What If…?: What’s hidden in plain sight in episode 4

The most tragic episode of What If…? holds many clues and references, especially for those who know all things Doctor Strange.

So you thought that because Marvel’s What If…? is a cartoon series on Disney+, it would also be a nice and safe half-hour of TV viewing? That even the occasional unhappy ending, like we saw in episode 3, would, at most, still be bittersweet with a glimmer of hope? Oh, you poor, innocent, naïve children, you. Your humble writer read the original What If…? comics on which this Disney Plus series is based, and let me tell you: dark, cautionary tales like “What If…Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?” were the norm for that series. I can’t tell you the number of issues in which the ending was essentially “Everyone dies!” Or almost everyone, in this case.

But I’m not here to berate you for thinking there was no way that a Marvel movie would ever have such a sad, hopeless ending (did we all forget what happened at the end of Avengers: Infinity War?). We’re here to go over the Marvel related clues and Easter Eggs, and not just the minor ones like the return of news reporter Christine Everheart (Leslie Bibb) from the Iron Man movies. Because when you’re dealing with Mystic Arts, time travel, alternate realities, the end of all existence, and a god-like alien who is “not a god,” there’s bound to be a lot of blink-and-you-might miss it moments. Or at least one or two things in need of a proper context. So, let’s go through a deep dive into What If…?’s very strange fourth episode, shall we?

Christine Palmer and her favorite dessert?

When it comes to the one small change which leads to apocalyptic consequences for this particular What If…?, it all comes down to love. Because Doctor Strange’s (Benedict Cumberbatch) colleague and ex-girlfriend, Dr. Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams), decided to accompany him at a “neurological society dinner,” she ends up getting killed in the car crash while Stephen survives unscathed. Of course, if you watched the original 2016 Doctor Strange movie, you know that Stephen went alone and the accident severely injured his hands, thereby ruining his career as a surgeon. And yes, there is a scene where Stephen does ask Christine to go with him in the film.

Why then would Christine change her mind in this universe? Apparently, Stephen said dessert for the dinner would be crème brûlée, something he didn’t mention to her in the original film. Could Christine have really changed her mind over that? Well, if you look closer, there’s another minor difference between What If…? and Doctor Strange. The film makes it clear that Stephen and Christine are no longer romantically involved despite being on friendly – and flirtatious – terms. Yet “What If… Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?” heavily implies that Stephen and Christine are still more than just friends. Or, given how the movie ended up playing out, they always were even after their break-up.

Furthermore, Christine tells Stephen that he “just performed a radical hemispherectomy.” But that’s not the operation he did during the movie. Instead, he removed a intracerebral bullet from a gunshot victim. This suggests that that this scene doesn’t take place during the beginning of Doctor Strange, but that Stephen and Christine are going to an entirely different speaking engagement dinner.

Either way, this episode of What If…? reinforces the subtext from the original movie: that although Stephen and Christine stopped seeing each other due to supposed professional reasons, they still had the same feelings for each other regardless.