Well, that was… different.
Spoilers What If...? discussion thread
- Thread starter The Nth Doctor
- Start date
Really great episode due to its sadness and desperate tone.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions as the saying goes and i think we can all relate - could anyone claim if they had Strange's powers and the Time Stone they wouldn't be tempted to bring a loved one back?
The road to hell is paved with good intentions as the saying goes and i think we can all relate - could anyone claim if they had Strange's powers and the Time Stone they wouldn't be tempted to bring a loved one back?
I loved this one. I truly felt the darkness of Strange's actions, not just from the gorgeous animation, but also in how far he was willing to go to try and save Christine. How much he was willing to give up, even his own soul...and only to lose her yet again anyways, along with the rest of the universe. I wonder if we'll see this dark Strange again, since it appears he's trapped in a bubble (or rather, crystal) universe.
I particularly liked how this version of Strange was able to hear Uatu's musings to himself about intervening. I thought the episode would leave it at just that but then we got to see a direct conversation between the two of them, with Strange begging for help and Uatu standing his ground. The universe paid the price...and I imagine Uatu's decision not to step in here will have an affect on his future observations of these vast new realities.
Interesting how the divergence point doesn't actually start from a willful decision but rather a fixed point in time (or whatever non-Doctor Who descriptor The Ancient One gave it). That fated moment (different from the reality that we know) is what drives Strange to his obsession to delve deeper into the dark arts to reverse time. And yet, surprisingly, we get a second divergent point where a second Strange comes to his senses and has a cup of tea instead, if only because The Ancient One willed a split in the universe in direct response to the actions of the first Strange.
This does leave me wondering about these fixed points in time. Why couldn't Strange save Christine's life in this reality when in another reality, her death wasn't Strange's motivation to seek out the mystic arts and, in that same reality, why was Thanos able to reverse time to allow him to gain power to instantly eliminate half of all life in the universe? Yeah, I know, it's best not to overthink these fixed moments of time, just like in Doctor Who.
For those who know their Marvel mystic lore better than I do, can you identify all of the mystic creatures that the dark Strange summoned in order to absorb their essences?
I particularly liked how this version of Strange was able to hear Uatu's musings to himself about intervening. I thought the episode would leave it at just that but then we got to see a direct conversation between the two of them, with Strange begging for help and Uatu standing his ground. The universe paid the price...and I imagine Uatu's decision not to step in here will have an affect on his future observations of these vast new realities.
Interesting how the divergence point doesn't actually start from a willful decision but rather a fixed point in time (or whatever non-Doctor Who descriptor The Ancient One gave it). That fated moment (different from the reality that we know) is what drives Strange to his obsession to delve deeper into the dark arts to reverse time. And yet, surprisingly, we get a second divergent point where a second Strange comes to his senses and has a cup of tea instead, if only because The Ancient One willed a split in the universe in direct response to the actions of the first Strange.
This does leave me wondering about these fixed points in time. Why couldn't Strange save Christine's life in this reality when in another reality, her death wasn't Strange's motivation to seek out the mystic arts and, in that same reality, why was Thanos able to reverse time to allow him to gain power to instantly eliminate half of all life in the universe? Yeah, I know, it's best not to overthink these fixed moments of time, just like in Doctor Who.
For those who know their Marvel mystic lore better than I do, can you identify all of the mystic creatures that the dark Strange summoned in order to absorb their essences?
The tentacle beast was clearly intended to be the same one Captain Carter was battling, marking the first connection between What If…? Episodes other than the watcher.
It is interesting to wonder how MCU Christine is still alive. In the What if episode she still dies even if they avoid the car crash.
Yeah, I forgot to note that part. First of many connections with other realities I expect.
I meant to highlight that part, too, when I reflected on the weirdness of the fixed points of time
Her dying is not part of the sacred timeline.
I did smile during the final battle between the two Stranges when even their capes separate and start fighting each other.
I didn't like the part where they started punching each other - i mean come on. 2 Supreme Sorcerers and they resort to a fist fight? The Harry Potter style magical duel on steroids though was awesome - i wonder if Sorcerers at this level would really let loose with all their knowledge and power a city could survive that battle? The fight seemed tame for beings who are the premier magical wielders in the universe.
I'm no Dr. Strange expert but all main superheroes, especially the FF4, had run ins with Uatu or even worked with him, so i assume the Sorcerer Supreme knows that Uatu and the Watchers exist.
Can't remember the storyline ( it was sometime 10-15 years ago when i actively read Marvel) but Uatu had a habit of appearing during pivotal events in person and you can't miss a 50 feet tall humanoid just hovering there silently and watching while all hell breaks loose.
When it started out I was thinking we've all seen this before where no matter what you do time finds a way to make an event happen so the guy tries over and over and fails in different ways each time. Luckily, it takes a turn for the better as Strange is hellbent to break this no matter what. I'm not 100% sure about The Ancient One's action but having the Strange/Strange face-off was fun so easy to not overthink.
Because this isn't the MCU timeline.
I bet if MCU Strange did the same thing but to prevent his hands from being broken, they'd just keep getting broken some how.
Different set point in time.
This one didn't work for me. It makes little sense to claim that the very thing that makes this timeline different from the main one is impossible to prevent in any timeline. There was some vague handwave about this "universe" having its own timelines distinct from any other, but that's not how the multiverse was shown to work in Loki, nor does it make sense in more general terms (since fiction uses "universe" and "timeline" pretty much interchangeably for the same phenomenon). For that matter, it conflicts with the core premise of this show, which is supposed to be that the decisions that are made differently are what cause the universe to split into alternate realities. This seems to be saying the universes are already separate and unconnected, independently of the decisions we see.
And even if it has an in-story rationalization, it's still incongruous to say "Look, this is the bit that we changed, and also it's impossible to change." It feels like trying to have it both ways.
Also, the idea that the universe directly intervened to ensure that Christine got fridged no matter what in order to ensure that the male lead got to fulfill his journey... well, maybe it was some kind of meta-commentary on the "women in refrigerators" trope, but it feels like a pretty nasty way for cosmology to operate. Not to mention that it's pretty much a direct lift from the Guy Pearce remake of The Time Machine, the idea that the time traveler can't undo the death that motivated him to invent time travel in the first place. Although this version improves on that one in one respect, in that the protagonist actually needs to try multiple times before realizing it's impossible, rather than just jumping to that conclusion after a single failed attempt.
I don't remember Doctor Strange as well as some of the other movies, so I'm a little vague on the divergence. Weren't Strange and Christine broken up in the prime timeline? I hardly recognized this Strange as the same arrogant, distant character from the movie.
Yeah, the comics' Uatu is really, really bad at keeping his promise not to interfere.
And even if it has an in-story rationalization, it's still incongruous to say "Look, this is the bit that we changed, and also it's impossible to change." It feels like trying to have it both ways.
Also, the idea that the universe directly intervened to ensure that Christine got fridged no matter what in order to ensure that the male lead got to fulfill his journey... well, maybe it was some kind of meta-commentary on the "women in refrigerators" trope, but it feels like a pretty nasty way for cosmology to operate. Not to mention that it's pretty much a direct lift from the Guy Pearce remake of The Time Machine, the idea that the time traveler can't undo the death that motivated him to invent time travel in the first place. Although this version improves on that one in one respect, in that the protagonist actually needs to try multiple times before realizing it's impossible, rather than just jumping to that conclusion after a single failed attempt.
I don't remember Doctor Strange as well as some of the other movies, so I'm a little vague on the divergence. Weren't Strange and Christine broken up in the prime timeline? I hardly recognized this Strange as the same arrogant, distant character from the movie.
Yeah, the comics' Uatu is really, really bad at keeping his promise not to interfere.
I don't really care if it was comics canon or not. I accept the reason why this Strange saw him was because he had consumed so much dark arts and mystics and so much more that it eventually heightened his abilities beyond the norm (well, the norm of a Sorcerer Supreme anyways).
I thought the idea was that, as Strange put it, it was a paradox. He can’t use sorcery to undo the very event that made him a sorcerer in the first place. If he tried to, say, prevent himself from ever going to Kamar-Taj, the same would’ve happened.
Has the show so far introduced a single character or even object from the comics that wasn’t already in the films? I’m starting to wonder if they aren’t allowed to — don’t want to narrow the options for any future films/shows.
Within the story itself, yes, but that doesn't make sense within the context of the larger universe where Strange did become Sorceror Supreme without Christine dying. We know that there canonically was another path that led to him becoming the SorSup and saving the world from Dormammu. So it's contradictory to say that there can be no other path.
Honestly, I was expecting it to turn out that all these timelines Strange experienced were just possible alternatives he was sifting through, like he did in Infinity War to find the one timeline where they beat Thanos. And it would turn out that the one timeline where Christine lived was the one from the movie, where he was in the car alone and lost the use of his hands. So basically this was the original version of Strange's life and he ended up creating the version we knew.
That was dark and heartbreaking. The whole episode felt like something right out of the Twilight Zone or Outer Limits. Parts of it felt like a time loop movie. Parts of the episode reminded me of some movie or TV show where the main character goes back in time to save someone but that person just dies a different way each time because destiny.... (The Time Machine 2002)
Absolutely. If I had the time stone I know exactly when I would go back to and I would do it in an instant.
Maybe season 2? I was going to say in a future movie but I doubt they would bring an animated story continuity into a live action continuity.
But Thanos used it to reverse time just a few minutes. He didn't actually use it to travel back in time. Just reverse a moment in time that happened recently. I guess you can get away with that? And Strange handed over the time stone to him so he knew this was all meant to happen.
Another path that led him to becoming Sorcerer Supreme, yeah, but not a path that would have led him to going back in time to before he was Sorcerer Supreme and changing events.
Well, the main appeal of alternate realities is familiar things in new contexts, not brand new things. Also, I found it noteworthy that when we saw the Collector's lair in the second episode, the only easter eggs were things already seen in previous movies. That would have been the perfect opportunity to drop in a couple of cameos from the comics -- the sort of thing the films do all the time -- but they didn't do that.
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