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Who is Donna in ‘Doctor Strange 2?’

I'm loving all the variant group therapy sessions in Phase 4.

promotional poster showing doctor strange in the multiverse of madness

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is far from a perfect movie. However, it does give Stephen Strange the deeper character development that’s been overdue since his first appearance five movies ago. Stephen’s ego is as legendary as his powers, but in Multiverse of Madness he finally starts to get a little real, and in one scene, he even opens up about his lost sister, Donna.

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At first, the reference to Donna is just a way for him to convince a skeptical variant that he’s really who he says he is. Stephen and Christine find themselves in a universe that’s in the midst of an incursion—that is, two realities crashing together and destroying each other. They go to the Sanctum Sanctorum to find a seemingly broken, defeated version of Strange, and “our” Stephen verifies his own identity by telling the story of how he and Donna were playing on a frozen pond one winter and Donna fell through the ice. Stephen explains that he tried to save her, but couldn’t.

The movie doesn’t mention Donna again, but thanks to the reference, some puzzle pieces about Stephen’s character finally fall into place.

Donna in the Comics

In the original Doctor Strange comics, Stephen grows up on a farm in Nebraska with two younger siblings: Donna, and a brother named Victor. When Donna is nine, she’s injured in an accident and Stephen helps her, giving him his first interest in pursuing medicine. Later, when she’s seventeen, she gets a cramp while swimming and drowns. Just like in the movie, Stephen is left blaming himself for her death, since he’s unable to save her.

In Stephen’s previous MCU appearances, there’s always been a few aspects of his character that don’t quite add up. Yes, he’s fanatical about his career and aloof in his personal life, but why? The trauma of losing his sister might be part of the answer.

Stephen’s Toxic Mix of Ambition and Fear

In the first Doctor Strange movie, the Ancient One tells Stephen that he became a surgeon “to save one life above all else: your own.” In retrospect, that line makes much more sense when we know about the emotional baggage Stephen has been carrying with him his whole life.

Losing a sibling at a young age is an incredibly traumatic event—moreso if you feel responsible for your sibling’s death. As we recently saw in Moon Knight on Disney Plus, that mix of guilt and grief can be life-altering. Now that Donna’s death is canon in the MCU, Stephen’s relentless quest to be a top-tier surgeon makes more sense: Stephen’s ambition is actually his drive to make up for “failing” to save his sister’s life.

It’s also one explanation for Stephen’s struggle to get close to people. As we’ve seen over and over again in the MCU, Stephen is remarkably good at pushing people away. When Christine tries to help him after his accident, he accuses her of seeing him as a charity case. When he gets stuck on Thanos’s ship with Tony and Peter in Infinity War, he tells them in the cruelest and most callous way possible that he’ll prioritize the time stone over their lives. At Christine’s wedding, he tries to impress her by turning her water into wine, still not getting that his habit of showing off is one of the things that led to their breakup in the first place. Stephen’s goal seems to be to make sure no one ever likes him too much.

But near the end of Doctor Strange 2, he finally opens up to Christine about his antisocial tendencies. “It’s not that I don’t want to care for someone, or have someone care for me. It’s just … I get scared.”

Obviously a sibling relationship is much different than a romantic relationship, but the guilt and grief of losing Donna could carry over into his ability to get close to anyone. What if Stephen opens up to someone, and they die? What then? Some part of him might believe it’s safer just to keep people at arm’s length.

It’s funny that one recurring theme of Phase 4 is characters using alternate selves as vehicles for therapy—see, for example, the roomful of Lokis in Loki, the three Peters’ grief counseling session in No Way Home, Marc and Steven’s heart-to-heart in Moon Knight. When Stephen proves his identity to himself in Multiverse of Madness, he’s finally forced—or perhaps able—to confront an old would that’s been festering his entire life.

And, intriguingly, his relationship with America Chavez might help him move on.

Is America a Sister Figure for Stephen?

America Chavez running Dr. Strange 2

First off, let’s acknowledge the obvious: even though Xochitl Gomez and Elizabeth Olsen‘s performances are phenomenal, Multiverse of Madness does not do justice to their characters. In America Chavez’s case, her MCU character is almost unrecognizable from the badass queer Latina from the comics. It’s possible that Marvel is setting her up to eventually grow into that character—after all, they aged her down a few years—but for now, many Ms. America fans are frustrated and disappointed.

With that said, the movie does set up an interesting dynamic between Stephen and America. In the opening scene, they’re friends, working together to get the Book of Vishanti. Throughout her adventures with Strange 616, America grows close to Stephen all over again as they witness each other’s memories and Stephen bumblingly tries to coach her in learning to control her powers. By the end of the movie, America is a student at Kamar-Taj, and Stephen affectionately calls her “kid.” He’s not quite a father figure to her, though. He seems more like … a big brother?

It’s true that there’s quite an age difference between the two of them, but it’s not much of a stretch to argue that he sees America, on some level, as the sister he lost, and helping her helps him work through the pain of Donna’s death. Of course, that interpretation makes America’s place in the movie even more troubling for fans. Is she just there to be a balm for a male character’s trauma? What does she get out of the deal? Will Kamar-Taj at least serve as a new family for her while she searches for her moms?

Will Stephen and America’s friendship continue to evolve as phases 4 and 5 of the MCU progress? Will we get any more peeks under the hood of Stephen Strange’s character? It remains to be seen.

(image: Marvel)

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Author
Julia Glassman
Julia Glassman (she/her) holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and has been covering feminism and media since 2007. As a staff writer for The Mary Sue, Julia covers Marvel movies, folk horror, sci fi and fantasy, film and TV, comics, and all things witchy. Under the pen name Asa West, she's the author of the popular zine 'Five Principles of Green Witchcraft' (Gods & Radicals Press). You can check out more of her writing at <a href="https://juliaglassman.carrd.co/">https://juliaglassman.carrd.co/.</a>

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