Peter Parker’s going to get himself another superhero mentor in Spider-Man: No Way Home in the form of Doctor Strange. As we’ve seen in the first trailer, the webhead will turn to the Sorcerer Supreme for help after his life turns upside down, now that his superhero identity has been outed to the world. Being accused of murder and terrorism certainly doesn’t help his case either. The trailer teased that Spidey and Strange will have an easy going, buddy-buddy kind of dynamic.
In a new chat with The Hollywood Reporter, the Master of the Mystic Arts himself Benedict Cumberbatch echoed this by giving his thoughts on where the two Avengers are at when Spidey 3 opens. Cumberbatch explained that the pair are “close” because of their shared experiences in Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame. Always one to be careful not to reveal spoilers, the actor offered a joking explanation for how his character enters into the plot.
“There’s a close relationship. They’re neighborhood superheroes, and they’ve had an experience or two. They’ve got history. It might be the case that Peter asks me to help him do something? I think I’m allowed to say that much. I help him fill in his tax returns. That’s what I do.”
While Cumberbatch is playing coy with the details, we know that Peter goes to Strange to ask him to perform a spell to make everyone forget his secret identity. In the trailer, the sorcerer is only too happy to do it, but it goes badly wrong when the wallcrawler gets too chatty during the casting, causing the walls between universes to break down somehow. And this is something that has fans very concerned.
Most agree that Strange’s actions are surprisingly reckless in the No Way Home trailer and feel that he would have enough skill not to mess up the spell that badly. Not to mention that he wasn’t previously depicted as being all that pally with Peter before. Cumberbatch is keen to stress that Strange has just grown fonder of Parker over time, but fans can’t help but suspect that there’s a twist coming. This might not be the real Strange, after all.
But we’ll have to see if this is just a wild conspiracy theory or an accurate prediction when Spider-Man: No Way Home comes to theaters on December 17th.
