Warning: This story contains spoilers forDoctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
Michael Waldronknows his way around the multiverse.
How did this story change because ofSpider-Man?
Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff in ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’.Marvel Studios
MICHAEL WALDRON:Not dramatically, truth be told.
So that was actually nice.
That was the big thing.
He really helped keep us honest and made sure we were on the right trajectory with that journey.
Did you have any hesitation about taking Wanda into full villain mode?
Elizabeth Olsen is so great, and she’s been playing different iterations of this character over the years.
Did she influence Wanda’s arc inMultiverse of Madnessat all?
What she brought to the character is just so much humanity.
you’ve got the option to’t help but root for her.
She’s a Terminator that you’re cheering for.
The Darkhold seizes on that anger and dials it up to 11.
That might just make her even more angry.
That’s what equates to bad news for everybody in her way.
We see Wanda searching for her children across the multiverse, but she’s not necessarily searching for Vision.
Did you talk about including Vision in this story at all?
We talked about it, but ultimately, we felt like that story had been done.
That’s what we chose to focus on.
Let’s talk about the Illuminati.
How did you figure out which Illuminati members you wanted to include?
And somehow, we ended up with all of those people.
The entire lineup is the names you’d circle for your dream cast.
Did you have any characters you thought about including, but ultimately it didn’t work out?
I mean, you discuss a million people, and there were some near misses.
[Laughs]
Fair enough.
But one of the things I love about the Illuminati sequence is how brutal it is.
You introduce these great characters, just to immediately kill them off.
I was so excited to do that.
It’s my favorite part of the movie.
[Laughs] I just wrote it into my first draft of the script.
It wasn’t even in my outline.
It was just a surprise to everyone.
I had put it in there because I felt like the movie wasn’t mad enough.
I was like, the movie needs to get drunk.
That’s what we were trying to do.
This movie breaks a lot of rules.
Characters break the fourth wall and look at the camera, and other characters unexpectedly bite the dust.
I’d imagine that as a writer, it would be fun to play in that world.
Yeah, and that’s all Sam and Kevin.
So much of the crazy, awesome stuff in the movie isn’t even stuff that I wrote.
It’s just stuff that Sam did and found on the day.
It was my job to give him a blueprint, and that’s all he needed.
I also wanted to ask aboutLoki.You obviously have a history with that character.
I think anytime I ever mentioned bringing Loki up, everybody kinda rolled their eyes.
Like, “Oh, I can’t believe you want to include Loki.”
Kang, certainly he’s out there.
But this particular story wasn’t a Kang-based multiverse adventure.
The film ends with Wanda sacrificing herself and apparently dying.
Is that a definitive death, or is there a possibility we might see her again?
There’s always a possibility.
It’s an infinite multiverse.
Theend-credits scenealso introducesCharlize Theronas Clea.
What was it you found exciting abouther introduction?
What would you say was your biggest challenge on this film overall?
But otherwise, it was just balancing all of the different expectations and storylines coming in.
It was really all hands on deck, working really hard to keep this thing on the rails.
The real joy was to get to do this in the context of a Sam Raimi movie.
There’s a certain way that things happen [in a Raimi movie].
I was excited to try that on for size.
What would you say was the biggest way Sam Raimi’s style influenced this story?
Sam was always so aware of making the film accessible to people who knew nothing about this stuff.
I really learned a lot from him, as far as that goes.
