Sam Raimi didn’t want the undead in his Doctor Strange movie

Are there hells in the MCU, or is it just me? Is this a sign of the existence demons and God? Marvel Comics does indeed contain all these elements, however the MCU seems to be fuzzier. Black PantherThis makes it obvious that Wakandan rulers have a special afterlife. Moon Knight recently stated outright that there are a lot of afterlives and pantheon gods, though that series’ ties to the MCU have been fairly minimal.

Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness adds a new wrinkle, when multiverse-traveling sorcerer Stephen Strange falls afoul of “the spirits of the damned” after he uses magic in a very specific way. Is that referring to human spirits from hell, or multiverse-traveling sorcerer Stephen Strange? What’s going on with the afterlife in this movie? What is the purpose of sinful spirits being in charge magical law enforcement? What will the impact of this on season 2? Loki? Polygon asked Multiverse of MadnessScreenwriter Loki writer-producer) Michael Waldron whether he’s just opened a giant can of religious worms.

“Those are all conversations we had,” Waldron laughs. “Nothing is in the movie by accident. [Marvel Studios president] Kevin [Feige]You know that he is aware of all the consequences of this. They’re not spirits of the damned just for spirits of the damned’s sake.”

[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for a particular event in Multiverse of Madness.]

Image by Marvel Studios/Disney

Fans are particularly curious about demons and hells in the MCU because they’ve been holding out hope for existing Marvel Comics characters like Mephisto to eventually appear in the movies or shows. Waldron said that spirits exist. Multiverse of Madness See more of the supernatural tradition in the movie built around Wundagore Mountain. The corrupting dark magic book transcribed from its walls is the Darkhold.

“We truly tried to root [the dead in this movie] in our own internal logic,” he says. “There’s the Darkhold, and if you use the Darkhold to possess your own corpse, there’s a separate layer of gatekeeping beyond all of this stuff that will come for you. And that’s who Stephen finally runs afoul of, so that was pretty fun to explore.”

“Don’t use multiverse-crossing magic to possess your own corpse” seems like a remarkably specific edge case to have a rule around, much less a spiritual enforcement task group. Waldron encourages viewers not to think of it as though someone wrote down a rule that Stephen broke — it’s just something weird and transgressive enough to really infuriate the spirits.

“In my mind, Stephen Strange and Wanda are the only two sorcerers strong enough to even dreamwalk to begin with,” he says. “It’s such an impossible spell to achieve, let alone maintain. Strange was probably the first man to attempt to control his own corpse, according to me. It’s the Broken glass for an emergencyat the back of the Darkhold. And these spirits of damned look like No, It is impossible do this.”

The sequence in the film where the spirits attack Strange yank on his zombie face closely recalls some of the specific torments Ash goes through in fighting the dead in Raimi’s comedy-horror films Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness. It is loved by fans for its uniqueness. Multiverse of Madness Feels so very Raimi-like.

Image by Marvel Studios/Disney

Waldron claims that Raimi hesitated at first over whether or not he wanted to make a horror comic involving the dead. “I was totally writing with Sam in mind the entire time,” he says. “I had watched all his movies. It was my goal to make the movies feel more like Sam Raimi films. I did everything I could to understand his dialogue. Sam was not interested in playing hits, which is to his credit. Sam came in not to tell, Please give me a zombie. And in fact, when I presented the idea of Dead Strange to him, there was a real hesitancy on his part, because he didn’t want it to seem like he was just saying Sam Raimi is my favorite thing..”

Waldron says Raimi wasn’t on board with the idea until it was clear that it was part of the larger themes of Doctor Strange ignoring what everyone else tells him the rules are and doing whatever he thinks is necessary to achieve his goals. “So when we could justify it in that way, then Sam was on board,” Waldron says. “It was like All right, now let’s have some fun, let’s really go all in.”

Some aspects that are all-encompassing Multiverse of Madness Some things are particularly bizarre, such as the universe in which everyone is made of paint. If he and his co-writers will have the freedom to experiment with multiverse madness, he answered that it would. LokiSeason 2: Waldron makes a comeback.

“I don’t know if I could go any weirder than we went in season 1,” he says. “We had an alligator drinking wine out of a kiddie pool. This was the Mount Everest summit of bizarre! I think there’s plenty of opportunity there. We’re always looking to outdo ourselves, but hopefully it’s always driven by character. Yes, this film taught me that no thought is too insane. You can write Stephen Strange possessing his own corpse, and maybe you’ll end up shooting it. That encourages me to be bold, which is good.”