Doctor Strange: How Clea’s Arrival Sets Up Doctor Strange 3

The screenwriter for Doctor Strange 2, Michael Waldron recently talked about getting Clea into the storyline of Stephen Strange.

While speaking to Vanity Fair, Waldron was asked about the movie’s mid-credits scene, where Strange meets Clea (Charlize Theron) and the duo can be seen setting off on their first adventure together.

Here’s what Michael Waldron had to say about Clea’s debut in Doctor Strange 2:

“I was thrilled to introduce her as Clea,” Waldron explained. “Clea has been Strange’s counterpart in the comics for a long time. She’s an amazing sorcerer. She’s also his great love; she’s his wife at one point. We had to conclude his story with Christine Palmer — Rachel McAdams’s character —first, and at the end of that Strange walks away with this wisdom. He’s been able to face his fears and not be afraid to love somebody or let somebody love him. I think that’s the perfect place for him to be mentally to finally meet Clea, who’s gonna be a really important figure in his life moving forward.”

Who is Clea in Marvel Comics?

Clea made her debut in 1964 and is a denizen of the Dark Dimension, and she is a niece to its ruler, Dormammu. Despite this, she goes on to rebel against her family, joining Doctor Stepehen Strange as his student in sorcery, allying with him against evil. Clea was also Strange’s romantic interest, though we have seen them parting ways in the recent years as Clea has devoted herself more to fighting against Dormammu’s tyranny. Recently, at the end of Death of Doctor Strange, Clea also inherited the mantle of Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme.

Before Clea got introduced in Multiverse of Madness, fans saw Strange face the consequences of tampering with dark magic, as he developed a third eye suddenly, just his corrupted variant. “It was doubly exciting,” Waldron said of the film’s cliffhanger ending. “It’s like, well, what if Strange has embraced this darkness a little bit? He’s figuring out how to live with this. What does that mean for our hero? That’s an interesting question to pose on its own. Now here comes Clea saying, ‘You caused an incursion. You did the thing— perhaps the very thing—you were hoping Wanda wouldn’t do. Now we’ve gotta fix it together.’ So, yeah, it just felt like a nice little tease of adventures to come.”

We don’t really know the future of Doctor Strange and Clea at this time. Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays the titular role, has earlier revealed that he does intend to take a break from acting in the coming days but also stated that he would continue to play the Master of the Mystic Arts for one more decade. “If they keep me, and it, interesting and keep him evolving and try to exercise his full potential as a character, I think there’s a lot of places for him to explore,” he explained. “So yeah, bring it on.”

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is playing in theaters now.

Source: Vanity Fair