SPOILERS AHEAD! STOP READING IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED THE FOURTH EPISODE!
What If...? Episode 4 "What If...Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands" explored the life of Doctor Strange, losing the love of his life for which he turned to Mystic Arts to bring her back. Learning that it is impossible, he takes darker turns, dooming his entire universe.
The Story-view
The episode starts with Dr. Stephen Strange taking Dr. Christine Palmer on his Lamborghini, the same car in which he had an accident in 2016's Doctor Strange movie. There, he lost the use of his hands, but unfortunately, in this episode, Strange lost the love of his life in that accident. Even though it wasn't his fault, he starts to blame himself for it and goes to Kamar Taj to learn mystic arts. According to the movie, he defeats Dormammu and saves the world. But the death of Christine still haunts him. As a result he uses the Time Stone to save her, but every time he takes a different step than before, the consequence remains the same. Ancient One comes to him and reveals that Christine's death is an Absolute Point in time, which can never be changed because without her death, Strange wouldn't have defeated Dormammu.
Stephen Strange doesn't listen to her and starts seeking more power avoiding Ancient One's warnings. Strange goes to a jungle where he finds O'Bengh, the librarian of the lost book library. He takes Strange there where he finds the book of Time Manipulation. To reverse an absolute point in time, he just needs for power through absorption of other beings. So, he starts absorbing mystic beings for centuries, including Shuma-Gorath. But then he learns that he is not the only Doctor Strange in his universe.
While Ancient One was talking with this Strange before, she used dark magic to branch the timeline into two where one of the Doctor Strange didn't use the Time Stone to save Christine Palmer. That Doctor Strange finds out that his "evil misguided twin" is trying to reverse an Absolute Point in time for which the resulting temporal paradox will destroy this universe. But the other Strange finds this Strange and brings to him. He tries to absorb him, to become whole again, but Strange resists. He fights his more powerful self but fails, resulting in Doctor Strange Supreme's dream to save Christine come true. But the whole universe starts to shorten and all life forms starts to fade away.
For the very first time, we see the Watcher actually talking to a being from the story when Doctor Strange Supreme begs for his help. But the whole universe becomes destroyed and turns into a pink glass orb dimension in the void, with only Doctor Strange Supreme surviving.
Major Details
In the car before the accident, Christine talks about his brain surgery techniques and about the recent performed Radical Hemispherectomy. This is a brain surgery where half of the brain is removed or disconnected from the other half of the brain. As brain is considered to have the personality of a person, splitting it to two foreshadows the future as Ancient One uses Dark Magic to split the timeline to have two Doctor Stranges in the same universe, living half lifes.
With the death of Christine, he goes to Kamar Taj in order to learn Mystic Arts but he is more determined now than ever. As a result, he is found to be using the magics pretty easily, unlike in his solo movie where he struggles to form a portal.
Doctor
Strange Supreme goes to a jungle in search of Great Sorcerer
Cagliostro, whose name was revealed in 2016's Doctor Strange movie when
Doctor Strange was eager to know more about a book, chained by Ancient
One, named the Book of Cagliostro. Before the library of lost books,
Doctor Strange Supreme meets O'Bengh which is also an alias of Sorcerer
Cagliostro from Marvel Comics. So this O'Bengh could actually be the
Sorcerer Cagliostro as he also says that he has seen Doctor Strange for
centuries.
While studying the Book of Cagliostro, we see a page with a strange symbol on it, similar to the book from movie. But in the movie, those pages were torn off and taken by Kaecillius from which he learned how to bring Dormammu from the dark dimension. Doctor Strange Supreme also learns these evil techniques from those pages of the book resulting in turning him towards the darker path.
We see Shuma-Gorath return in this episode, after what happened in Episode 1. Though this universe isn't the same one from Episode 1, there could remain a connection as we know there is a scene of Doctor Strange Supreme and Captain Carter together in the trailer of the series.
When
Doctor Strange Supreme uses his evil magic to bring Christine back, the
green time stone becomes blood red. This could mean that he is using
Chaos Magic, similar to Wanda Maximoff who is the Scarlet Witch, destined to
destroy the world. We do see Doctor Strange Supreme using this red
magic to destroy the whole universe, referring that while absorbing
different creatures, he might have also absorbed creatures having
different forms of magic, like Dark Magic, Chaos Magic, Cosmic Magic
etc.
Final Verdict
What If...? Episode 4 takes the consequences of a hero's wrong decision and toxic obsession to an extreme level, giving us one of the darkest and tragic installments from the MCU. The animation is at its peak, describing and exploring the Mystic Arts and the powers. The episode confirms that there is no bargaining with death as he meddles with time, inviting destruction of this alternate universe. Benedict Cumberbatch shines with his incredible voice-acting with the perfect representation of emotions and feelings.
Rating: 8.5/10
What If...? Episode 4 is streaming now exclusively on Disney+ with new episodes airing every Wednesday.
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