A new rumor claims that the character played by Benedict Cumberbatch that looks like Doctor Strange in the recent Spider-Man: No Way Home trailer is not actually Doctor Strange.
If you haven’t seen the trailer yet, you can watch below.
The portrayal of Doctor Strange is very odd in the trailer especially since he appears to completely ignore Wong’s warning about the spell that will ensure the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe will not remember that Peter Parker is Spider-Man.
The characterization is completely off from the character that we’ve seen in the past and recently in Thor: Ragnarok, where he has taken his duties as the Master of the Sanctum Santorum in New York very seriously.
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In Thor: Ragnarok, he puts Loki into a seemingly endless fall because the Asgardian god is on his list of threats to the multiverse.
Strange tells Thor, “I keep a watch list of individuals and beings from other realms that may be a threat to this world. Your adoptive brother Loki is one of those beings.”
Not only does Strange have this watch list in Thor: Ragnarok, but he makes it clear he takes his duty of protecting the realm extremely seriously as he fiercely debates Tony Stark on what the Avengers should do with the Time Stone.
After defeating Ebony Maw, Strange tells Stark, “Under no circumstances can we bring the Time Stone to Thanos. I don’t think you quite understand what’s at stake here.”
While Strange agrees to take the fight to Thanos, he warns Tony, “But you have to understand, if it comes to saving you, or the kid, or the Time Stone. I will not hesitate to let either of you die. I can’t because the universe depends on it.”
So it’s quite surprising that Doctor Strange would all of a sudden perform this risky spell that could endanger the universe.
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Well, a new rumor claims the character that looks like Doctor Strange in the new trailer is not actually Doctor Strange, but is in fact Mephisto.
This new rumor comes from scooper Mikey Sutton who writes at Geekosity, “That’s probably not Doctor Strange in the the Spider-Man: No Way Home trailer. It’s not likely a variant or a multiverse Doctor Strange, either.”
He adds, “Who is it then? Don’t groan. It’s Mephisto.” He even went on to speculate that “it’s possible that Marvel Studios mashed Mephisto and Nightmare into a single character.”
Sutton further claims that the film is loosely adapting the infamous Spider-Man story One More Day where Spider-Man creates a pact with Mephisto in order to save the life of Aunt May.
The scooper also references Dante’s poem Inferno and the fact that the Ninth Circle of Hell has a frozen lake.
Dante writes, “Whereat I turned me round, and saw before me And underfoot a lake, that from the frost The semblance had of glass, and not of water.”
He continues, “So thick a veil ne’er made upon its current In winter-time Danube in Austria, Nor there beneath the frigid sky the Don.”
Sutton believes the trailer references the Divine Comedy when it shows the Sanctum Santorum filled with snow and ice when Peter first arrives.
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This isn’t the first time Sutton has claimed Mephisto will show up in Spider-Man: No Way Home. Back in December the scooper claimed Mephisto would play a key role saying, “Spider-Man 3 is basically the middle piece of what really is a three-part tale, ending in the Doctor Strange sequel with Mephisto, who will show up here, too, as revealed to me.”
In that scoop, Sutton had previously claimed that “Doctor Strange is going to remove people’s memories of Parker being Spider-Man, including MJ’s with one of his powerful spells.” The trailer appears to confirm that scoop.
Time will tell if the Mephisto scoop will be true.
What do you make of this new scoop from Mikey Sutton? Do you think the Doctor Strange shown in the trailer and who performs the spell for Peter Parker is actually Doctor Strange or could he be Mephisto in disguise or some kind of amalgamation of Nightmare and Mephisto in disguise?