Avengers: Endgame ran for 3 hours and left us all thinking about the little moments in the film. There was a whole lot for us to decode throughout the movie. While the battle towards the end was really the one that brought all the screamers, the best parts about the film were the little quiet moments. Even though this film was the end, it still left us with many mysteries, and one of those was Doctor Strange’s involvement.
While Doctor Strange had a massive role in Infinity War, beating even the likes of Captain America for screen time, Endgame did not give him a whole lot to do. The winning future of Endgame depended upon him and the Russos actually managed to make it work giving him very limited screen time, having just 2 dialogues in the film. But still, his little involvement also had people asking certain questions.
Upon his first appearance during the final battle, Strange asked Wong whether he managed to bring everyone. This line obviously meant as a joke since Wong replied “What, you wanted more?” But there’s a little meaning hidden behind this quip. The second issue that people had was Doctor Strange not facing off against Thanos. He controlled the flood, he told Tony about the timeline and that was it.
Reddit soccerfreak723 talked about these two issues that most people have had regarding Doctor Strange, and he explained why Strange asked about more Avengers and the whole Strange not facing Thanos conundrum. He wrote:
“There is a good intention as to why Strange asked that [to Wong]. It is not necessarily about the number of people there but it is about the specific Avengers that are needed to be there to get to the winning outcome. In other words, it’s the small details that are required to get to the winning outcome. Therefore, Strange needed to make sure that each single player was there because if one Avenger was not present in the winning outcome, then they will not have the winning outcome.”
The Redditor goes on to explain that there 14 Million 604 outcomes were actually failures, so there could have been scenarios where Wong might have forgotten some of the Avengers and the team lost against Thanos. Soccerfreak continued:
“However, also know that Strange did not want anyone else to know what will happened, so Wong’s reaction itself is genuine. It is even possible that Wong does not even know that Strange saw all the outcomes, so Strange can’t give out more details as to why he mentioned if everyone was there. It could change the outcome of the future that is not the winning path.
Another Strange issue that came up was that there was no fighting scene between Strange and Thanos in Endgame. Yes, he had an epic fight against him in Infinity War and showed himself to be one of the most powerful heroes in the MCU. He could have even easily fought against 2014 Thanos without the stones. Heck, even Scarlet Witch got her own redo against 2014 Thanos and showed herself to be one of the most powerful heroes that we have always been waiting to see. However, again, this goes with Strange’s intentions and knowing about the future. It is possible that Strange saw all the outcomes where he did fight Thanos and it still led to a defeat for the Avengers. In other words, Strange fighting Thanos would have been useless because they would always lose and Strange knew that.
Therefore, in the end, Strange actually plays a huge role in making sure that specific details took place to get to that future. Heck, his own solo fight against Thanos in Infinity War was perhaps not a shocker for himself because he had already seen that future by that point and knew that he was going to lose or had to lose if it meant winning the overall war against Thanos.”
So, the redditor claims that Strange is indeed the MVP of the story, even though he isn’t in Endgame for a whole lot of time.
