We’ve Found a New Universe, It’s the Doctor Strange 2 Spoiler Zone

Well, it’s finally here. After numerous delays, cryptic trailers, and plenty of teases about who could or couldn’t be showing up, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness arrived in theaters this weekend. It’s going to make a ton of money, as is often the case with MCU movies, and reviews are have been generally positive, though there are some who’ve found it lacking in some spots.

In non-spoiler terms, I thought it was pretty good! It doesn’t entirely live up to its subtitle, save for that brief flash of other multiverses (a paint universe would be cool to see in the future, honestly), but what we do get is fairly fascinating and it appears that director Sam Raimi was given a looser leash to let his horror flag fly. Whether or not you can reasonably call this the MCU’s first horror is up to personal taste, but he was certainly trying to have some fun and push the limits of what the MCU’s been allowed to do with violence so far. If I were a young kid seeing this, some of this stuff would’ve freaked me right the hell out.

Now then, if you haven’t seen the movie, best to not tread any further.

The biggest complaint I have against the movie is the whole Illuminati side detour. On some level, yes, it’s fun to see Haley Atwell, Lashana Lynch, and Anson Mount return as Peggy Carter, Maria Rambeau, and Black Bolt. But once Patrick Stewart’s Professor X and John Krasinski as Reed Richards showed up, it felt just incredibly self congratulatory in the worst way possible. The only thing that didn’t make it a complete dud and kill the film for me is that Wanda murders them all, in largely pretty horrific ways. Sure, Peggy goes down like a chump, but Black Bolt and Charles especially have some pretty gruesome ends that again, may be a bit much for the younger audiences who’ve only known mostly cleaner kills (and also Thanos’ decapitation) exist in these films up to this point.

Incidentally, when it comes to Wanda, you can really see how the shuffling of the MCU schedule affected this movie, which was originally meant to come a year before both WandaVision and Spider-Man: No Way Home. The argument that she’s basically going through the same arc as she did in her own show again, but with a bleaker ending, is an entirely valid one. As we said in our review, Elizabeth Olsen is giving a really damn good villain performance, definitely in the upper tier of these films. But it also feels as if the movie just was not interested in fully exploring everything they had set up for her, which is a shame since WandaVision has shown what she’s really capable of with a script that’s interested in her interiority beyond being a mother.

But enough from me, it’s now time for your thoughts on Doctor Strange 2. Whether you loved it to pieces or hated it, let us know what you think in the comments down below.

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