JEFFREY WRIGHT: Strange's dilemma is such a timeless one. And when I saw this episode for the first time, I guess that timelessness was very timely for me. [Laughs] It just rocked me. It hit me pretty close to home. We all, at times, have tried to reverse circumstances and undo events, or at least we all, at times, have wished we were able to trace our steps backward and try to undo events that have not turned out as we might have desired they turned out the first time. The framing of that temptation for him was really well conceived of in this episode, and I just found myself sinking further and further into this hopelessly tragic abyss with Strange as it unfolded — [laughs] for reasons that I won't go into detail about.
That's understandable. What was your reaction when you read the script and learned how dark and emotional this episode gets?
I use the term dark differently than some. I just saw it as tragic. I don't know if that's dark, tragedy is something that we will all experience. There's something deeply human and emotional about it for me. Yes, he's tortured by this loss and desperate and full of hubris and lost, but for me it just seems so perfectly human. So I think I describe it more in those terms than it being dark. It's just filled with pathos. And for that reason I really empathize with that journey. [Laughs] I found myself, like The Watcher, there with him.
I didn't expect to see an entire universe get destroyed as a result of Doctor Strange's actions — how is that going to influence the rest of the season now that we know there can be such wide-reaching consequences to a What If...? question?
That remains to be seen, but I think this idea of his universe being destroyed is a wonderful metaphor too for all of us when we attempt the impossible or rather when we try to reject our path, our destiny, or the inevitability of our lives. When a schism grows between our reality and our relationship to it, we do in fact kind of destroy our universe, you know? It unravels completely and we lose touch with our wisdom and we lose touch with a healthy relationship to our lives, and that in and of itself is the destruction of the universe, right? I really enjoyed the metaphor of that idea, and I don't want to give too much away about what comes after... The nature of this series is about exploring possibilities, and what I think is true of the MCU is that all of these threads can potentially weave themselves in to the other. So it's possible. Just watch.