What If? #4: Baron Armani's Mentalverse Of Madness?

Article by Sean Wilkinson,
a.k.a The Ticketmaster
Good news, Ticketholders! Sony has officially dropped their cumbersome franchise brand, "The Sony Pictures Universe Of Marvel Characters," in favor of the much more concise, but also kind of scope-limiting, "Sony's Spider-Man Universe." That isn't to say the pool of Spider-Man-adjacent characters is a small one, though. Name an animal, and chances are--whether they look like the animal in question or not--Spider-Man has fought a villain with that name. On top of that, he has at least three Goblins, a Spot, a Big Wheel, a Prowler, a Hunter, several vampires, electrical villains, sonic villains, water villains, fire villains, magic villains, a Universe full of Symbiotes, and even villains connected to other heroes (like the Sandman) in his rogues' gallery. Then there are all of the characters from his civilian life (including half a dozen or so ex-girlfriends for various reasons), and that's just for one of the Peter Parker versions of the hero. We've already seen a female Dr. Octopus (who--SPOILERS--May or May not have been in a relationship with someone's Aunt) in the animated Into the Spider-Verse. Imagine if Sony could stop being stupid in the live action medium and successfully build their Spider-Man Universe to a cosmic level! I'm highly caffeinated and could go on for hours about the potential of this new branding, but I just want to touch briefly on a theory/idea that I omitted last time (over 350 views as of this writing!) and move on to this week's episode of What If...? before I forget all of the cool stuff I planned to say.
So, according to various Wikipedia pages connected to the MCU, a fourth Spider-Man film has already been greenlit. My thought (if the NWH trailer's reveal of Peter in the Iron Spider suit--which has four mechanical spider legs, similar to a certain, divisive limited series from the previous decade--and Doctor Octopus--who has four mechanical tentacles--are any indication, I think we could be looking at Spider-Man: Home, Superior Home for that fourth installment. Comment below what you think.
If you haven't seen the fourth episode (or any episodes) of What If...?, get on Disney+ and catch yourselves up to avoid me spoiling anything. And if you are caught up on all of the action, here's my "playlist" of the episode reviews so far:

Episode 1: "What If Captain Carter Were the First Avenger?"

Episode 2: "What If T'Challa Became A Star Lord?"

Episode 3: "What If the World Lost Its Mightiest Heroes?"

New episodes drop at midnight every Wednesday on the app, and will continue to do so for the next six weeks. Shang-Chi premieres in theatres tomorrow (Friday, Sept. 3), but I will not be covering it until its projected streaming release in October. With that said, let's break down Episode Four after the image.

The Premise: "What If Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead Of His Hands?" Kind of an abstract title here, but if you've seen the episode preview on YouTube, you at least know that we get an evil Doctor Strange out of whatever is about to go down in the episode. My usual council of YouTube breakdown artists seem to have adhered to the idea that the evil Strange in this episode is the Strangely-behaving Strange from the NWH trailer, but I will continue to dog-bone the idea that it's Agatha using a glamour. The reasons why it can't be What If...?'s Evil Strange will become clear in a later section. Also note that his official title is "Strange Supreme," but because that makes him sound like a pizza with everything--or a cheap taco with sour cream--and because of his darker cloak and thick, pointy beard later in the episode, I will call him "Baron Strange" from here on, as a reference to his comic book nemesis, Baron Mordo.

Quick Aside: Is it just me, or does anyone else hear Uatu's opening speech ("Space, Time, Reality..."), and think he should play a Starfleet captain on Star Trek? My brain automatically cuts him off and says, "Space, Time, Reality: the Infinite frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship, Observer. Our mission: to watch over Variant life and new Timeline branches. To boldly go where no being has gone before!" Am I weird? I mean, I know I'm weird; but is that a weird thought to have upon hearing Jeffrey Wright say the word, "Space"? Please comment below.

The Premise (continued): So, in this version of events, Dr. Stephen Strange is well into a romantic relationship with fellow surgeon, Christine Palmer.

But because of that, she's in the car with him when he's run off the road, and she dies.

But he learns magic from the Ancient One and discovers that the Eye Of Agamotto has power over time.

But every time he tries to save Christine, Fate course corrects and she dies anyway.

But he finds the Library of Cagliostro, where he learns that it's possible to change fate and save Christine.

But to do so, he has to gain power by eating the souls of demons, which will turn him into an evil, supernatural chimera and destroy the fabric of reality.

I have inserted my obligatory Simpsons meme, so, yes. Yes, Homer, you can go now.

Among the demons that the future Baron Strange absorbs into his body are a small imp, a humanoid insect wearing the Baron Mordo cloak, a giant, six-eyed bird that looks like a Trigon-possessed Raven from Teen Titans, some kind of excessively antlered deer-thing, a red demon that makes Strange look like Mephisto for a few frames (shut up, speculators!), and a Variant of Shuma Gorath (the tentacle monster from the Captain Carter episode). I feel obligated to note that this is the second time the giant, extradimensional, immortal, reality-warping elder god has possibly been killed by a mere human. First, Captain Carter went into its reality, alone, and sliced it to pieces with a normal sword. And now, just because Baron Strange With Sour Cream And All the Toppings absorbed the souls of a few thousand low-level demons and mythical creatures, he can just eat the soul of an immeasurable, reality-warping, Lovecraftian starfish-god like it's sushi. If Fonzie jumped the shark, Dennis Rodman and Jean-Claude Van Damme fried the Coke, and Indy nuked the fridge, then the MCU has officially Nerfed the Cosmic Starfish. I don't care if that sounds like a lost Flaming Lips track, a band that David Bowie would have never admitted to being in, or the title of a Limp Bizkit album. I don't care that it made Captain Carter look like the most kick-ass chick in non-anime history. And I don't care that the person to kill Shuma Gorath in the comics actually was Doctor Strange. Marvel Nerfed the Cosmic Starfish, which means one of two things: they just wanted to make their What If...? leads look cool, or they wanted to job out an extra-dimensional, pre-Universal deity to drive home just how terrifying the real saga villain (a.k.a. "the next Thanos") will be by comparison. While I think it's a ridiculous hype tactic, I cannot deny that it worked on me on both fronts. In the end, Baron Strange becomes a sunken-eyed conglomeration of demonic souls and heavily backlit body horror that terrifies Christine as much or more than her return to life or the literally melting reality that surrounds them both.

I have realized that I'm blurring a few boundaries myself, so let's briefly address the voice cast. 

The Cast: Just about every main character from the Doctor Strange movie (Strange, Christine Palmer, Wong, and the Ancient One) is voiced by their film actors, with Benedict Cumberbatch giving a few unusual (you thought I was going to say "Strange," didn't you?) line deliveries, but otherwise bringing a conflicted, tortured, dual performance to the screen as Doctor and Baron Strange. Rachel McAdams, whose film presence was wasted after her role was re-written and mostly left on the cutting room floor prior to Doctor Strange's release, brings a lot of emotion and character to Christine, despite being refrigerated by Fate for much of the episode's runtime. Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One and Benedict Wong as...Wong serve as little more than stoic, buzzkill authority figures. I suppose Swinton has slightly more to work with, as her character is the one to play Schroedinger with Strange's future, splitting his power in two and ultimately creating Baron Strange. But in general, she and Wong are just there to say no. Meanwhile, Mortal Kombat Legends voice actor Ike Amadi (he voices Jax Briggs in both of the MKL animated films) here supplies his talents to a new character, O'Bengh. O'Bengh serves as kind of a passive gatekeeper for the Library of Cagliostro, an anti-Wong, and a friend to Strange. This last is mostly offscreen, but Amadi and Cumberbatch masterfully convey their characters' unseen history in the moment of O'Bengh's death, and while O'Bengh has little in the way of verbal dialogue, Amadi's grunting and exasperated breaths speak volumes to his character.

The Animation: If ever there was an episode to benefit from the series' heavily shadowed, rotoscopish aesthetic and hyperdramatic, Disneyfied nightmare fuel facial expressions, this is it. The Doctor Strange side of the MCU is all about psychedelic, boundary-defying, cosmic horror visuals. Floors become walls, buildings drip molten darkness upward, everything becomes a kaleidoscope, human emotions leap from contorted expressions of rage, horror, shock, sadness, madness, and everything between and beyond, splintered realities slam into one another via a twisted combination of the Bifrost, Willy Wonka's nightmare tunnel, and the rabbit hole that leads from Wonderland to Toon Town, and Baron Strange's body is perverted into a Frankenstein amalgamation of tentacled shadows, hulking limbs, sunken, dislocated eyes, and many-fanged jaws as unhinged as the Sorcerer himself has become. This episode is an animation achievement far beyond any that has preceded it thus far, and uses what previously didn't work about the animation style to its full potential. I fear that I may spend a few of the coming weeks underwhelmed by what will follow this, but I know I will nonetheless find other things to enjoy about the series going forward. Excelsior?

What Changed & The Implications: I've already said so much about Episode Four's plot, so I'm just going to bundle these two sections together. So what changed? Christine was in the car with him when the driver ran him off the road this time, so instead of Strange damaging his hands beyond conventional repair, Christine died. Thus Strange was able to pick up spellcasting more quickly (working hands means fluent magical hand-signs) and was more eager and impatient to learn as much of the Mystic Arts as he could, which led him to try bargaining with Dormammu much earlier (this time, presumably to bargain for Christine's return to life, which Dormammu was not able to accomplish). Unsuccessful with Dormammu--to his own ends, at least--Strange began using the Eye's power to repeatedly reset time and attempt to save Christine's life. But Groundhog Day will be Groundhog Day and Final Destination will be Final Destination, so he fails time and time again (puns!), and draws the attention of the Ancient One, who intentionally turns Strange into Schroedinger's Nexus Point via the classic astral shove. Who says you can't live two lives, huh?

While Baron Strange travels the world in search of answers, eating demonic souls for every meal and getting so powerful that he becomes aware of the Watcher himself, the good Doctor eschews the allure of time manipulation and personal gain in favor of slow progress and a far-too-soon call to a greater purpose, so that when the big Highlander moment comes, our hero is unfathomably outclassed and gets absorbed by his Baron Variant with minimal resistance. So what are the implications here? Pretty much nothing. I don't mean nothing happens; quite a bit happens in the episode's final moments. Having absorbed the necessary power and made his own power whole again, Strange succeeds in defying Fate and reviving Christine, only to appear to her as something terrifying and literally unrecognizable. After losing her multiple times in the episode, he finally loses Christine three ways at once: she is horrified at what he has become, horrified that he would revive her into a nightmarish, melting reality, and soon becomes a part of that melting reality herself, dissolving into inky nothingness right before his eyes (all of them). This ultimate loss brings Strange back to his senses, and he pleads with the Watcher to help him survive, to take pity on a fool who has recognized his prideful mistakes and wishes to repent. But the Watcher must remain as such: a passive observer of Variant events and nothing more. And so this reality, and Baron Strange along with it, is reclaimed by nothingness. That is what I meant by there being no implications in this episode. Nothing is implied, and nothing can be implied, by a Universe that no longer exists. I guess it is possible, since Strange is part Shuma Gorath now, that he could have shifted beyond dimensions and survived as some kind of semi-phenomenal, nearly cosmic meta-character, only to emerge in the NWH trailer so he could poke some insider fun at Wong's naysaying and live vicariously through Peter, using magic to help the young hero have the happy, fresh start that Strange himself never could. But this also negates Baron Strange's final redemption and goes against his character, and let's not forget: he's supposed to not exist anymore! So, yeah; I'm sticking with my Agatha Strangeness theory, TYVM.

The Verdict: Best What If...? episode so far, by miles. If you thought Loki taking over the Earth after the Avengers got serial murdered by Hank Pym was a dark ending, if you thought the Ravagers dooming the Universe to be collateral damage in a Celestial grudge match was a dark ending, this episode is so dark that it literally has a dark ending. The screen is consumed by blackness and the tortured wailings of an erased, tragic hero. While not inviting anywhere near the level of future-speculation as any of the previous episodes, it adheres the closest to the comics' formula of "captivating story in a reality you definitely don't want to be canonized." The voice cast is small but big on performance quality, and the animation style (disturbing flaws included) is put to its best use ever. I'm surprised that I was able to get to sleep when it was over, but this episode's impact is sure to stay with me for a long time after.

I hope all of you will stay with me for a long time after this post, so stay tuned for more Marvelous content. As always, I have been:

Ticketmaster the Watcher,

Cannot interfere,

Must not interfere,

So come with me and ponder the question:

Out If?

Goodnight.