Love & Loss in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

Spoilers for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness to follow.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness begins with Strange attending Christine’s wedding. He’s a braver man than I am, for attending the wedding of an ex-girlfriend is no easy feat, especially since he’s still in love with her. While he was busy saving the world and finding his greater purpose, she moved on. She found someone else, she found her happiness, and he, despite what he tells her when she asks, isn’t happy. It’s the same situation Wanda faces, only hers is compounded by loss that was beyond her control.

These superheroes prioritised the greater good and made necessary sacrifices, and yes, people were saved, people were brought back, yet not everyone perceives this with the gratitude we would expect. Stephen is confronted with this the moment he sets foot in the church, and as we dive into the events of the movie, he is forced to reckon with this as he meets different variants of himself.

The first Stephen we encounter is trying to help America, but the moment things get out of control, he desires to take her powers for himself, for the greater good. The Stephen Strange of universe 838 begins reading the Darkhold, once again for matters regarding the greater good, and causes an incursion because of it.

When Stephen meets the Stephen of a universe that has faced incursion, incursion-Stephen speaks about his attempts of trying to find a universe where he had Christine, a universe where he was happy. But his search was in vain. Everywhere he looked, these variants had made the same choice, the choice of power and ambition over love and happiness. His obsession over what he had lost led him to seek out the Darkhold, and he becomes corrupted by it as a result. Even when Stephen speaks about needing to save his own universe, incursion-Stephen’s only request is for him to give him his Christine. Christine has become a prop for his happiness, instead of an agent partner for him to share his life with.

It’s the same fate for Wanda, who dreams about her children every night when she goes to sleep, only to wake and find them absent from her reality. Her obsession with her loss leads her down the same path, reading the Darkhold for a solution, only to be corrupted by it, fueled by an entitlement to happiness. After facing so much loss, and existing so long in the abyss of grief, she longs for a reality devoid of it, even if it means murdering others to achieve it. Once again, there is no consideration of what she would have to do to 838’s Wanda in order to have her children, and instead looks at them as props, quickly replaced by their variants should anything happen to the ones she has.

The path to villainy occurs when we fail to factor others into our decision making process, or use the rhetoric of the greater good as justification for our actions. There’s a certain blindness here as it is only our vision that matters, a need to be holding the knife and paving a particular way forward, even if it isn’t the best way. In his travels through the Multiverse and interactions with his variants, Stephen recognises that he needs to change his ways, to have faith that the people around him can rise to the occasion and handle what needs to be done.

This is why he chooses to encourage and empower America, to have faith in her despite the implications that await. And yes, it is awfully convenient that she can suddenly control her powers, but having someone like Stephen Strange believe in her can be a massive motivation, especially since he’s the closest thing she has to a support system. She gives Wanda what she wants, and the reality of her children looking at her like some type of monster is the clarity Wanda needs to wake up, to finally see the consequences of her obsession and make the necessary amends.

As the dust clears, we begin to see a pattern that runs through all these MCU narratives, where a fixation on loss becomes so consuming that it devours any sense of objectivity and empathy. Hawkeye goes on a killing spree after the loss of his family, Zemo sought to divide the Avengers because of what happened to his family, and Wanda enslaved an entire community to her bidding because of her grief. Even the rift between Tony and Steve is caused by what the Winter Soldier did to Tony’s parents, with Tony refusing to acquit Bucky of the actions of the Winter Soldier.

T’Challa was also consumed by a similar motivation, chasing down the Winter Soldier to make him pay for what he did to his father, but in his pursuit begins to see that this fixation doesn’t make the emptiness any easier to bear. Killing the Winter Soldier and Zemo would not bring him any peace, just like how Wanda’s plan to be with her children would not have truly brought her a sense of fulfilment.

The only way forward is forgiveness and acceptance, so that you can begin to heal and carve another path of happiness for yourself. This is the path Stephen chooses for himself at the end of the movie. He tells Christine the truth in his heart, that he’s loved her in every universe, and accepts that he cannot have her. This allows him to finally move on, releasing himself from the emotional cage of the past, ready to embrace whatever life brings his way.

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