Doctor Strange

Stephen Strange, an arrogant neurosurgeon, destroys his hands in a car crash and exhausts every medical option before finding Kamar-Taj in Nepal. He learns the mystic arts under the Ancient One and Mordo, discovers she draws power from the Dark Dimension, and — after her death — defeats Dormammu not by fighting but by trapping him in a time loop using the Eye of Agamotto and refusing to stop dying until Dormammu agrees to leave. Strange becomes Master of the New York Sanctum.

"Refuses to stop dying" — what does that mean? Strange puts himself in a time loop using the Eye of Agamotto and confronts Dormammu inside the Dark Dimension. Dormammu kills him. The loop resets. Strange returns and says the same line. Dormammu kills him again. And again — hundreds or thousands of times, each death real and agonising.

Dormammu is a being for whom time does not pass, so the loop traps him too, in an eternity of the same conversation. Strange's leverage is that he is willing to die forever and Dormammu cannot bear the tedium.

Strange wins by losing repeatedly and refusing to stay dead — the only fight in the franchise settled by stubbornness.

Why isn't Strange the Sorcerer Supreme? He isn't at the end of this film — he becomes Master of the New York Sanctum, a lower post.

He does hold the title later, but loses it during the Blip: he was dusted for five years and Wong was promoted in his absence. When Strange returns, Wong keeps it. That's a running joke through No Way Home and Multiverse of Madness.

Mordo's relevance: he leaves in disillusionment, having learned the Ancient One broke her own rules. His conclusion isn't that she was a hypocrite but that the world has "too many sorcerers," and he begins stripping other practitioners of their power.

His main payoff is in Multiverse of Madness, where the Earth-838 version is a villain.

The Earth-616 Mordo hasn't been seen since 2016; that thread is open.