Spider-Man: No Way Home Must Explain Doctor Strange’s Mysterio Plot Hole

It’s important that Spider-Man: No Way Home address a lingering Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) plot hole. After their initial team-up in Avengers: Infinity War, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is reuniting with the sorcerer for a brand new adventure. This time, the pair deals with the fallout from Quentin Beck/Mysterio’s (Jake Gyllenhaal) malicious death confession at the end of Spider-Man: Far From Home, which outed wall-crawler’s secret identity. But instead of making things better, Doctor Strange’s involvement somehow made things worse.

Admittedly, Spider-Man: Far From Home set up an entirely different sequel. Regardless, Spider-Man: No Way Home tackling the multiverse fits in the overall narrative trajectory of MCU Phase 4 thus far. Directed by Jon Watts, the upcoming blockbuster will see Peter Parker in his most vulnerable slate. Not only did his real identity get revealed to the world, but he’s also being framed for the death of Beck. With his life turned upside down and his loved ones now in danger, Spider-Man desperately reaches out to Doctor Strange for help. However, before they could even address the current issue at hand, Spider-Man: No Way Home needs to answer a lingering question about the future Sorcerer Supreme.

When Mysterio debuted in Spider-Man: Far From Home, he was first introduced as a superhero from the multiverse. He purportedly ended up in the Sacred Timeline while fighting interdimensional creatures known as the Elementals. While it’s later made clear that it’s all a bluff, it still doesn’t explain why Doctor Strange wasn’t involved at all in dealing with the situation. As the leader of the Masters of the Mystics Arts, he and his group should’ve been the ones to handle Mysterio’s problem. Peter even asked about his whereabouts at the beginning of the whole incident, thinking that Doctor Strange would be better suited given the predicament, but he was supposedly unavailable. It’s curious if Nick Fury (who was, of course, really Talos the Skrull in disguise) really even reached out to the sorcerers. Nonetheless, since it was his job to keep an eye on such threats, the least Doctor Strange could’ve done was check in on what was happening. From there, he would’ve found out right away that Mysterio was lying.

When Peter finally reaches out to Doctor Strange in Spider-Man: No Way Home, it sounds as if he’s oblivious to everything that’s been happening with the wall-crawler. That’s simply not possible considering that the fight with the Elementals throughout Europe was covered by the media. And when The Daily Bugle aired Mysterio’s video on a jumbotron in the middle of Manhattan, it must’ve played elsewhere as well. Marvel Studios needs to tackle this mystery, otherwise, it would look like the Masters of Mystic Arts are either not too good at their jobs or they’re simply not doing it properly. When they were first introduced in the original Doctor Strange film in 2017, many wondered where they were during the Battle of New York. Avengers: Endgame was able to explain this eventually, but Marvel Studios shouldn’t wait that long to address a similar query.

It’s not like it’s going to be that complicated to resolve the issue anyway. Perhaps Doctor Strange has been busy with something more serious like traversing the multiverse — something that could further play out in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. But it’s imperative that Spider-Man: No Way Home, at the very least, alludes to a reason.