***Major spoilers for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness lie ahead***
The question of who the villain is in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is complicated. While some characters take on the more traditional bad guy role, no one here is a villain just for being a villain’s sake. There’s a lot more nuance involved, which is nice to see for those of us who love multifaceted villain stories. You won’t find any James Bond villain types cackling about destroying the world while twiddling their mustaches.
As hinted by many trailers in advance, the primary villain of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch, as played by Elizabeth Olsen. As I mentioned, however, Wanda is not a traditional superhero movie villain. She doesn’t want to be the bad guy, and she has no grand schemes or goals except trying to get her children Billy and Tommy back. Unfortunately for Wanda, the means to achieve her ends mean she has to be hugely destructive and hurt people if she wants to see her plans through. So she takes on the main villain mantle here, while Doctor Strange and his allies have to try and stop her.
Why is Wanda Maximoff a villain in Doctor Strange 2?
Wanda’s life in recent years has been absolutely devastated by grief. First, she lost be beloved twin brother Pietro in Avengers: Age of Ultron, then she lost her love Vision at Thanos’s hands in Infinity War. Wanda’s grief was so all-consuming that it led to her creating an idyllic sitcom reality life for herself and Vision in WandaVision. Wanda basically takes herself out of her awful reality and gives herself a happy marriage and eventually two children with Vision, Billy and Tommy. It’s later revealed that everything that is happening with Wanda in the town of Westview is generated by her magic—even Vision and Billy and Tommy are essentially given life by her magic and aren’t really “alive.” Wanda eventually chooses to free the town from her spell and she unmakes Vision, Billy, and Tommy, therefore making her grief all the worse.
Then at the end of WandaVision, Wanda is using the Darkhold spellbook and she hears Billy and Tommy calling for her, presumably from somewhere in the multiverse. This sets her on the path that we find her on in Doctor Strange 2, wherein Wanda has become obsessed with the idea of finding and recovering multiverse versions of her kids to be with her.
I call Wanda a reluctant villain here because while she ends up being absolutely ruthless and brutal in her pursuits, she doesn’t actually want to be. Unlike many villains who revel in cruelty for cruelty’s sake, Wanda just does what she sees is necessary for her mission to “recover” her children. Unfortunately, her plan hinges on taking the life of another young woman, America Chavez, in order to gain her powers. And since Doctor Strange won’t turn over America, Wanda kills and injures countless people in her quest.
There are other villains here too … Strange ones
We meet several multiverse versions of Doctor Strange in Multiverse of Madness. The one we meet in the opening sequence doesn’t seem like a bad guy—he’s America’s friend, and he’s trying to help her escape from demons and find the powerful Book of Vishanti to defeat what’s after her. However, when it appears that the demon is on the verge of stealing America’s power, that Strange tries to do the same thing even though it will kill her. He’s made the calculation that stopping a bad guy (or in this case, lady, since it’s Wanda) from getting America’s power is more important than her life. This Strange isn’t a villain per se but he shows from the first scene that there are other Doctor Stranges that make more calculating and inhumane decisions than our Earth 616 Doctor Strange.
We eventually learn that there are quite a few other Doctor Stranges in parallel worlds that have been warped by their choices in the past. One Strange used the Book of Vishanti and the Darkhold to help stop Thanos, but he became so consumed and corrupted by dreamwalking and the Darkhold that the Illuminati superhero team, his friends, had to kill him. So that Strange became a villain in his world of his own hubris.
Then our Doctor Strange encounters another Doctor Strange in a lonely, destructed universe. That Strange is the keeper of the Darkhold and it becomes clear that the dark magic book has also impacted him. Doctor Strange must fight this version of himself, which is a difficult and, it turns out, oddly musical task.
Though I wouldn’t call him a villain, Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Mordo in the Illuminati universe is still no fan of Doctor Strange (unsurprising, considering what the Strange did in this Mordo’s ‘verse), and at one point Doctor Strange has to fight him as well.
So who is the real villain here?
Ultimately, Wanda Maximoff does take on the primary villain role, in that she is the main antagonist that all of our heroes are trying to stop. But the movie also makes it clear that Wanda isn’t exactly herself—she’s as altered by the power of the Darkhold as the other Stranges—and her motivation to get her kids back, though misguided, comes from a place of love. Wanda does a lot of terrible things in Doctor Strange 2, but you won’t really be cheering for her to meet her end.
(image: Marvel Studios)
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