Benedict Cumberbatch Shares His Doctor Strange Future in Marvel’s ‘Modern Myths’

Benedict Cumberbatch is a man people love to see on screen. Ever since Sherlock, he’s captivated audiences with his magnetic performances, and he won everyone over almost instantly when he was cast as Doctor Strange in the MCU.

Now, it’s hard to imagine there being an Avengers movie without Strange in there somewhere. But that’s exactly what will happen when Avengers: Doomsday comes out in 2026. Unfortunately for the small army of Cumberbatch fangirls who still roam the internet, the movie will be a Strange-free zone.

“Is that a spoiler? F**k it!” Cumberbatch told Variety in a new interview. He then explained what happened: scripts and stories had to be changed after the departure of Jonathan Majors, who played the villain Kang. Kang was set up to be a driving force of the MCU going forward, but in 2024, Majors was convicted of assaulting his partner and fired from what would have been the role of a lifetime for him. The MCU quickly recalibrated and a new villain was found: Doctor Doom. In a move that shocked everyone, none other than Iron Man actor Robert Downey Jr. was cast to play him.

This surprised Cumberbatch just as much as it surprised everyone else. “I texted [Kevin Feige], ‘What the f**k?’ and then quickly added, ‘Good what-the-f**k. I mean, good what-the-f**k.’” 

But Cumberbatch won’t be acting opposite that good what-the-f**k. Strange, he explains, was “not aligning with this part of the story.” He will instead have his day in the next Avengers film after Doomsday, Secret Wars. In fact, he’ll be in that one “a lot” and Strange is “quite central to where things might go.”

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It’s a shame that Cumberbatch and Downey Jr. won’t be in Doomsday together, because they had fantastic chemistry. It also didn’t escape fans’ notice that both actors had played Sherlock Holmes, Downey Jr. on the big screen and Cumberbatch on the small. Fans waited for the MCU to make a Sherlock joke, but it never came. Turns out, Cumberbatch had something to do with that. “We had a gas about being the two Sherlocks on set,” he said. “But there was some line of dialogue where someone turns to us and says, ‘No shit, Sherlock.’ Well, we took out all that meta stuff. We just said, ‘No, no, no. Better to leave that for the fan fiction.’”

Downey Jr. has indicated in the past that he doesn’t find the MCU movies fulfilling. At the BAFTAS in 2024, he jabbed at the franchise, implying he’d gotten “dwindling credibility” from them. Cumberbatch isn’t the same, although he does admit to finding “tentpole films,” as he calls them, “monolithic.” Of course, he might not be talking about the MCU there – let’s not forget he was also in Star Trek: Into Darkness, a not exactly loved film – but he also says that filming superhero movies is “hard because you have this huge apparatus around you.”

However, Cumberbatch is perfectly happy to remain Doctor Strange for as long as he’s needed. Marvel films, he believes, are “the modern myths of our times.” He went on, “Yes, [the films are] huge and unwieldy, but Marvel is so committed to getting it right. Even when we make one of these Avengers films and it gets exponentially huger, we’re still just kids playing in the sand pit. We’re still just making s**t up and having fun with it.”

So, that’s all the more reason to look forward to the upcoming MCU movies.