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The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s (MCU) first of two summer movies, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Raimi 2022), brings fans the latest chapter in the stories of long-time favorites Doctor Stephen Strange and the Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff. While Multiverse of Madness isn’t director Sam Raimi’s first Marvel movie – he also directed the Tobey Maguire Spidey trilogy back in the early 2000s – it is his first project with the MCU. Raimi’s long history directing occult horror, from The Evil Dead (1981) to Drag Me To Hell (2009), is cleverly incorporated into the MCU’s first serious engagement with the genre because of how the nature of Strange and Wanda’s abilities veers into the supernatural. Horror seems like the natural genre to marry to a superhero movie directly dealing with themes like loss, desperation, and grief, not to mention the meeting doubles and seeing alternative possibilities through the story’s multiversal element.
The stylistic choices Raimi brings to the table for Multiverse of Madness make it aesthetically and tonally unique compared to other MCU projects as of late. Phase 4 has intentionally leaned into using genre as a story-telling apparatus to tease out certain themes in the story and/or characters. In the context of Wanda, WandaVision (Shakman 2021) used the sitcom to effectively project how the shiny veneer of the suburban utopia can be used to hide personal trauma and emotional isolation. And while the story is a very standard MCU story, and very similar to Doctor Strange (Derrickson 2016), it brings a new dimension to Strange’s character by upping the stakes and forcing him to confront alternative possibility through the multiverse – paralleling how he was asked to imagine a world with magic when he first learned of the mystic arts. Raimi’s classic, campy style sets the showdown between Strange’s mastery of the mystic arts and Wanda’s uncontrollable chaos magic against the backdrop of a supernatural horror film with superheroic stakes — and makes it great movie-going fun.
Multiverse Of Madness’ Story
Multiverse of Madness picks up shortly after the events of WandaVision (2021), with Wanda desperately wanting to reunite with her twin sons, Billy and Tommy. She sees the young multiverse-hopping superhero America Chavez as her ticket to doing so, but getting America’s powers for herself means killing the girl. Strange runs into America (and a dead alternate Strange — more on that later) when she’s on the run from eldritch creatures out to kidnap her, and immediately takes her under his wing with the help of Sorcerer Supreme Wong and all of Kamar-Taj.
Strange goes to enlist Wanda in uncovering who is sending these creatures after America, but their encounter quickly reveals that she was the one sending them. Then, an all-out fight between the masters of the mystic arts and Wanda goes down at Kamar-Taj, where she tries to extract America’s powers. The fear and anxiety America feels during the attack opens a portal to the multiverse that she and Strange travel through, leaving Wanda and Wong behind. Strange and America find themselves in a new universe, designated by its version of Christine Palmer as 838, and immediately attempt to locate the Book of Vishanti in order to stop Wanda from dream-walking.
However, a run-in with 838’s Karl Mordo leads to the arrest of Strange and America by the Illuminati, a group made by the late 838 Strange to protect the world from threats. While Strange tries to plead for access to the Book of Vishanti with the Illuminati, a sorceress from Kamar-Taj manages to escape Wanda’s grasp and destroys the Darkhold in an attempt to stop her. With the Darkhold gone, Wanda forces Wong to bring her to Mount Wundagore, where the spells found in the evil book originate from. She dream-walks as 838’s Wanda, who is only a stay-at-home mom, and goes to the Illuminati to kidnap America herself. A gory, jaw-dropping fight ensues as Wanda eliminates each member of the Illuminati and Strange, America, and 838 Christine try to reach the Book of Vishanti before Wanda does.
A showdown at the space between universes holding the Book of Vishanti ends with Wanda destroying the page needed to protect America. Wanda succeeds in kidnapping America, transports Strange and 838 Christine to an imploding universe implied to have been the result of Sinister Strange’s use of the Darkhold, and brings America back to 616. Strange defeats Sinister Strange and steals his Darkhold in order to dream-walk in the Strange corpse that America’s portal dragged with her into 616 and defeat Wanda once and for all.
When Wong is able to temporarily contain Wanda, America offers to sacrifice herself to Strange so that Wanda will never have her powers, but Strange encourages her to control her powers and use them to save herself. In a heart-wrenching scene, America purposely opens a portal to 838 right in front of Billy and Tommy while the Scarlet Witch attacks her. The sight terrifies Billy and Tommy, leaving her heartbroken. 838’s Wanda comes to comfort the Scarlet Witch and reassures her that Billy and Tommy will be loved. In her pain, the Scarlet Witch retreats back to 616 and kills herself, destroying every Darkhold in the multiverse. Everyone is returned to their proper universes, and America takes up the mystic arts at Kamar-Taj. All seems well, but Strange develops Sinister Strange’s third eye from dream-walking and using the Darkhold in the last scene of the film.
Subverting Assumptions Of The Superhero Genre
Multiverse of Madness is a Doctor Strange film through and through, magical threats aside. Strange is always placed at the intersection between the world he once knew and one full of new and fantastical possibilities. At the start of Doctor Strange, Strange was a cocky neurosurgeon with a failed, tenuous relationship with Christine whose world got turned upside down with a car accident that left him with severe nerve damage. His injury pushed him towards finding a cure so that he could return to being a surgeon, but instead of a cure, he found the world of the mystic arts and accessibility for his disability.
Before the mystic arts, Strange was selfish and wouldn’t do anything that wouldn’t help himself, but when Earth is threatened by Dormammu and the dark dimension, he sacrifices himself in an infinite time loop to stop Dormammu from taking over. He learns the values of sacrifice and compassion and devotes himself to a higher cause. In Multiverse of Madness, Strange travels the multiverse and is forced to reckon with his “there was only one way” mentality from Avengers: Infinity War (Russo Brothers 2018) by confronting alternate possibilities.
His cockiness and hero complex gets deconstructed when Strange hears from 838 Christine and Sinister Strange about his flaws and failures — ones that led to both the destruction of his relationships and whole universes. The mentality is also called into question with America’s powers. The first scene of the film shows an alternate Strange attempting to kill America and take her powers for himself so that the eldritch creature won’t kidnap her, arguing that it’s the only way to prevent the being sending the creatures from getting them. This is echoed again at the end of the film when Strange refuses to kill America and offers her the encouragement she needs to focus and control her powers for the very first time, which ultimately saves the day.
It’s the best version of a superhero story, one that allows for a deconstruction of toxic masculinity. Strange’s most heroic act is realizing it’s not his powers that will save the day but someone else’s. It’s not lost on me that the person he realizes whose powers can save the day are that of a young woman’s, and that America doesn’t try to kill the Scarlet Witch with them: America shows her the consequences of her choices instead. The MCU’s reliance on the “it was the only way” narrative is abandoned in favor of one that allows a young woman to take her bodily autonomy into her own hands and use her powers in a productive way instead of denying her the chance to be a hero. Killing an innocent girl for “the greater good” doesn’t need to happen. The very-masculine hero complex assumption that the most severe (literally) life-ending solution is the “only” one gets deconstructed through the Strange-America dynamic and offers a much more uplifting story in the end.
In the midst of Multiverse of Madness’ multiversal adventures and magical battles, though, lies a down-to-earth emotional story dealing with the effects of loss and grief on the psyche. The double whammy of losing her husband Vision and both of her children is what drives Wanda to the desperate act of trying to kill America. America struggles with the guilt of assuming she’s killed her mothers, so much so that when it comes down to how they can defeat Wanda, she jumps to sacrifice herself without a second thought. Strange struggles with whether or not he is happy and satisfied with his life, especially when he meets 838 Christine. But Wong’s words to Stephen at the end of the film, where he says he’s grateful for what he has in this universe and knows a version of himself in the multiverse is happy, is comforting in that it presents the multiverse not as a place of madness, but a place of hope.
Horror Elements Abound
Raimi’s fondness for supernatural, occult horror is a perfect match for the magical, multiversal battles depicted in Multiverse of Madness. The Darkhold, the evil book at the center of the narrative, is used as a story-telling device to emphasize how using certain kinds of power corrupts the mind and soul. The post-credits scene for WandaVision, which is the entire context for her arc in Multiverse of Madness, shows Wanda already succumbing to the corruptive power of the Darkhold. Her use of the Darkhold to dream-walk in one scene looks like something out of The Craft (Fleming 1996): a dark, gothic rock song (composed by none other than Danny Elfman!) plays over Wanda’s spell to begin the dream-walk, as she lights the candles and begins to levitate. Stranges, too, become touched by the Darkhold, as Strange discovers when he travels the multiverse and meets his doubles. The Darkhold’s corrupting force, and how Strange seems to fall prey to its powers in every universe, is aptly explored with the horror element: when Strange meets his evil, corrupted double, he’s forced to reckon with the darkness and flaws inside him.
The dream-walking spell granted to users of the Darkhold is a fabulous way to incorporate the power of magic and the mystic arts into the superhero world. Instead of being pure necromancy or possession like it would be in a supernatural or occult horror story, marrying the multiverse to the mystic arts through dream-walking is possession with an MCU twist. It makes possession a terrifying superpower, the implications of which feed on our anxieties that we can be controlled by outside forces who want to manipulate us for selfish, evil gain.
And what is the horror genre, if not the filmic/artistic manifestation of our society’s collective anxieties about the unknown, the transgressive, and the deviant? This is why Multiverse of Madness’ explicit horror coding works so well for the story and elevates it from being just another superhero popcorn movie. Multiverse of Madness shows endless possibilities of what the world and ourselves can look like by making the multiverse the center of the story’s stakes. And though Multiverse of Madness does end on a hopeful note about the possibilities of the multiverse through America’s powers, the sheer vastness of the multiverse and the unknown (and possibly evil) entities lurking there makes it the perfect playground for horror coding.
The visuals and editing — which many fans and critics argue should’ve warranted an R-rating, a moot point given that they were more gross than gory – pay homage to Raimi’s fondness for campy horror violence. Wong and Strange pluck out an octopus-like eldritch creature’s eyeball with a lamppost in gory detail; Wanda kills every member of the Illuminati in gruesome ways, from slicing them in half to exploding their heads or cracking their necks; there’s even an extended sequence where America, Strange, and 838 Christine are escaping from Wanda down a hallway that has a “why aren’t they running away!” moment like many horror movies do that ends in a jump scare.
There are more literal callbacks to the horror genre, like when Sinister Strange calls the crumbling Sanctum a “haunted house” or when Strange dream-walks in the decayed body of his dead alternate self (essentially making him a zombie) that also add to the horror aesthetic of the film and create memorable moments that make it a fun case study for how to bring horror into a superhero movie.
Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness (2022)
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness takes audiences on a horror-inflected superhero trip through the multiverse. Strange and Wanda’s arcs (and powers) clash in a story that delves into the tragedy of grief and begins dismantling the MCU’s reliance on “there was only one way” narratives.
The multiverse holds possibilities beyond mere madness, as the film’s title would suggest, and ultimately ends on a hopeful note with the introduction of America and her powers. The horror stylings allowed Raimi to tell Wanda’s tragic story and also express anxieties about the unknowns that lurk in the multiverse. Multiverse of Madness is a welcome, fresh addition to the massive franchise because of its aesthetic and self-reflexive story about what it means to be a hero — one that future directors and screenwriters in the MCU should take notes from.
