Doctor Strange
Half of WandaVision was spent with Marvel fans looking for cameos from past and future heroes, but most weren’t found, outside of a bit of stunt casting with Evan Peters as Wanda’s fake, undead brother Pietro, reprising his Quicksilver role from the FOX universe, in a sense.
One common question was whether or not Doctor Strange would show up, given that the events of WandaVision were supposed to lead directly into the next film, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, and Wanda herself will be in that film as the newly empowered Scarlet Witch.
Turns out at one point that was the plan. Doctor Strange was supposed to show up in WandaVision, but the decision was ultimately made to cut him. Here’s an excerpt from an upcoming Rolling Stone oral history of the show:
“Some people might say, ‘Oh, it would’ve been so cool to see Dr. Strange,’” said Kevin Feige. “But it would have taken away from Wanda, which is what we didn’t want to do. We didn’t want the end of the show to be commoditized to go to the next movie — here’s the white guy, ‘Let me show you how power works.’”
This idea was pretty far along. A deal had already been made for Benedict Cumberbatch to appear in the finale and his appearance was written into the upcoming movie. When that didn’t happen, they had to rewrite that part of the film.
I am split on whether or not I agree with Feige here. On the one hand, yes, I think the current ending of Wanda herself speed reading the Darkhold while astral projecting worked pretty well and hearing her children’s voices was a satisfying tease about what’s to come.
WandaVision
On the other hand, this is a Marvel movie, surprise crossover cameos at the end are sort of just a thing it almost always does. So it’s easy to see how they could have added a Doctor Strange stinger at the end there and it probably would have worked more than it didn’t. If Doctor Strange showed up for the bulk of the finale, not just a post-credits scene, then yes, I can see how that would tread into “steal the show” territory, given that the finale is supposed to be mainly focused on Wanda finally becoming the Scarlet Witch.
Doctor Strange was just one of many rumored cameos that were “supposed” to happen in WandaVision, but didn’t. Play a sad “Rest in Peace” montage song as we remember the following:
- Reed Richards
- Mephisto
- Professor X
- Magneto
- Mephisto
In short, people really thought we’d see Mephisto. Falcon and the Winter Soldier did not have quite as many expectations for cameos, once it became clear its mysterious Power Broker was not going to be someone from a different sub-series like Yelena Belova. It got Madame Hydra and that was it.
In any case, it all worked out in the end, it’s just interesting to see how that was planned, then scrapped, and why.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series, and The Earthborn Trilogy, which is also on audiobook.
