What I’m Watching: What If…?

What If…? Season 1, Episode 4 “What If… Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?” (B)

I feel like I’m saying this a lot, but I don’t remember all that much about Doctor Strange even though I’ve seen the 2016 film starring Benedict Cumberbatch, whose upcoming sequel is going to be the next big epic MCU crossover following the events seen in “WandaVision” and “Loki.” I do have an affinity for one character related to this protagonist after interviewing Benedict Wong recently, though he didn’t play much a part in this episode. What I do understand is that Doctor Strange was probably the most powerful of all the characters in the two Phase Three-concluding Avengers installments, and that he had the ability to see so many different outcomes and yet wasn’t going to intervene since that might unduly influence the result. This alternate version of events was deeply troubling since he became obsessive rather than all-knowing, and wanted to use all the power he was able to harness to bring the back the love of his life rather than better the universe as a whole. I’ve seen many shows and movies where one person’s death is inevitable and the universe finds way to accommodate for an attempted subversion of fate, and in this case, both the Ancient One and the Watcher did what little they could to prevent Strange from using his full abilities to self-destruct everything around him. Splitting him into two different versions that could exist in the same timeline was a bit of a head trip, and while this episode started out intriguingly, it went down a less interesting and more convoluted path on its trip towards a desolate end.