Benedict Cumberbatch is more than willing to continue the adventures of Doctor Strange for many years to come, so long as the character remains interesting of course. The actor will return to the role of The Sorcerer Supreme in this month’s Spider-Man: No Way Home, before leading his own sequel, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, next year. While he was unable to discuss anything specific about Doctor Strange’s future in the MCU, he did at least reveal that he plans to stick around for the foreseeable...

"As long as the character is interesting and challenging and doing fantastic things in the MCU, why not?"

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness will seemingly act as a follow-up to Spider-Man: No Way Home and the Disney+ series WandaVision and Loki, as the good doctor continues to explore the ramifications caused by the re-emergence of the multiverse. With several members of the Marvel franchise’s old guard, including Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark and Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers, having been removed from the superhero board, Doctor Strange has some big shoes to fill as the character moves to the forefront, with his future role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe sure to be a major one.

Benedict Cumberbatch will soon reprise the role of Doctor Strange in the further adventures of Peter Parker in Spider-Man: No Way Home. Directed by Jon Watts, and written by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, the sequel finds Peter Parker asking Doctor Strange to help make his identity as Spider-Man a secret following its public revelation, which quickly leads to the multiverse being unleashed. This causes several versions of previous Spider-Man villains to enter the MCU, with the web-slinger and The Sorcerer Supreme having to work together to send them back.

According to Cumberbatch, the movie will see Strange take on something of a Tony Stark-esque role to Tom Holland’s Peter Parker; "There's a shade of the [Tony] Stark relationship... It's not as intimate to begin with," the actor said earlier this year. "Because of how experienced a superhero he is, it's a strange dynamic and it kind of shifts into something far more parental and corrective. And then it shifts again."

Describing a “shift” in the relationship could be a major understatement on Cumberbatch’s part, with Tom Holland recently stating that the Doctor Strange/Spider-Man team-up “breaks down,” revealing that, "It's a very different relationship [from Tony Stark and Peter Parker]. I wouldn't consider Doctor Strange as a mentor in this film - it's more as a colleague. At this point in the films, Spider-Man has established himself as quite a powerful and serious Avenger. Doctor Strange sees that in him, and treats him like an equal. And throughout the course of the film, their relationship breaks down. And rather than becoming colleagues - they don't become enemies, but they're definitely not friends."

Spider-Man: No Way Home is scheduled to be released in the United States on December 17, 2021, with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness following on a little later on May 6, 2022, both as part of Phase Four of the MCU. This comes to us from USA Today.