‘What If…?’ Recap: ‘What If… Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?’

Written by Shae Rufe

Caution: This article contains spoilers for Episode Four of ‘What If…?’
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Is it just me or does every episode of this series get progressively darker? I was almost expecting a happier episode after the last one, and that is not remotely what I got. As it turns out, this show can get darker, and it so did. I don’t know what turn I was expecting it to take with Doctor Strange and I am so happy with this episode. I genuinely loved seeing Stephen Strange as the villain. Much like many of the possible timelines, this one has changed quite a bit from the original story. Christine joins Stephen for the infamous gala where Stephen crashes his car and breaks his hands.
 
However, the car accident has a different outcome; in this version Christine dies and that’s what pushes Stephen to become the Sorcerer we know and love.  Still, Stephen has seen the power of the Time Stone, and let’s not forget that in this universe Stephen studied the mystic arts to find a way to save Christine. What happens when he’s given the opportunity to go back in time? Well, he experiments in every which way to save Christine. No matter what he does, though, Christine always dies.

The event is so damaging to the timeline that the Ancient One comes back from the dead, so to speak, in order to warn Strange not to push. There’s nothing he can do to save Christine; her death is a fixed point in time. Without it, Stephen never becomes a Sorcerer. She warns Stephen to drop it before he breaks the timeline. If only Strange listened. Instead, he seeks the answers to the question he’s dead set on; can anything break a fixed point in time? Good news for Stephen, he can, it just requires powerful magic and that can only be found in inter dimensional creatures, such as the Hive. Well, he learns how to absorb their energy. And so, he does. Over and over, for centuries. Eventually Stephen deems himself strong enough to finally break time and save Christine. There’s just one little catch. The Ancient One split Stephen in half. One went on and sought power while the other went and had tea with Wong.

How one single moment changes an entire universe.

Strange finds out he was split into two and faces off against his counterpart in a true good versus evil fight that will determine the fate of their world. Sadly, good Stephen does not stand a chance. We live in a world where good almost always wins, especially in the MCU. Even when they lost at the end of Infinity War, they won at the end of Endgame. Sure, winning comes at a cost, in the lives of Natasha and Tony, respectively. In this case, even when Stephen wins, he loses. While he does become whole again and brings Christine back to life, he damns his entire universe into oblivion. In the end, Stephen is able to save a tiny part of it, a small barrier around himself and Christine. It’s not enough. He begs, pleads with the Watcher, who’s he’s noticed all along. But nothing can stop what happens. Christine fades away, and Stephen Strange is left alone. It’s remarkably sad, this particular episode. What lengths we might go to in order to save those we love from the grips of death. Just because one can doesn’t mean one should. Yet, if faced with the same scenario, how many of us would let death happen to those we love?

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