MCU What If...? - Every Episode Ranked From Worst To Best
3. What If... Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead Of His Hands?
Hank Pym murdering the Avengers was dark, and seeing the Earth covered with flesh eating zombies was possibly darker, but there was no episode quite so dark as episode four. Seeing Doctor Strange lose his heart instead of his hands was the potentially the darkest the MCU has ever gone.
Such a change of pace from the jovial norm of the franchise was more than welcome, as Stephen Strange spiraled down into a descent of madness and heart ache. This was yet another showing from Marvel Studios exactly what lengths grief can drive people to.
The story itself was compelling, heartbreaking, and like any good ‘what if’ scenario, completely unique and different from anything seen previously in the MCU. Doctor Strange is an incredibly powerful sorcerer, and seeing what he could achieve should he ever turn his talents to darker magic was truly eye opening.
What made this chapter of the series even stronger was the completely unexpected ending. The original Doctor Strange was pitted against his now evil counterpart, but instead of the good guy prevailing as we are trained to believe will happen in every superhero story, he was simply absorbed too. Even this couldn’t stop the universe from ending, as everything around Strange, including Christine, melted into a black goo in the most shocking ending of all.