Warning: This article contains spoilers for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
The MCU’s long-awaited deep dive into dark magic and alternate realities, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, has finally arrived in theaters. The greatest thing about the Doctor Strange sequel is that it’s a Sam Raimi movie above all. It has his shamelessly camp tone, his gruesome vision of horror, and his unique blend of goriness and goofiness.
Compared to the rest of the franchise, Multiverse of Madness is more focused on horror, comedy, and mind-bending psychedelic imagery than standard superhero action. But Raimi still packs in plenty of the expected set-pieces.
Strange Fights Mordo
When the rest of the Illuminati take off to fight the Scarlet Witch, Karl Mordo sticks around to keep an eye on their prisoner, Stephen Strange. Strange quickly goads Mordo into attacking him, leading to a pretty typical fight scene. There’s an interesting conflict in Strange being handcuffed through the whole thing, but the choreography is still pretty uninspired.
Two sorcerers throw each other around a room while one tries to use the other’s sword to cut through his cuffs. This fight scene might be more fun if it wasn’t spliced into a much better fight scene. Strange’s brawl with Mordo is nowhere near as thrilling as the other action sequence it’s intercut with: Scarlet Witch slaughtering the Illuminati.
Scarlet Witch Attacks Kamar-Taj
After learning that there’s a witch chasing America Chavez, Doctor Strange takes her to Kamar-Taj to hide out. Then, Strange seeks out the help of the only witch he knows, Wanda Maximoff, to find the witch chasing his new young ward – only to learn that Wanda is that witch. So, right after taking America to hide out from the witch who wants to kill her, Strange instantly tells that witch where she is.
Kamar-Taj becomes a fortress to ward off the Scarlet Witch, but Wanda manages to break in pretty easily. At the last second, America opens a portal and she and Strange bound across the multiverse. This early sequence is the closest thing this movie has to a standard Marvel battle sequence. Still, the many sorcerer murders are more shocking than the average MCU battlefield bloodshed.
Strange Fights An Evil Version Of Himself
Toward the end of the second act, after being banished from the space between worlds and separated from Chavez, Strange finds himself stranded in a universe that was destroyed by an incursion caused by his other self. He heads to that universe’s Sanctum to meet this other self and learns that he’s an evil, corrupted version of Strange who succumbed to the allure of the Darkhold.
This isn’t the highest-stakes action sequence in the movie, but it is one of the most visually stunning. As Strange and his evil self use magic to battle one another, they rip musical notes off the pages of sheet music and throw them at each other.
Strange And Wong Save America Chavez From An Octopus Demon
Chavez first arrives on Earth-616 with an octopus demon chasing after her. Strange spots the carnage from Christine Palmer’s wedding reception and flies over there to help out. This sequence gets the action off to a great start with a Lovecraftian monster, a badass introduction for Wong, and carnage on the streets of New York.
This scene also introduces Raimi-style “splatstick” right off the bat when Strange pops out the demon’s giant eyeball and it splatters all over the crowded street below.
Zombified Strange Takes On The Scarlet Witch
The first couple of acts of Multiverse of Madness are a little disjointed in their pacing and a little exposition-heavy in their dialogue, but the movie goes full Raimi in its final act. Strange dreamwalks into his own universe via the reanimated corpse of his multiversal self. He battles the souls of the damned for control of the corpse, then ends up mastering these demons and riding them into his confrontation with the Scarlet Witch.
The movie’s conflict with the Scarlet Witch isn’t resolved with an extravagant display of superpowers. The resolution is surprisingly moving, as Strange inspires Chavez to take control of her powers. She sends Wanda to Earth-838 to see the fear she strikes into the children she covets, at which point she makes the ultimate sacrifice to save humanity from the Darkhold.
Scarlet Witch Massacres The Illuminati
Easily the most memorable set-piece in Multiverse of Madness sees the Scarlet Witch crashing the star-studded Illuminati meeting in the second act and eviscerating the entire team in one fell swoop. The shocking brutality of this massacre instantly establishes both how powerful the Scarlet Witch is and how far Wanda has fallen down the villainous rabbit hole. This isn’t the morally gray, ultimately noble antihero that Marvel fans saw in WandaVision; she’s a full-blown mass murderer.
She doesn’t just kill every member of the Illuminati quickly and painlessly; she wipes them out in jaw-droppingly cruel and unusual fashion. She rips Mr. Fantastic to shreds, she breaks Professor X’s neck, she crushes Captain Marvel under a statue, she cuts Captain Carter in half with her vibranium shield, and she forces Black Bolt to cave in his own skull.