The first three episodes of Marvel’s What If…? made it clear that being a great actor in live-action doesn’t necessarily translate to animation. Not to name any names in particular, but there were more than a few sketchy vocal performance across the opening trio of installments, but Benedict Cumberbatch reliably gave it his all when his turn rolled around in last week’s “What If… Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?”.
The Academy Award nominee delivers what’s comfortably one of What If…?‘s finest performances yet, which is just as well when he’s carrying the most emotional episode by far. Splitting himself in two, Doctor Strange tries everything in his power to stop Christine Palmer’s death, but in the end he ends up almost tearing the entire fabric of reality in two.
It’s heavy stuff, and painted the largely benevolent Sorcerer Supreme in a light we’d never seen before. It would make for an incredible movie, albeit a very expensive one, and a new fan poster from digital artist César imagines the live-action Doctor Strange and the Absolute Point in Time, which you can check out below.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is already poised to reinvent the MCU as we know it, but adapting the latest episode of What If…? as a feature film is an interesting proposition. The series is official MCU canon thanks to Loki introducing alternate realities, but Cumberbatch’s surgeon-turned-superhero has enough chaos to deal with in his sequel without adding Strange Supreme into the mix.