What If… Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands? pushes the Marvel Multiverse in a dark direction

For a franchise that notoriously doesn’t do grim/dark, WHAT IF… DOCTOR STRANGE LOST HIS HEART INSTEAD OF HIS HANDS? takes the Marvel Cinematic Multiverse to a very dark and very grim place indeed. Like WHAT IF…CAPTAIN CARTER WERE THE FIRST AVENGER, this episode reimagines the origin story of the Marvel hero. Where the series’ first episode had Peggy Carter making a choice that radically altered her destiny, this story sees Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams) make the choice to accompany Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to his speaking engagement, with tragic consequences. It’s Christine’s death in the car crash rather than the injury to his hands that sees Strange seek answers and meaning in the mystic arts. Of course, the time-warping powers of the Eye of Agamotto prove too tempting for Strange to resist and he sets out to change history for the better – or so he thinks.

It’s hard to avoid the fact that WHAT IF… DOCTOR STRANGE LOST HIS HEART INSTEAD OF HIS HANDS? takes the comic book trope of “fridging” and elevates it to something of an art form as it kills poor Doctor Plamer over and over and over again. It shouldn’t really come as a surprise for fans of the MCU’s Sorcerer Supreme, though, as we’re talking about the same guy who sat and watched his friends (and half the universe) die fourteen million, six hundred and five times in a row.

Beyond the motivational multiple murders, though, the story is packed with mystical cosmic lore and a number of big comic book name drops – such as O’Bengh and a further appearance by Shuma-Gorath.

There’s also a heavy overlap with LOKI in WHAT IF… DOCTOR STRANGE LOST HIS HEART INSTEAD OF HIS HANDS? and not just in its full-blooded embrace of the multiverse. Like LOKI, it plays with Whovian concepts, this time giving us a Marvel Cinematic Universe interpretation of the venerable sci-fi staple’s “fixed point in time”. It’s also a timely reminder, as we head towards SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME, of Strange’s inherent arrogance and given the lengths he’s willing to go here, ignoring Wong’s warning about casting a spell to alter Peter Parker’s reality seems like relatively small potatoes.

While I’m still unconvinced that anyone or any event from WHAT IF..? will play anything more than a passing referential part of the main cinematic universe, if there is to be substantial overlap, there’s a great deal here that might inform and even impinge on DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS.

8/10