8) Namedrop In Captain America: The Winter Soldier
The first direct name check of the Sorcerer Supreme in the MCU occurred in 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Looking back at it now, however, it raises a lot of questions about the timeline of Doctor Strange.
When Cap and Black Widow are questioning S.H.I.E.L.D. turncoat/secret HYDRA member Jasper Sitwell about Project Insight, he explains that it uses Armin Zola’s algorithm to single out those who will be a threat to HYDRA in the future – including a bunch of nameless people, Bruce Banner and Stephen Strange.
[zergpaid]This mention raises questions as, though the time frame of Doctor Strange isn’t outright stated, we assume Strange didn’t get his powers until after the events of this movie. That said, there is some speculation over how long Strange spends training in Kamar-Taj. Could he have just started his mystical apprenticeship around the time of Winter Soldier?
Probably not. Marvel head honcho Kevin Feige has a different explanation for why the algorithm predicts that Strange will be a threat. And since he’s the guy in charge, what he says goes.
“So is Stephen Strange the Sorcerer Supreme [at that point]? Probably not at that point. Is he an unbelievably talented neurosurgeon who’s opinionated and kind of arrogant? Probably. That might put him on the list.”
In other words, it was just a cool easter egg and not something to be analyzed too much.