Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness story writer Michael Waldron revealed an alternate more sinister ending of the movie which could never make its way to the finished film. While The Marvel Cinematic Universe gave us a decent cliffhanger at the end, this alternate ending would have broken the usual tropes of a general MCU movie and presented us with something absolutely unprecedented.
Original Ending: Throwback to Evil Dead?
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In the original movie which we got, Doctor Strange played by Benedict Cumberbatch travels through Multiple Universes to protect the other universe-hopping super heroine America Chavez from the Scarlett Witch, and in this process, he kills the Sinister strange of the other universe- who in his world uses the Darkhold to kill all the Stranges of other universes to search for reality with the Rachel McAdams played Christine Palmer only to induce an incursion in his reality- then our 616 Strange dream walks using the Book of the Damned and at the last successfully returns to our universe with a mystical third eye after defeating Wanda.
Michael Waldron went on to describe the original ending as a throwback to old Evil Dead(also directed by the Doctor Strange 2 director Sam Raimi):
“It was a little bit of a throwback to [director Sam Raimi’s] old Evil Dead, and that groaner of an ending, or it’s just like, ‘Oh my God, things turned out bad in the end.’ So, yeah. We’ll see what all that means for Stephen.”
Although the original ending does give us a cliffhanger by introducing Clea played by Charlize Theron in the end but it was somewhat unsatisfactory for a movie like Multiverse of Madness.
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The Alternate Ending:
As revealed by the Loki and Doctor Strange 2 writer Michael Waldron, the alternate ending seems a much more interesting and unique take on Marvel Cinematic Universe. As stated by him in the audio commentary of the digital release, the original Earth 616 Strange was about to get trapped in the shattering universe of Sinister Strange and we were going to have the menacing laugh of the horror icon Vincent Price at the end:
“Strange gets trapped in that [incursion] universe … and then [Sinister Strange] turns around, and the third eye opens.” Punctuating the twist-ending switcheroo was to be the laugh of horror icon Vincent Price, reminiscent of Price’s narration on Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
Although we did get a different outcome than what was planned but now with Doctor Strange traveling in Dark Dimension with Clea, more can be expected in the future.
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Doctor Strange 2 releases on 4K UHD Blu-ray and DVD on July 26 and is now exclusively streaming on Disney+.
