While the first three episodes of Marvel’s What If…? all ended with disappointingly tame, familiar story beats, this week’s entry “What If … Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?” made up for that in spades, clubs, hearts, and maybe even some UNO cards too, deviating from the trend with an impressively bleak story.
In the new, alternate reality, instead of injuring his hands in that fateful car accident, Doctor Strange’s beloved cartoon Rachel McAdams dies. He later uses the time stone to go back to save her, but regardless of what he does, she always ends up dead. It’s kind of like a better version of that crappy early 2000s remake of The Time Machine.
One of the most impressive parts of the episode is how the What If…? format allows us to actually witness the repercussions of meddling with time. Not only does Strange have to battle his evil doppelganger, but at one point, the world itself starts coming apart at the seams. People freeze up, and their very existence seems to be decaying; it looks as if they’re smoldering like a Pop-Tart in a broken toaster. Oh, and the universe is destroyed at the end: