Spider-Man: No Way Home star Benedict Cumberbatch defended Doctor Strange's controversial actions in the Marvel Cinematic Universe blockbuster.
Cumberbatch discussed the Master of the Mystic Arts' role in No Way Home in an interview with Total Film. "I know we all love Peter Parker, but can we just rewind to the point that [Doctor Strange's] spell is interrupted something like six times?" Cumberbatch explained. "I think it’s just too easily written off as: '[Doctor Strange's] going to have to pay for his arrogance.' It’s not all arrogance, actually. I think some of it is a very calculated risk. But we’ll see where that takes him."
As Cumberbatch mentions, the catalyst for Spider-Man: No Way Home's plot is a botched memory modification spell Doctor Strange casts early in the film. The sorcerer performs this magical feat to make everyone on Earth forget that Peter Parker is Spider-Man but the Wall-Crawler blurts out a series of exemptions to the spell which causes Strange to miscast it. As a result, several supervillains from alternate universes are pulled into the MCU, a threat some fans attribute to Strange's arrogance in attempting the spell in the first place.
Strange successfully performs the memory modification magic during Spider-Man: No Way Home's climax, which returns the non-MCU baddies to their original realities. This proves to be a double-edged sword as it also means that everyone on Earth, including Peter's closest friends MJ and Ned Leeds, no longer know who he is. Cumberbatch recently revealed he improvised one of the saddest moments during No Way Home's bittersweet finale, where Strange tries to convince Peter not to go ahead with the spell. "I came up with this idea of, to show that I love [Peter Parker], I didn't want him to make the sacrifice of being forgotten," he recalled. "[Director Jon Watts] was like, 'That's gonna be in the film.'"
Some fans have since called the logistics of Strange's spell into question, arguing that physical evidence related to Peter Parker's secret identity should still exist. Spider-Man: No Way Home co-writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers subsequently teased an in-universe explanation for this apparent plot hole, but refrained from sharing it. In the meantime, Sommers suggested that fans adopt a Back to the Future-style approach to how the film's altered reality works in a more practical sense.
Strange will return May 6 for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which also features the return of Scarlet Witch and the introduction of the Illuminati.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is currently in theaters and on digital, arriving on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and DVD on April 12.
Source: Total Film, via GamesRadar+