‘Doctor Strange 2’ Originally Opened With A Gruesome Death For Baron Mordo At The Hands Of Wanda

As “Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness,” nears the billion-dollar mark at the global box office, the latest sequel in the Marvel Cinematic Universe further cements director Sam Raimi’s god-tier status in the superhero genre following the original “Spider-Man” trilogy. It also continues the concept of Marvel’s latest obsession with the Multiverse, following its appearance in “Loki”, and “Spider-Man: No Way Home.”

Of course, one of the highlights of the film is Elizabeth Olsen’s turn as a ruthless villain, fully manifesting into the character The Scarlet Witch. Yet for all her body count’s in the original film, including wiping out the Illuminati, that toll could have been even higher.

The physical DVD/Blu-Ray release of “Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness” has an audio commentary track in and in it (via The Direct), Raimi and screenwriter Michael Waldron revealed some of the film’s original plans, which they nixed. One of them was killing off a fairly major character.

READ MORE: ‘Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness’: Writer Michael Waldron Talks Wanda’s Twist, The Illuminati, Charlize Theron & More [The Discourse Podcast]

“Michael [Waldron] had written an early scene with [Chiwetel Ejiofor’s 616 universe version of Baron Mordo] where we saw him in our universe, 616, where he was the Mordo that we knew from ‘Doctor Strange’ one, only he had been through many battles since that,” Raimi said in the commentary. “He had a limp. And he was coming after the Scarlet Witch to take her power because he knew she was dark and terribly corrupted by the Darkhold and she killed him and cut off his head, and presented it to Strange in a later scene. It was really great writing, but it slowed the beginning down too much, so we had to lose it.”

Waldron adds, “Yeah, that was a fun scene that just didn’t have a place in the movie. But it was cool that she cut his head off right halfway through his ears, [as he’s] about to say,’ The bill comes due.’”

As we know from ‘Multiverse of Madness,’ the 616 version of Mordo isn’t actually in that film, so is still out there in the current Marvel universe somewhere.

Given the end of the movie and its post-credits tease with Charlize Theron as Clea, there is a hope assumption that Marvel will announce “Doctor Strange 3” and another Scarlet Witch project in the future. And that could potentially happen really soon. It was recently revealed by studio head Kevin Feige (via EW) that Marvel will return to San Diego Comic-Con next month, after a three-year absence. There are plenty of new projects that could be announced— highly-anticipated reboots of “Fantastic Four” and “X-Men” for example — and who knows, maybe a third “Doctor Strange” movie co-starring Charlize Theron could be announced. So, stay tuned for updates on the MCU slate.