How Doctor Strange 2 Will Change Everything
So Marvel just announced something interesting involving our favorite strange doctor. After two years, we’ve finally gotten some solid confirmation that Doctor Strange 2 is indeed happening.
Marvel has recently just started up the future film’s development. They’ve announced that Scott Derickson will be helming the film as its director. This is great news for fans of the first movie since Derickson was the director for that as well. Considering the films overall success, it should be safe to say that the film is in good hands.
Scott teased his return to working on Doctor Strange sometime ago, but this is actually our first confirmation that the cogs of the movie have been set in motion. Actual production of the film should be begin in spring 2020, and Marvel seems to be aiming for a 2021 release date, so the film should take place five whole years after the original if we're still abiding by Marvel’s MCU timeline a that point.
With all of that being said, we thought it would be interesting to take a look at just how Doctor Strange 2 will affect the MCU with its premiere.
Doctor Strange Rejoins the Fray
The announcement of Doctor Strange’s sequel seems to solidify a few things, but the biggest one is the fact that he will be returning in the events of Avengers: Endgame. Of course, they do do something wonky in Endgame and make it so that strange doesn’t return so that they can tackle it in his sequel, but that doesn’t feel like the likely scenario (same deal with Spider-Man: Far From Home, considering they’re already advertising that movie.
Anywho, if you haven’t seen Infinity War (what are you doing?), some pretty drastic things happen at the climax of the film.
Doctor Strange sees only one victorious future with the fight with Thanos out of over 14 million possible others; he loses his fight with Thanos and gives up the time stone to “save” a friend; and then he dies when Thanos inevitably collects the rest of the stones and snaps his fingers. It was all very dramatic and really cool.
The point is, is that Doctor Strange--along with a number of other heroes--is currently nothing more than a pile of dust who’s soul may or may not be trapped in the Soul World of the soul stone. He’s definitely not alive right now or at the time his sequel confirmation was made, so a second film revolving around his character should be impossible if not impractical.
But, since we now know the sequel is actually happening, that must mean he will be coming back relatively soon (as if we didn’t already know). Whether or not we’ll be seeing him make a runback against Thanos in Endgame remains to be seen though, but it clear that MCU will getting their Master of the Mystic Arts back.
Baron Mordo Enters the Fray
Baron Mordo started off as one of The Ancient One’s greatest disciples. He was the one who originally introduced Doctor Strange to The Ancient One and was the main partner to help Strange control his magic. Aside from all of his skills as a sorcerer, he was also one of the Ancient One’s most trusted and loyal followers.
But, then all of that changed when he figured out the secret behind the Ancient One’s immortality. She had always told him that the dark dimension was a place of pure evil, yet she herself was drawing power from it in order to sustain her life, and increase her abilities.
This revelation destroyed Baron as it undermined everything she had taught him to believe. The whole ordeal had revealed to him that the man he built himself up to be was lie. This is a pretty bad revelation to have when you’re a character who originally sought out magic as way to obtain the power necessary to exact revenge.
Baron proves this in the end credits scene of the first Doctor Strange when he demonstrates that his new mission is to strip sorcerers of their magic at all costs, stating that his new belief is that sorcerers are what’s wrong with the world.
All of this basically means that Baron has been set up to be the villain for Doctor Strange to face off against. Considering his respectable level of magically power, seeing what he does to shake up the MCU’s norm will be interesting. The actions of villains like Killmonger put Wakanda on the map publically; the Winter Soldier helped reveal S.H.I.E.L.D for what it really was, and the Skrulls--even though Captain Marvel hasn’t come out yet--are sure to leave a lasting impact of their own.
Brother Voodoo Enters the Fray
The Ancient One had a lot of disciples in the first Doctor Strange, but there was one that stood out in particular to the rest. He didn’t have a lot of screen time, but he had enough to at least get a name reveal. Apparently, he was known as Daniel Drumm. We use the term “was” here because he was promptly killed by Kaecilius and goons when they first appeared before Strange.
The reason why his name is important, though, is because in the comics the name belongs to the brother of superhero known as Brother Voodoo. Brother Voodoo is a powerful ally to Strange. In fact, in the comics, Voodoo takes up the mantle of Sorcerer Supreme after the Eye of Agamotto deems him worthy. Brother Voodoo’s real name is Jeiro Drumm and in the comics, his origin as Brother Voodoo also deals with death of Daniel Drumm. Daniel is fatally wounded by a another sorcerer, and before he dies he manages to get one last message to Jericho. He tells him to visit a man named Papa Jambo, Daniel’s mentor. Jericho does and the resulting training transforms him into sorcerer more powerful than Daniel.
None of this of course will happen in the marvel movies considering we saw Daniel get slaughtered, but the MCU can always just take liberties with Brother Voodoo’s origin. For example, Jericho can visit Strange after coming to the conclusion that his brother is dead. He can learn what happened and Strange and Wong can have a hand in teaching him how to become his super hero persona. In this way, Strange would be stepping into the roll Baron Mordo had with him.
Also, Daniel’s soul is supposed to be bonded to Brother Voodoo--it’s one of the skills in his power set. So, Marvel could also bring Jericho's character into the picture using the disembodied soul of brother to lead him to Strange. This would make sense considering the Astral form is a trick that the sorcerers of the MCU Doctor Strange love using whenever they have the opportunity to.
Brother Voodoo’s inclusion into the MCU would also give Strange his first, solo superhero ally outside of the avengers. Tony has War Machine, Thor “had” Loki, Ant-Man has Wasp, and Cap has both Bucky and Falcon, and all of these partnerships were established in these superheroes second movie. Introducing Brother Voodoo into the MCU in the upcoming installment of Doctor Strange would help further emphasize that he and the other new heroes are the new focus since the conclusion of Endgame should take it away from the originals.
