MARVEL WHAT IF Episode 4 BREAKDOWN! Easter Eggs & Details You Missed!

welcome back to new rockstars i'm eric voss and this is a breakdown of marvel studios what if episode 4 what if doctor strange lost his heart instead of his hands and what if we all lost our minds with this tragic horror of an episode unafraid to sentence its hero to bleak consequences my favorite episode of the series yet and not just because it had like 20 mephisto's in it if you could even call them that but because this episode was filled with beautiful imagery and concepts that are fascinating to break down but you gotta do it frame by frame and i'm gonna do that and point out all the animation details and easter eggs that you might have overlooked this video is sponsored by storyblocks more on them later we open with the outline of the watcher but notice how we see more of his body than usual in fact he's made more and more appearances with each new episode of the season as of getting closer and closer to finally intervening but by the end of this episode we do actually see his full flesh before he reverts to his astral silhouette like a judge who abides by habeas corpus to render a guilty verdict in person before returning to his chambers he says what if the best of intentions has very strange consequences [Music] yeah that music was michael g aquino's doctor strange theme which comes back throughout this episode where am i the ancient one warned us if we save christine we destroy the world [Music] benedict cumberbatch and rachel mcadams returned to voice steven strange and christine palmer you stunning i'm only going for dessert you promised me creme brulee yes in this universe strange and christine are in an active romantic relationship instead of the platonic but still flirty exes they were in the film she coaches him on a speech no no stop i'm already asleep come on cut the preamble just get straight to the heart of it choice words for a doctor who spends this episode trying to awaken his dead loved one the heart that he lost now in the 2016 film strange invited christine to a speaking engagement i'm talking tonight at a neurological society there come with me another speaking engagement so romantic you should love coming to those things with me but here the event seems like a different one that's a celebration in strange's honor we need to celebrate this we are you performed a radical hemispherectomy it could be another variance or maybe one of those prior dates when strange and christine were still together also we should point out that a hemispherectomy is where half the brain is removed or disconnected from its other half in order to treat seizures and epilepsy which is quite similar to the way the ancient one splits the halves of doctor strange's identity in mind now the wreck is caused by slightly different conditions like here strange tries to pass a semi truck and nearly collides head-on with a car swerves back into his lane but then gets rear-ended in the film he passes a car and collides with it while distracted but still the wreck itself goes down exactly the same way frame by frame even spinning into a pole and then flipping on its front end into a fence before teetering down into the water strange cries over christine while framed in this broken glass of the back windshield you think about it this whole series depicts the multiverse as shards of broken glass and at the end of this episode after strange has allowed his universe to melt away he is trapped inside a condensed prism of shards crying once more alone so this shot here in the crashed car foreshadows strange's tragic destiny strange ends up in camartage but this version of strange has not had his hands damaged which in the films was his unhealable wound with that trimble even persisting all the way through avengers in game but you'll notice not in the trailer for spider-man no way home got a theory for that keep that in mind for later but still having his hands allows steven strange to surpass the mastery of his film version and this guy never having a constant reminder of his arrogant mistake to ground him in that guilt instead he feels like the universe stole something from him strange discovers the eye of agamotto cradle of the temporal singularity discovered by cagliostro manipulation and alteration of timelines yes the temporal singularity of course referring to the time stone the word singularity coming from wong's recap and infinity war of the stones being the singularities from the big bang as in the film strange uses the time stone to unwind and rewind the bites of an apple and he is caught in the act by wong and the ancient one with benedict wong until the swinton returning tinkering with time can weaken the very fabric of the universe we protect reality we don't threaten it but in the film mordo joined wong in admonishing strange but mordo was mysteriously absent from this episode they didn't even bring in a guest voice actor to try to emulate chill tell echo for like they normally do for actors they can't get back in there not sure why but without this scolding conscience it does unleash strange to go further with a sorcery than he would otherwise as in the film the ancient one dies and strange bargains with dormammu and becomes a sorcerer supreme but now he uses the time stone to return to the night of christine's death now compared to the time travel logic of loki in end game doctor strange's time stone magic seems limited to within his timeline like he doesn't create branch timelines so much as he relives history within his timeline by reversing time and creating time loops definitely seems more limited in scope compared to the more technological quantum approach to time travel used by kang the tva and the avengers who when they alter time create branch timelines this could be why the tva showed us the infinity stones from their point of view as powerless outside of their home timelines but since we stay within doctor strange's timeline here this time stone is infinitely powerful and strange creates a new loop point that begins with christine at the car similar to how he used a time loop to torture dormammu but here strange creates this groundhog day scenario to essentially torture himself really which is ironic because dormammu was benedict cumberbatch with his voice and performed via mocap all this plays out like the heartbreaking montage and groundhog day when bill murray tries over and over to save a dying homeless man the sequence that always makes me tear up because he calls him pop and dad he goes to the extent of thinking himself as a doctor demanding to see the guy's chart the way doctor strange arrogantly refuses to let his patient die there's a moment where strange seats christine in the car on one loop and the watcher's reflection appears beside him but notice how strange blinks almost seeming to sense him but no matter what in this montage death on wheels always seems to come for regina george i actually theorize that each of these fateful deaths could have been sent by strange's future strange supreme form trying to fix his own mess and force his past self to move on because notice the vagrant who randomly shoots in the pizza shop for no reason that guy's face is only shown from afar and here in shadow because that could be the face of that strange supreme unrecognizable to his past self here even when strange stands her up she still dies in a building fire numerous casualties including the death of one dr christine palmer surgeon file photo ready to go all the buildings still blazing okay actually that reporter is christine everhart voiced by leslie bibb the recurring mcu whih reporter who first appeared in the first iron man the ancient one appears to him from a blue portal which compared to the golden sparkle portals normally used by sorcerers might indicate a higher form of magic allowing one to traverse timelines or dimensions or realms like the blue portal captain carter and the tentacle monster went through and the blue color christine glows when strange resurrects her at the end of the episode now the ancient one would still be alive at this point in the timeline right because the night of christine's death the ancient one was still living but the fact that she uses this blue portal it's just interesting to note because she is someone who has seen every part of her life and every part of her timeline she seems to have an omniscience to her and she could be coming to strange through another realm and she explains her death is an absolute point in time absolutely unchangeable unmovable okay so absolute points a kind of new rule in the mcu's ever expanding timeline logic that i'm sure some folks might debate whether or not applies to the live-action mcu titles but for now i'm going gonna assume it does again in in-game and loki past tragedies could be altered or subverted but doing so would result in the creation of a branch timeline thanos's snap though could not be prevented could be practically undone by extracting infinity stones from the past and using them to snap everyone back in the present though the world still had to live with the consequences of some people living five years more than others the sudden population change from snaps that seemed like it could have been an absolute point that they just kind of had to work around but now we are learning that some events are considered absolute points they are fixed load-bearing watershed moments that cannot be erased these could be anchor points that were placed in the timeline by whatever version of kang in order to maintain stability to that universe's sacred timeline so in this episode when strange eventually forces christine's survival he violates the natural limits of his time stone and he breaks the absolute point of that timeline careening the timeline into a chaotic branch beyond the timeline logic that his time stone could have any control over it's like the darkest timeline that the ancient one warned bruce banner about in endgame in this new branch reality without our chief weapon against the forces of darkness our world would be overrun millions will suffer which the ancient one in this episode echoes this path only leads to darkness and the end of this reality the darkness on that hypothetical branch that she talked about in endgame could have meant that the branch would eventually self-prune by melting away into this cosmic sludge that we see in this episode a choice that i really like because for one it contrasts the dry dusting aesthetic of infinity war but also evokes the more dark matter that makes up the borders of this reality and in the medium of comics and classic animation the ink that these characters are literally drawn in but as we move on from this remember christine palmer's death is only an absolute point in this universe not the universe of the primary mcu because she's still alive in the primary mcu we're all still fine so this would suggest that different universes are structured with different absolute points that that kang timeline scribe considered to be unchangeable so the ancient one attacks strange to keep him from going further and notice how her spell explodes in a white impact blast i love when the show does this it's really fun to pause at the right moment like first she does it when she brings the edges of her runic fans together and then when it hits strange it creates this one black line where he was standing representing how the ancient one just split his soul in half so strange thinks he survived it going to the distant past to the library of cagliostro before this library was lost alongside several other ancient libraries like the burning of the library of alexandria in this case cagliostro was an actual real person in history but in the lore of marvel comics he was an ancient italian sorcerer and it was his spells of the book of kai leostro the spell book in the 2016 film strange is greeted by obeng voiced by akamari and he later implies estranged that he is not himself kagliostro but in fact in the comics obeng is the possible real-life name of the actual cagliostro and notice how he has one blue eye and one reddish brown eye maybe a clue that strange is here in a split reality split between a place where his eyes stay clear blue and another place where his eyes go darker and at times red the lost library of cagliostro is beautiful inside and out the facade of it has carvings of winged griffins and then is flanked by larger sphinxes the sphinx is the mythological being who pose the riddle which creature has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and then two-footed and three-footed the answer being man who crawls on all fours as a baby walks on two feet as an adult and uses a walking stick in old age which you could see reflecting strange's journey as a man in a literal sense taking multi-limbed forms but also lives throughout centuries as obang ages into an old man who cannot stand on his two feet as he tries to go inside strange encounters all these protective runes much like the ones wanda and agatha used against each other in one division wizards love runes and oben greets him sorcerer armani no it's it's strange not any stranger than any other name in this world calling back the name word play that kaiselius had with them in the 2016 film how long have you been at karmatage mr doctor mr doctor it's strange maybe who am i to judge inside the library of cagliostro strange finds the book on time manipulation this is the same book of cagliostro from the camera tag library that we saw in doctor strange it has the same cover but this would be hundreds of years earlier before it ended up in camertash the page he actually opens up to are the same pages that kaiselius tore out of the book in the 2016 film and you can see that same dark dimension symbol the one that kaiselius conjures in the church and appeared on his in the ancient one's foreheads because the ancient one would draw power from the dark dimension that's why she was called a hypocrite now trust me when i say making video content is time consuming especially if you want that content to be really high quality you know the type of videos that people fall in love with well storyblocks saves you time and helps you make your videos that much more lovable a storyblocks membership is essential for any creator again thanks to storyblocks for sponsoring this video they have a huge library full of 4k and hd footage after effects and premiere pro templates music images and sound effects to bring your stories to life the assets are royalty free so you can use your downloaded content anywhere for commercial and personal use the unlimited all access plan gives you unlimited downloads for the over 1 million assets in their library choose a plan that works for you from their selection of flexible subscriptions at scale to give you all the content and tools you need to focus on creating not worrying about budget storyblocks also has this really cool new program the restock initiative they are hiring creators from marginalized communities to create content that is more reflective of the diverse world that we live in go to storyblocks.com new rockstars now or click the link in the description to check out their plans and get one for yourself learning that he has to absorb other entities strange attempts to absorb the freaking same interdimensional tentacle monster from episode one with captain carter now i speculated then that this could be one of the elder gods aka the many angled ones like schuma gorath who is speculated to appear in doctor strange the multiverse of madness this is a huge deal that it came back because other than the watcher himself this is a first example of continuity on this series and since the trailer showed that one image of captain carter meeting the strange supreme i think we can expect a later episode this season to confirm what exactly this monster is and keep in mind that we may only be seeing this entity's bottom half and shang chi promotional footage seems to be showing some massive tentacled entity in that movie's final battle we'll know more after shong chi comes out but there could be a connection between these two obang says mystic beings do not bargain their powers are not meant for man a very weird thing to say because uh yeah dormammu totally did bargain at least eventually after being worn down unless you consider that the deal strange made with dormammu might have not been a deal in strange's favor but a curse that dormammu might have benefited from strange starts smaller this time with an evil little gnome and then an insect whom he sends back but takes its cloak of levitation meaning that this might have been some alternate variant in reality that was a sorcerer and you'll notice that this cloak has a darker color and golden lining similar to the flesh of that insect himself he then absorbs a cosmic six-eyed bird whom he strips of its feathers and then a dragon that i guess you could say looks a bit like the great protector of chongqi that dragon turns his skin red and gives him horns making strange look a bit like we have to admit mephisto because this is followed by a freaking double-headed goat like the skull we saw in agatha harkness's satanic dungeon and then this laughing humanoid being with a skull head a cape and with antlers and then a snarling bat demon now now this episode never explicitly calls any of these entities mephisto of course it didn't but this demonic imagery alone dispels that stupid myth that people keep throwing at me that disney will never put demons in their properties as if fantasia and hocus pocus never happened or wandavision with its witches and book of the damned and by absorbing these things strange gains enough power to be able to perceive past reality to the form of the watcher which is the kind of reality bending abilities normally reserved for entities like mephisto but the fate of his universe is not worth risking the safety of all others besides i doubt he'd listen hello who's that so mevisto confirmed well no of course not not yet technically but this is the kind of supernatural evil within strange's consciousness that i mentioned in my recent video that makes it at least more likely that doctor strange and no way home or multiverse of madness could be influenced by mephisto and since in that no way home footage strange's hand is not scarred and does not tremble i am wondering if that could be the strange from this reality a theory i go much more into in our episode of inside marvel now the next absorbed demons include this evil elk that makes strange grow antlers giving him a silhouette of hella another dragon who makes strange's face stretch out into a snout a demon wolf with weirdly a pierced ear and then a snake that turns strange into a snake that still has his hair yikes but then we gotta look at these flashes of body horror that go by real fast you gotta go through frame by frame first they're strange in this thick boy red hellboy style demon form who sprouts a second head then strange made of this yellowy waxy substance then strange in an insectoid form with antenna and barbed appendages and then fascinatingly strange with the facial texture in the eyes of dorm mamu including a third eye on his forehead could throughout this process strange have at some point absorbed dormammu as well he transforms into a snarling fanged strange with rows of glowing eyes who then turns back into strange's semi-normal head but his skin cracking like a paper lantern burning from the inside meanwhile the time lapse outside the library shows the lush greenery wilting away from the cliff side as hundreds of years have passed so then strange re-summons that tentacle monster from the beginning this time slicing off its limbs and absorbing them into his flesh ending with this gross neck snap now it's interesting how the creature's tentacles still have some life in them even after they were cut off which could mean that when those severed parts came back through the portal with captain carter in episode one those pieces could still be dangerous to peggy and the others of that universe abang reveals that strange supreme was merely one half of himself in a split reality and then we jump back to his other side who has moved on from christine but strange sees that this reality is melting into the inky sludge and the ancient one arrives to explain what's going on no whoa wait a minute yes so this must be a psychic impression sense through a splinter in reality just think of me as an echo now you may ask why is the ancient one ghostly now but in a more living form when she appeared strange before well before the ancient one would have been alive at that point in strange's time loop in early 2016 and because she is all knowing she just knew the implications of what strange was trying to do then but now she would have been dead after strange to become the sorcerer supreme and by psychic impression and echo it appears that she has left this sorcery-based carbon copy of her mind which is now flickering because her magic is fading in this dying universe and this echo is trying to explain strange what she had done i drew upon the power of the dark dimension to split the timeline allowing for two of your possible timelines to occur in one universe yes so as the ancient one did in the 2016 film she used magic from the dark dimension that's why she had the symbol on her head that's why kaiseles would call her hypocrite but it's interesting how the ancient one's words remind us that timelines and universes are not synonymous and interchangeable they're really different structural categories because branch timelines coexist within one universe similar to how in loki branch timelines could snake off of the sacred timeline but that all of those existed within the same universe and that the more branches from that sacred timeline make that bigger universe less stable so in the end when it splintered off into thousands and thousands of different branches that whole universe was one of infinite more but i'd love the audio distortion effect on the ancient one's words but notice how the distortion snaps back into clarity right on the one line when she delivers a key message if the other strange succeeds in reversing an absolute point in our universe you mean saving christine he cannot save us stephen the resulting temporal paradox will destroy this universe so wong hooks up strange with a protection spell guardian vichanti heavy duty protection spell oh yes the vashanti are actually a trio of godlike entities oshter hogoth and agamoto who serve as patrons for the sorcerer's supreme those who sit above and the seal of the shanti that forms the sanctum window is referencing these vishanti and i like how the runes burn into his face these are actually the same ones that swarmed the alternate strange in the cagliostro temple which remember he could handle one at a time but the swarm of them collectively was a bit overwhelming for him which explains why this strange is able to for most of the battles stay evenly matched as they talk to each other strange supreme rages and you can see for a moment shadows of the other absorbed entities burst out of him in fire including a claw and horned animal skull and he takes him back to the scene of the crash for a brief shot you can see the broken windshield glass refracting the form of good strange showing how he is from a broken reality and in this case might be a bit less fit for battle and then they dual strange supreme uses the beastly demons inside him he turns his hand into tentacles to break through a good strange shield and then he deploys sand worms and then the two cloaks of levitation square off but then good strange's cloak sacrifices himself oh you can even hear a pained little scream when he tears apart strange supreme distracts him with his orb of light and then creeps up behind him to drag him into a shadow realm might even be using strange's ability to see the watcher into distracting him that might just be the watcher but no it's actually his shadow self and then he uses the inky dark matter that people are melting into to form the memory of christine but good strange realizes it's an illusion and strange supreme punches him out of it shattering like a glass pane you can see those shards falling with them another example of how reality even a small pocket reality like this one takes the form of a delicate crystal just on the verge of shattering shockingly strange supreme defeats him and absorbs his other self and eye of agimoto turns red along with those runic rings around his wrist which would normally of course glow green but this is no longer manipulation of time but manipulation of reality like the red reality stone but also like wando maximoff's chaos magic red meaning less orderly and more insidious strange's final form is a freak includes tattered wings tentacles horns hooved feet and multiple eyes just plopped randomly all over the face now again the name fisto never gets spoken this episode but the demonic nature of strangest transformation speaks for itself like notice when he says her name his voice is accompanied by separate whispers and as he leans into christine his extra eyes all twitch independently of each other and as his reality's final pieces crumble apart these other entities suddenly vacate his body no this wasn't supposed to happen because you could argue these mystic entities might have come out on top hijacking this sorcerer's supreme to destroy his own universe so when obang said mystic entities don't bargain the fact that one of those could have been dormammu could mean that dormammu won that battle after all and that all these entities down to that little gnome might have been victorious here strange begs to watch her for help i read about you sensed your presence you're a god you can undo this i'm not a god and neither are you if strange had read about uatu the watcher that would imply there might have been others in this universe powerful enough to have witnessed or sensed the watcher's presence in the past who else in this mcu could be aware of watchers perhaps kang or he remains maybe the ancient one maybe even wanda maximoff who did suddenly see someone while reading that darkhold in the one of edition post credits scene but strange is left tragically alone clutching christine as she melts away in his hands similar to peter parker dusting in tony stark's hands i'm sorry i am so so sorry one life one choice one moment can destroy the entire universe and as the episode goes to credits we are just left with this feeling like some kind of grim cautionary tale but for whom exactly now sure you can see this as a lesson about the dangers of clinging too much to a lost loved one fixing what cannot be fixed but the most impactful images of this episode are the tale of a wizard who goes too far none of us are sorcerers with the ability to reverse time or rewrite reality well uh yet working on some stuff on the side i really think this episode just seems like a taste of the horrors to come as characters in the marvel world face multiversal madness especially in the live action universe that's why i think it's definitely worth considering this episode as having actual implications on titles like no way home and multiverse of madness because it's the first episode this season that did not use a single sound-a-like actor as if this live-action cast knows the importance of this story on their character's journeys and yes it reintroduces that multiversal monster that seems like it could tie into multiverse madness or even chongqi so there was a time when folks were not sure if marvel's what if was essential watching but now i think it is clear this is essential re-watching you can support new rockstars by checking out all of our merch options like this what if shirt that when you get you can write in a custom shout out that will appear on our what if after shows get all of that at newrockstarsmerch.com follow me on instagram and twitter at eavos follow and subscribe to new rockstars thanks for watching bye [Music] you [Music]

Channel: New Rockstars

Views: 2,327,112

Keywords: new rockstars, new rockstars youtube, youtube new rockstars, what if, what if breakdown, marvel, marvel what if, doctor strange, what if doctor strange, mephisto, ancient one, what if doctor strange ending, what if doctor strange reaction, multiverse, watcher, what if explained, what if episode, what if episode 4 breakdown, what if episode 4 easter egg

Id: _bpOIjSFGpo

Length: 26min 25sec (1585 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 02 2021