"What If... Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?" is the fourth episode of the first season of the American animated television series What If...?, based on the Marvel Comics series of the same name. It explores what would happen if the events of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film Doctor Strange (2016) occurred differently, with Dr. Stephen Strange's girlfriend Christine Palmer dying rather than Strange losing the use of his hands. The episode was written by head writer A. C. Bradley and directed by Bryan Andrews.
Jeffrey Wright narrates the series as the Watcher, with this episode also starring the voices of Benedict Cumberbatch (Strange), Rachel McAdams (Palmer), Benedict Wong, Tilda Swinton, Ike Amadi, and Leslie Bibb. The series began development by September 2018, with Andrews and Bradley joining soon after, and many actors expected to reprise their roles from the MCU films. The episode tells a tragic love story in which Strange attempts to use magic to prevent Palmer's death. Animation for the episode was provided by Flying Bark Productions, with Stephan Franck serving as head of animation.
"What If... Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?" was released on Disney+ on September 1, 2021. Critics praised the episode's dark storyline and ending, but gave mixed reviews for its visuals and Palmer's fridging storyline.
Plot After successfully completing a rare hemispherectomy, surgeon Dr. Stephen Strange and his girlfriend Dr. Christine Palmer drive to a celebration party in his honor. However, they get into a car crash that kills Palmer. A grieving Strange seeks answers in Kamar-Taj, where he becomes a Master of the Mystic Arts. While studying the Eye of Agamotto, Strange learns that it can manipulate time, but is warned by the Ancient One and Wong not to do so as it could damage the fabric of reality.
Two years after Palmer's death, Strange returns to that night using the Eye, but is unable to save her no matter how he alters events. The Ancient One explains that averting Palmer's death would mean he never became a sorcerer, creating a universe-destroying paradox as the event is an "absolute point" in time. Strange refuses to listen and uses the Eye to escape to the Lost Library of Cagliostro. He meets librarian O'Bengh and learns he can amass enough power to break an absolute point by absorbing magical beings.
After centuries of doing so, Strange is told by a dying O'Bengh that he is still not powerful enough because he is only half of himself. He soon learns that when he escaped the Ancient One, she used the power of the Dark Dimension to split him into two alternate versions, with him becoming "Strange Supreme" and the other going on to accept Palmer's death, in the hopes that the latter Strange can defeat the former.
After a battle between the two, Strange Supreme overpowers and absorbs his counterpart. He then uses his enhanced powers to reverse Palmer's death, but his monstrous appearance repulses her. As the paradox begins tearing reality apart and his surroundings collapse, Strange Supreme begs the Watcher for help. The latter refuses to interfere and the universe is destroyed. While Strange preserves a small pocket of it, Palmer disintegrates, leaving a regretful Strange Supreme to grieve alone.
Production Development
By September 2018, Marvel Studios was developing an animated anthology series based on the What If...? comic books, which would explore how the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) films would be altered if certain events occurred differently. Head writer A. C. Bradley joined the project in October 2018, with director Bryan Andrews meeting Marvel Studios executive Brad Winderbaum about the project as early as 2018; Bradley and Andrews' involvement was announced in August 2019. They executive produce alongside Winderbaum, Kevin Feige, Louis D'Esposito, and Victoria Alonso. Bradley wrote the fourth episode, titled "What If... Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?", which features an alternate storyline of the film Doctor Strange (2016). "What If... Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?" was released on Disney+ on September 1, 2021.
Writing The episode was written in February 2019. In the episode's alternate storyline, a car crash results in Dr. Stephen Strange's girlfriend Christine Palmer dying rather than Strange losing the use of his hands, creating a "dark... tragic love story". The creative team of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) were interested in What If...? take on Strange during that film's development. The episode adapts part of the H.G. Wells novel The Time Machine (1895), with Strange making multiple attempts to go back in time and save Palmer only for her to always die. Bradley was scared to begin work on the episode because of its heavy themes, including tragedy and "why does loss hurt so much", but she ultimately found writing the episode to be a rewarding experience because it "all comes down to love. Only the things we love can hurt us". Bradley drew from a personal loss of her older cousin, using her desire to go back in time to save him as the basis for Strange wanting to save Palmer, as well as what it means to have grief. She also called it the "most human" episode of the season. Andrews felt the episode went in a different direction to others of the series that he believed animation should cover more often, and believed the audience would be shocked by the episode's ending.
The Watcher considers intervening to prevent Strange from endangering his whole reality, taking a more active role than in previous episodes, which actor Jeffrey Wright said was a "shift in attitude ... purpose and intent" for him, becoming "less disembodied". He added that the Watcher took particular interest in this story because he and Doctor Strange have a "common perspective on certain things". Wright also explained that the Watcher is "not a voyeur for voyeurism's sake, he is in some ways made up of these characters. Without them, what does he watch? He's profoundly compelled by them, and maybe there's only so much he can take". Wright was moved by the episode and believed its lessons were "really riveting and relevant", while calling the premise of the episode "timeless" since all people have had moments when they wish they could undo certain events. The episode refers to fixed points in time as "absolute points", which had previously been established as a "nexus point" in the first season of Loki (2021). Bradley conceded that "nexus point" should have been used in the episode, however, the scripts for Loki were not yet created when the episode had completed its animatics.
Casting
Jeffrey Wright narrates the episode as the Watcher, with Marvel planning to have other characters in the series voiced by the actors who portrayed them in the MCU films. The episode stars returning Doctor Strange actors Benedict Cumberbatch as Dr. Stephen Strange as well as his evil counterpart which is referred to as Doctor Strange Supreme, Rachel McAdams as Christine Palmer, Benedict Wong as Wong, and Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One. Leslie Bibb reprises her role of Christine Everhart from previous MCU media and Ike Amadi also stars in the episode as O'Bengh, which is a pseudonym used by the sorcerer Cagliostro in Marvel Comics. Dormammu also appears in a non-speaking role.
Animation Animation for the episode was provided by Flying Bark Productions, with Stephan Franck serving as head of animation. Andrews developed the series' cel-shaded animation style with Ryan Meinerding, the head of visual development at Marvel Studios. Though the series has a consistent art style, elements such as the camera and color palette differ between episodes. After an early screening of the episode before animation work began, Feige said "It's amazing... I don't know how we're going to pull this off with the animation, but keep pushing it." Concept art for the episode is included during the end credits and was released online by Marvel following the episode's premiere.
When designing an evil version of Doctor Strange, Meinerding looked to the idea that he had been altered by the mystical creatures he was absorbing and designed a "very odd-looking, malformed person". The creatives decided that they still wanted the character to be recognizable as Strange, so Meinerding instead went with a more human version of the character that is gaunt, with a darker costume, paler skin, "sharper and more dangerous" hair and beard, and dark circles under his eyes. Meinerding described this as a "classic" evil character look. Another element that was adjusted is the character's cape and collar, which is bigger to give the two versions of Strange a distinctive silhouette. The more monstrous designs that Meinerding originally did were brought back for the episode's ending. This look incorporates the different creatures that appear in the episode, which were based on ideas from Andrews, Bradley, and storyboard artist Aram Sarkisian rather than any existing Marvel Comics characters. They designed around 20 different creatures for the episode, and wanted the looks to both be interesting on their own as well as in the ways that they could temporarily merge with Strange as he absorbs them. The design team went through more iterations of Doctor Strange than many other characters for the series as they worked out how evil he needed to be portrayed and how monstrous his final form should be, as well as the other variations such as the character wearing a tux, injured versions, and 10 to 15 variations of him absorbing different creatures.
One of the most complex environments to create for production designer Paul Lasaine and his team was the room where Strange absorbs the creatures. It is meant to be the same main library room that is seen earlier in the episode, and they initially planned to use the same space with the lighting turned down, but the way the shots were framed for the sequence meant they would have to create 60 or 70 different backgrounds for the scene. Instead, they created a new "big black nothing" location and painted six or seven columns that they could then move around the scene depending on the angle of the shot. Another difficult sequence was the abstract backgrounds required when Strange sees an illusion of Palmer near the end of the climactic fight, which was added on the suggestion of editors Joel and Graham Fisher. The fight itself was developed by Andrews and Sarkisian and was described by the editors as "insane action" and "phenomenal stuff", but they felt it would detract from the story if the characters just fought until one of them won. They felt that adding a "final temptation moment" for the good Strange where he considers joining Strange Supreme to save Palmer would "reestablish the emotional reason for why this is happening, and what the stakes are". In the episode's original script, the good Strange suffered a much more gruesome death at the hands of Strange Supreme by getting beaten to death with the Eye of Agamotto. During storyboarding, Andrews and Sarkisian decided to make the scene more fantastical and visual instead of "horrifically violent". When Strange Supreme wins and changes the past, the universe begins to collapse. Franck described this as an "abstract environment where you don't have anything that you can recognize to orient you, and it's purely relying on the aesthetic and shape language". The animators used comic book artist Jack Kirby's distinct Kirby Krackle art style which is rarely seen in film and television to depict the negative space of the universe dissolving around him with a field of black.