Stephen Strange and Wanda Maximoff have had a rough go of it recently. After WandaVision, she just wanted to hide away from the rest of the world to try to unpack her own grief and grow from her loss. For Strange, he’s dealing with the aftermath of No Way Home and how it affected him as a person, so it isn’t surprising that the trailer for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness ushers us into a world where Strange is out of his depth and he needs help.

The first thing we hear is Wong telling Strange that he shouldn’t do the spell that he did anyway in No Way Home to try to help Peter Parker, and the aftermath of that is clearly not just Stephen Strange’s burden to carry. The world seems in flux, and everything is coming at him to the point where he finally needs to search for help. And who better to help with the multiverse than the Scarlett Witch?

Two broken souls

The interesting part about this movie isn’t a further exploration of the multiverse but instead the fact that the two leads are incredibly broken people. While Wanda is open about her grief and is trying to unpack everything that’s happened to her, Stephen Strange is someone who hides behind a mask more often than not. He’s rude and abrasive towards people and lashes out without having any sort of remorse, but in No Way Home, we see a man clearly just trying to figure out how to live in his own pain and guilt—and Multiverse of Madness seems like more of an exploration of that.

But pair it with Wanda and her own pain? That’s going to be interesting. My fear with this movie is that Strange will mess something up and he’ll blame it on Wanda, as he did with Peter and as he did in his own movie before. He doesn’t like taking blame when something goes wrong, and he’ll find any way of justifying why it isn’t his fault. While Peter had MJ there to call it out, Wanda is the type of person who will either internalize his comments and cause more harm to herself or will lash out at him, and personally, I’d love if she lashed out if he dares blame her for anything.

We know very little about Multiverse of Madness, but we do get to see a glimpse of America Chavez (played by Xochitl Gomez). The portal-punching hero is one that fans (myself included) love, and we still don’t know what the Marvel Cinematic Universe will do with her and the future of the Young Avengers, but getting to see her in her star jacket in the trailer is something amazing!

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness has a lot to answer for. Sylvie broke the multiverse, so did Peter Parker, and so did Wanda Maximoff in a way. All these moments are leading something bigger for the MCU at large and I can’t wait to see what happens next!

(image: Marvel Entertainment)

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