How Doctor Strange 2 Delays Changed Wanda’s Villainous Role, Costume Design

Like most of Marvel Studios’ Phase 4 releases, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ production underwent significant transformations in the midst of the pandemic. Those alterations ranged from massive changes, such as axing Daniel Craig’s Balder the Brave from the script, while others were detail-oriented tweaks, like the costume for Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch. The wine-colored attire Olsen rocks in the WandaVision finale is traded in for a corrupted crimson get-up, an adjustment that was birthed during the film’s production pause.

“Lizzie did her first bit of shooting in LA in March of 2020, and then the whole world shut down,” Doctor Strange 2 costume designer Graham Churchyard told ComicBook.com’s Phase Zero podcast. “And then we had five months on Zoom to sort of, ‘Hey guys, what we’re going to do about this?,’ and then rewrite. So essentially, all the crew were working remotely until, not five months, but until end of July. And so, ‘What about if we do this?’ And so all these new script pages would come out because of many things to do with COVID and all so dramatically. So, we felt that we had to move the Wanda costume on. This was something that really came directly from Sam [Raimi], with her kind of beautiful jewel-like costume with its cold shoulder look and somewhat sort of corseted, but I just wanted to give Lizzie more freedom.”

That aforementioned corrupted crimson came as a result of the Darkhold, as the wickedly tempting text seeped into both Wanda Maximoff’s mind and appearance.

“And the big thing that came into the mix was the Darkhold having such an influence on her and the rest of the movie. To me, it was just like, ‘Well the whole of her and the whole costume was taken the brunt of the corruption from the Darkhold.’ And so it was just to create something that was deteriorated,” Churchyard continued. “So we had fabulous printers and dyers and 3D modelers and costume makers. And we just did different things, like make the skirt more fluid. Because in WandaVision, you barely saw her. And then in Doctor Strange, she was just flying around Kamar-Taj the whole time. So I didn’t want [visual effects artists] Janek Sirrs and Cindy [Ochs] to be responsible, always for the skirt moving. So we created all of those things for real, but Lizzie loved pretty much all aspects of it.”

As Churchyard mentioned, super suits go through many evolutions from the initial sketch to the final product. The costume designer revealed actors like Olsen and Benedict Cumberbatch give fitting feedback, but are pretty much “on board with everything” when it comes to the style.

“The key to a successful costume is as many fittings as you can get, because it’s a bit like, you put something on and people are sort of, ‘Hey, this is great.’ And they go home and they go and open their refrigerator and go, ‘Hang on. I think that was too big on the shoulder,’” Churchyard said. “And they come back and do another fitting, say, ‘I think this is too big on the shoulder,’ or literally as simple things as that, but you do need to take time to evolve things and fit them. So you get a lot of feedback, because [these actors] spent years in front of the camera and looking at themselves and they know what suits them. So there’s certain parameters that you don’t want to do, but generally, pretty much, they’re on board with everything.”

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