy magic library. 

This is all to facilitate an epic third-act finale where Strange Supreme fights against a 'good' Dr. Strange, which I thought was a bit of padding. It's at least very pretty padding, though, because animation doesn't really need to care all that much about the 'unrealistic SFX budgets' that the live-action shows and films need to, so we get to see a bunch of wacky stuff being tossed here and there. It falters a bit, perhaps, compared to the finale of this season or the second season, but I do like the principle of the matter. Ultimately, Strange Supreme's demonic transformations and powers causes him to get the upper hand from Good Strange, and he absorbs his alternate self. 

And thus, Strange Supreme won. He beat his opponents, he finally manages to defy fate and reality itself to save Christine... but at the cost of everything else. He has been morphed into a nasty demon-dragon goopy thing that makes poor Christine freak out... and then reality starts to break and collapse. And now, not even Strange Supreme's ultimate magic can stop it as reality itself folds down into a singularity point in response to the paradox, and Strange Supreme screams wildly as he shoots his magic beams to stop the borders of the sphere from crushing him. He yells at the mysterious Watcher looming above him, pleading the Watcher to "punish me, not the world!"

...but the Watcher just watches. For he must never interfere, and we close out this episode with Uatu actually interacting and condemning Strange Supreme. He gives an ominous declaration that 'one choice' can destroy the entire universe, watching this utter wasteland of a universe be wiped out because this Dr. Strange does not have the same responsibility that his prime-universe variant has. 

It's a great, emotional downer of an episode, and one that is sadly somewhat neutered considering some subsequent season two episodes, but ultimately I still think this is easily one of the strongest individual episodes that What If has came up with. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• 
  This episode adapts events from Doctor Strange. There are several nods to specific lines that were said in the movie, most particularly O'Bengh's reaction to Dr. Strange's name being more or less similar to Kaecillius's "Mister Doctor" reaction. 
• A different "alternate-universe Dr. Strange who destroyed his reality and trappdd in a crapsack world" is featured in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, but that's a completely different evil Dr. Strange, who has a far more unhinged and less noble reason to turning evil.
• Marketing refers to What If's evil Dr. Strange as "Strange Supreme", and Multiverse of Madness's Dr. Strange as "Sinister Strange". 
  
• Christine Everheart makes a very unexpected return, having appeared last in Iron Man and Iron Man 2, and basically disappeared from the MCU afterwards. 
• The concept of this episode is taken from the arcs that ran from Strange Tales #9-14, where in a bid to fight Shuma-Gorath, Dr. Strange begins to use black magic and absorb the magical powers of several other magical entities to gain power, losing his humanity in the process. 
• The concept of 'Absolute Points' in What If is identical to the concept of 'Nexus Points' in Loki, both of which were in production simultaneously. The directors of What If has gone on record that they would've changed the terminology to 'Nexus Points' had there been more lead-time. 
• The tentacled kraken from the Captain Carter What If episode makes a cameo among the monsters that Dr. Strange summons. Early on around the time of the episode's release, many people speculated that this is either Dweller in Darkness (featured in Shang-Chi), or Dr. Strange's iconic enemy Shuma-Gorath (an expy, Gargantos, would appear in Dr. Strange 2). 
• This Reality is Designated... Earth-91233
• Role Reprises: Benedict Cumberbatch (Dr. Strange), Tilda Swinton (Ancient One), Rachel McAdams (Christine Palmer), Benedict Wong (Wong), and, very unexpectedly, Leslie Bibb (Christine Everheart)
• This is one of the few What If episodes to have the entire cast where we have a full cast of the MCU live-action actors returning.