Doctor Strange has a history of stepping in to fix the messes created by other heroes, and is starting to become a mystical version of Mr. Fixit.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Amazing Spider-Man #50 by Nick Spencer, Patrick Gleason, Edgar Delgado & VC’s Joe Caramagna, on sale now
Doctor Strange seems to be getting more frustrated as the years go by due to the bad decisions made by people who claim to be heroes. This time around, it was Spider-Man who made a deal with a demon that eventually backfired.
Spider-Man had a choice to make, and he made the wrong one, thrusting him into a great battle and bringing back his biggest sins to haunt him. He sacrificed his own morals by handing over Norman Osborn to Sin-Eater to cleanse, leading to the demonic Kindred’s rise. When he tells Doctor Strange this story, Stephen is furious and asks what Peter thought would happen when he made a deal with a demon.
Stephen Strange is not only the Master of the Mystic Arts, but he also appears to be the fixer of the Marvel Universe and the one person who is there to clean up everyone’s problems. He is who Peter went to for help when Sin-Eater turned Spider-Man’s own allies into enemies with the powers of all the cleansed villains. This is not unusual for Doctor Strange, who is arguably one of the most powerful beings in the Marvel Universe. In this case, Spider-Man has made a deal with a demon in Kindred, without knowing the extent of it, similar to what he did with Mephisto in One More Day.
It is quite possible that Doctor Strange’s new job as the man who cleans up the mess that others make will play out in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) as well. Doctor Strange will appear in the next Spider-Man movie as a mentor. With the rumors that there are going to be characters from multiple Earth’s appearing in the movie, including possibly both Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire’s iterations of the Web-Slinger, Stephen will have a lot to fix. This should all come to a head in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, which is expected to deal with the fallout that might have all started in WandaVision, thanks to a problem caused by the Scarlet Witch.