Elizabeth Olsen's Scarlet Witch had the opportunity to go fully down her villainous path in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, becoming the sequel's lead antagonist as she ravaged through the Multiverse. While most fans expected that role to go to Chiwetel Ejiofor's Baron Mordo after 2016's Doctor Strange, Wanda Maximoff took the terror to a new level in her first Phase 4 movie.
Mordo played a much different role in the Doctor Strange sequel, with Ejiofor only appearing as Earth-838's Master Mordo instead of the 616 version from the original movie. However, as the story for Marvel Studios' magical sequel solidified its story further, one moment featuring the 616 Mordo was actually scrapped from the final cut.
That moment would have shown the Scarlet Witch murdering Mordo in the movie's opening scene, setting her up as Doctor Strange 2's villain even more quickly than how it happened upon the film's release.
Now, thanks to new quotes from a couple of the sequel's biggest behind-the-scenes names, more details have come to light on how that scene would have gone.
Mordo Loses Head in Opening Scarlet Witch Scene
In the audio commentary from the digital release of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, director Sam Raimi and head writer Michael Waldron discussed the scrapped opening scene between Wanda Maximoff and Baron Mordo.
Raimi and Waldron described how this scene would have caught fans up with Earth-616's Mordo, who had grown battle-weary in the time since his debut in 2016's Doctor Strange. He hunted down the Scarlet Witch in order to take her power after the Darkhold corrupted her, but she beheaded him and then presented the head to Strange when they first met:
Raimi: “Michael [Waldron] had written an early scene with [Mordo] where we saw him in our universe, 616, where he was the Mordo that we knew from Doctor Strange 1, only he had been through many battles since that. He had a limp. And he was coming after the Scarlet Witch to take her power because he knew she was dark and terribly corrupted by the Darkhold and she killed him and cut off his head, and presented it to Strange in a later scene. It was really great writing, but it slowed the beginning down too much, so we had to lose it."
Waldron: “Yeah, that was a fun scene that just didn’t have a place in the movie. But it was cool that she cut his head off right halfway through his ears, [as he’s] about to say, ’The bill comes due.’”
This scene was also teased on the official poster for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which shows Mordo facing off against Wanda in her Westview home:
Mordo Meets a Brutal End in Deleted Scene
The second post-credits scene from Doctor Strange put Baron Mordo on a path toward eliminating the world's magic-wielders one by one after uttering the line "too many sorcerers." While this deleted scene would have picked up right where that scene left off, Sam Raimi and Michael Waldron made it clear that Mordo was in over his head with a Darkhold-influenced Scarlet Witch.
In the end, Raimi admitted that this scene slowed down the movie's opening too much, instead kicking off with Defender Strange and America Chavez already knee-deep in action with Multiversal monsters. Since Doctor Strange 2's runtime only came out at a little over two hours long, Raimi wanted to ensure its pace stayed consistent from start to finish.
Now that Mordo's fate in the MCU is still up, there is a small chance that the villainous sorcerer could come back to haunt Strange again in future outings along with Earth-838's Master Mordo. With Doctor Strange 3 on the minds of everybody involved with this latest movie, fans may not have seen the last of Chiwetel Ejiofor just yet.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is now streaming on Disney+.
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