Enter Professor X & Captain America’s Shield in New “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” Teaser

May 2, 2022

Director Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness promises to bring the crazy. We’ve already seen trailers and teasers that point to just how messy, and mystical, things are going to get for the good Doctor (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his friends. In the new film, one of his most crucial allies will be Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), one of the most powerful Avengers of them all and one who got in a good deal of trouble herself for messing about in the mystical realms. (See her shenanigans involving the Hex in WandaVision) In a new teaser, we see just how unruly things get when none other than Professor X (Patrick Stewart) arrives to find out “Will we see what kind of Doctor Strange you are.” You know things are bad if Charles Xavier, the man who tried tamping down Wolverine’s worst instincts, has to use his mind tricks on you.

The reason Professor X has to try to get to the bottom of what kind of Doctor Strange he is happens to do with the fact that when the multiverse is unleashed, a very bad version of Doctor Strange is untethered from his realm and into ours. So, too, does it look like an Evil Wanda will start to make life miserable for her kinder counterpart. The new film will fully unleash Marvel’s Phase 4, setting up new stakes, new characters, and a new direction for the vaunted mega-movie franchise house. Heck, before Professor X rolls up, Doctor Strange is treated to a near-miss of Captain America’s shield, which is launched from somewhere else (another realm, we supposed) and comes crashing into Strange’s reality.

In describing to /film how he went about designing the world of the film, Raimi says he took inspiration from the original “Doctor Who” artist Steve Ditko, who illustrated the Stan Lee comics that brought Doctor Strange and his wild world into the comics canon.

“Sometimes you’d open up a two-page Ditko landscape piece and it was incredible,” Raimi says to /Film. “In fact, if you saw the first 20 minutes of our movie, that universe where the movie starts is really based on what we call the Ditko-verse.

“It’s pretty unfathomably exciting where we’re going in this film,” Cumberbatch said in a recent featurette. “It’s the most fantastic new phase of Marvel.”

“In this story, we are leaping into different universes, but unlocking the multiverse creates a big Pandora’s box,” Olsen said in the same featurette. Wanda and Strange will try to contend with the unleashed contents of that Pandora’s box, which include monsters, villains, and an evil version of Strange himself.

“We’re in unknown territory. I think audiences are going to be startled,” said Benedict Wong, who returns as Strange’s right-hand man, Wong. “These other realities invite a plethora of all these new characters.”

Joining Strange, Stewart, Wanda, and Wong are Xochitl Gomez as superhero America Chavez, Rachel McAdams as Dr. Christine Palmer, and Chiwetel Ejiofor returning as Mordo.

Check out the epic new teaser below. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness hits theaters on May 6.