Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness does its best to carry on the multiversal plot threads introduced in last year’s first season of Loki, but there’s one major component missing from the final product. Despite an ominous warning from Jonathan Majors’ He Who Remains that a more dangerous variant of himself, Kang the Conqueror, would arrive if the Sacred Timeline was continually tampered with, there was not a single inter-dimensional warlord to be found in Doctor Strange’s two-hour runtime. Michael Waldron, the man with a plan who wrote both projects for Marvel, recently sat down with Deadline’s Hero Nation podcast and revealed exactly why he chose not to include the next big Ant-Man baddie in Sam Raimi’s sequel:
To me it felt like we had the biggest, best bullet already, in Wanda. That when working with Sam, when it was like we should really make the decision to make Wanda the antagonist of this film. It was exciting and part of that was the feeling of ‘geez, we can’t let another movie go have that fun.’ It’s because she is going to be so great.
Michael Waldron
The Scarlet Witch acts as an incredibly effective villain in Multiverse of Madness, which packs a lot into its story already. It was probably for the best that Waldron and Raimi decided to focus on one antagonist at a time. The writer confirmed as much as he continued his answer, explaining:
And I think that if you had introduced Kang, as great as Jonathan Majors is, and as great as he is going to be playing that character, you would have risked the movie just getting maybe over-stuffed.
Michael Waldron
For fans worried about the lack of Kang, don’t be. The villain is set to get the spotlight in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and will likely be a major player in the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In the meantime, go see Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, in theaters now.
Source: Deadline
