The Hollywood Reporter has dropped the news that Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange is set to appear in the next MCU Spider-Man film.
It looks as though Strange will be stepping into the mentorship shoes left vacant by Tony Stark, which should hardly come as a surprise—the two of them were co-parenting something fierce in Avengers: Infinity War, once they all got stuck on that Thanosian (we name the ships after the villain now, okay?) vessel heading to Titan.
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This comes after the news that Jamie Foxx is likely returning as Electro, which would make sense of Strange’s involvement in the story; as Foxx’s Electro was first introduced in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (starring Andrew Garfield rather than Tom Holland), it’s probable that a multiverse conundrum is in play here. Strange’s plotlines are already rumored to feature multiverse shenanigans heavily going forward, with indication that his film will tie into the Disney Plus series WandaVision—which also appears to deal in reality-warping at the hands of a grief-stricken Wanda Maximoff.
Spider-Man 3 and Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness are both set to begin shooting this month, so Marvel clearly intends to keep Cumberbatch busy. What remains to be seen is whether or not we will see this exchange he definitely had with Tony Stark’s ghost following Endgame—
Tony: This is your son now, thanks for looking after him.
Strange: …he’s your son, though, clearly.
Tony: Right, and I common-law space married you, so now he’s your son too.
Strange: When did that happen?
Tony: When you produced the Time Stone to save my life. Jewelry exchange, tears, the whole bit.
Strange: …well, shit.
