Benedict Cumberbatch Thinks Marvel Missed An Opportunity With Doctor Strange's Iron Man Suit

"Avengers: Infinity War" brought most of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's heroes together in order to stop Thanos, the genocidal warlord from Titan, with a united front. It's one of the studio's most successful films and had several of Marvel's superheroes work together for the first time, paving the way for some unlikely but fan-favorite pairings.

While most Avengers fought to protect The Vision at Wakanda, Stephen Strange and Tony Stark found themselves millions of miles away, orchestrating a plan with Spider-Man and the Guardians of the Galaxy to rid Thanos of the Infinity Gauntlet and the Infinity Stones he'd retrived so far. With so many superhero possibilities, the film's writers had many different ideas about how the events "Avengers: Infinity War" would unfold, but not all of them came to fruition. In one deleted scene, Doctor Strange suited up in Iron Man armor and meshed his mystical powers with Tony Stark's super tech to fight Thanos' warrior Ebony Maw, and Benedict Cumberbatch is pretty bummed that it didn't happen.

In the deleted scene, Doctor Strange is seen wearing a version of Tony Stark's Mark L armor as he prepares to take on Ebony Maw. "Infinity War" concept artist Phil Saunders shared a couple pieces of concept art that show the suit with the Eye of Agamotto sitting in place of the arc reactor.

The possibility of the Iron Man armor working with the Time Stone is fascinating — how that is even possible is a different question altogether — but it looks fantastic! Strange was set to wear the superhero suit in an alternate version of the scene where we saw Peter Parker/Spider-Man and Tony Stark save Doctor Strange from Ebony Maw.

The film's final version sees an incapacitated Stephen Strange, immobilized and surrounded by hundreds of alien microsurgery needles, with Ebony Maw threatening to stab the Sorcerer Supreme. 

The deleted scene went like this: Before Stephen could get stabbed, Tony Stark sent all of his nanobots to cover and save him, forming the Iron Man armor around him. With Tony remaining vulnerable without his suit (via Emergency Awesome on YouTube), the Cloak of Levitation covers him, and the two heroes use their swapped powers together to defeat Ebony Maw. To think they filmed this scene and didn't add it to the movie is pretty upsetting, and Benedict Cumberbatch was among those disappointed to see it get cut. 

In an interview with Ali Plumb of BBC Radio 1, Benedict Cumberbatch joked about the missed opportunity, expressed being "annoyed" at the scene's exclusion, and said his character was named "Iron Strange." Cumberbatch said:

"Yeah, I was a bit [annoyed]. We both were. It took a long time to splurge those spliced costumes together. No, it was an amazing moment, and I think I definitely came out of it better than Iron Strange or Doctor Man, the other guy with the goatee. Strange Man. I definitely came out of it better."

The actor further talked about how "cool" the suit looked:

"I mean, having a bit of that outerwear on you, it's very very very cool. Yeah, very cool. I would love to have seen what the combination of wizardry and that tech would do as well."

In "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness," we saw several different versions of the former Sorcerer Supreme across different multiverses. In "What If...?," we saw the superhero turn over to the dark side, being overwhelmed by loss and grief. Who's to say Iron Strange will never be a part of the MCU? After all, even though Tony Stark is gone, there are plenty of other versions of him in the multiverse. As long as Cumberbatch continues to play Doctor Strange, we'll keep on hoping this happens.