Doctor Strange could be the villain of 'Avengers 5,' new theory suggests

Avengers 5 may not have a release date yet, but that hasn’t stopped fans from speculating about who the next big bad will be. While one theory has suggested Loki’s Disney+ series would set the god of mischief up as an antagonist in the MCU’s Phase Four, an outlandish new argument claims Doctor Strange could be the next Avengers villain. Let’s dive in.

When Doctor Strange helped the Avengers take on Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War, it wasn’t his first battle with a cosmic entity. In Doctor Strange, the magician took on Dormammu, an interdimensional entity and the ruler of the Dark Dimension, whose goal was to destroy the Masters of the Mystic Arts. Stephen Strange was able to best him with the use of time travel.

So, keeping in mind how powerful Doctor Strange is, Reddit user freezer76 has come up with a long and detailed theory that offers up a scenario suggesting Doctor Strange may have manipulated the events of Infinity War to get Iron Man out of the way.

Doctor Strange still has a huge ego, despite what we’ve seen in the last couple Avengers movies, and his ultimate goal has always been to rule the multiverse. But first, he had to get a few powerful people out of the way. So, it’s possible the MCU has been laying the bread crumbs for Strange’s eventual turn to villainy and the Avengers will have to fight the all-powerful magician in Phase Four.

“With the ancient one out of the way Iron Man is the foremost threat to Dormammu. But besides that his technological prowess makes him the antithesis to everything Dr. Strange, especially with his frail ego, stands for,” writes the redditor.

The theory essentially negates all of Doctor Strange’s character development as a good guy, and that’s a hard pill to swallow. Of the millions of scenarios Doctor Strange saw in Infinity War, there was only one opportunity that would get rid of Thanos and Iron Man, so he took it.

Now that the biggest threats to Dormammu and Strange have been removed, Dormammu will “indoctrinate” the magician and turn him into one of his soldiers. However, it’s more likely that Doctor Strange made a deal with Dormammu so that he wouldn’t interfere with his big plans and in this new reality, Doctor Strange will be the ruler of the multiverse.

But, wait. Did Doctor Strange always intend for the Avengers to time travel? It’s possible that he set it up so that way so that he could access the multiverse and other dimensions, which will presumably play a major role in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

This theory also connects nicely with speculation that Wanda Maximoff, completely unhinged after Vision’s death, alters reality. High on power and her control over reality, she must be stopped by the Avengers. This might explain why Wanda will appear in Doctor Strange 2 to begin with. Given how powerful Doctor Strange truly is, perhaps there’s more to him than we thought.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is set to hit theaters May 7, 2021.