Doctor Strange 2 Writer Michael Waldron Reveals The Major Plot Problem He Had To Solve
Contains spoilers for "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness"
In case you don't know by now, screenwriter and producer extraordinaire Michael Waldron isn't messing around when it comes to his Marvel Cinematic Universe projects. Whether it be his work on Disney+'s "Loki" or the latest big-screen MCU outing, "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness," for which he penned the script, Waldron is truly putting his stamp on the studio's Phase 4 lineup. However, that doesn't mean the former "Rick and Morty" scribe hasn't run into some issues while helping bring the MCU to life.
Speaking in a recent interview, Waldron revealed a major struggle he had while conjuring up the script for "Multiverse of Madness," which involved the film's final act. During it, we see Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) try to stop the now-depraved Scarlet Witch, aka Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), who has been using the infamous Darkhold book to "dreamwalk" across the multiverse in hopes of reuniting with her children, while also killing a bunch of people in the process.
But Strange has a big problem: once Wanda kidnaps multiverse-traversing teen America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez), he has nobody to help him travel through the multiverse, thus creating Waldron's major plot issue.
Waldron had to figure out how Doctor Strange could dreamwalk on Earth-616
With Strange trapped on Earth-838 at the start of the final act, Michael Waldron needed to find a way to get his titular hero back to where Wanda was wreaking havoc — Earth-616, which is the version of Earth in which the main continuity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe exists. The problem he faced, however, was that Strange is unable to use a variant to dreamwalk, which is an ability granted by the Darkhold that allows someone to possess alternate selves in other universes. Since our main Strange hails from Earth-616, and he's now on Earth-838 using the Darkhold, there's no way he can dreamwalk there. So, Waldron had to come up with a plan.
"Trying to figure out how we would get Strange into the third act to fight Wanda on Mount Wundagore was pretty tough," he explained, speaking to ScreenRant. "Ultimately, the solution was he would possess his own corpse. When we came up with that, it was a real eureka moment." Waldron continued on to add, "But that was like, geez, multiversal travel is so hard. It has to be hard — it has to be an impossible thing to do, such that only America can do it. That meant when Stephen got stranded in a multiverse, in another universe without America, he really was stuck for a while. And so was I."
Zombie Strange wound up being one of the best things about "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse in Madness" and showed just how much Waldron really wanted to make it feel like a Sam Raimi movie. "That was my goal," he recently told Looper. "I knew what I had to do for the MCU of it all, but I tried to set him up for success in his Sam Raimi way as much as possible."