Warning: this article contains spoilers for episode four of What If…?
If you thought the new teaser trailer for Marvel’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness looked somewhat familiar, you’re not alone by any stretch of the imagination.
That’s because a number of scenes and plot elements resemble an episode of the animated Disney Plus show What If…?. Warning: the article contains spoilers for episode four of What If…?.
The episode in question called What If… Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands? sees an alternative version of Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange fall into the dark side of magic by attempting to bring back his lost love, Rachel McAdams’ Christine Palmer. In this alternative universe, Christine is the one who dies in a car crash driven by Strange, rather than the surgeon’s hands being permanently maimed from the accident, as in the movie 2016’s Doctor Strange.
This all culminates in Strange absorbing the powers of interdimensional monsters to wield enough dark magic to resurrect or prevent Christine from dying altogether.
In the course of the episode, Strange is split in twain by Tilda Swinton’s The Ancient One, creating a good half and an evil half, Strange Supreme.
An eagle-eyed user on Reddit, u/Heretohello, put together a side-by-side comparison of the episode with images we’ve seen from the upcoming Multiverse of Madness trailer and posted it to the r/MarvelStudios subreddit. As you can see for yourself, there’s a lot of visual parallels from the episode and the upcoming movie.
We’re fairly optimistic Multiverse of Madness will be a showdown of epic proportions since the legendary director Sam Raimi is at the helm. Not only did he direct a trilogy of fine Spider-Man films in his heyday, arguably popularizing the superhero film genre in the modern sense, but his roots are also in horror. In fact, a major plot point of his excellent Army of Darkness is that the protagonist, Bruce Campbell’s Ash Williams, must face off with an evil version of himself.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness comes to theaters on May 6, 2022.