Costumes are a vital component of any superhero movie. Filmmakers attempt to straddle the line between accuracy to the source material and putting their own spin on things. What looks great on the comic book page doesn’t always translate well in live-action, so there are times when changes are deemed necessary. At this point, we’re well past the days of the X-Men wearing matching black uniforms while cracking jokes about yellow spandex, but even the Marvel Cinematic Universe has made some tweaks here and there. One of the most prominent MCU characters, Doctor Strange, has long been missing a key part of his comic book outfit, and Marvel fans are realizing it’s only been on screen once.
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On Reddit, user New-Pin-9064 posted that Thor: Ragnarok is the only time in the MCU Doctor Strange wears his trademark yellow gloves. The gloves do appear in the Doctor Strange post-credits scene, but that uses Ragnarok footage, and Strange has had bare hands in all of his subsequent appearances. “They don’t translate well in live action,” New-Pin-9064 wrote of the gloves. “They honestly make him look like he was doing the dishes and then got interrupted.”
In the thread replies, many agree with the assessment that the gloves look like dishwashing gloves. “It looks like he’s about to scrub my pots and pans,” said one Redditor. “The idea isn’t bad, it’s just that those specific gloves looked way too plain against the rest of his costume,” said another. There are others who wish the gloves had remained, just with a redesign. “Keep the practical benefit but make them look more like magical gauntlets instead of bright rubber gloves,” said one user. “I’m surprised they didn’t just redesign them a bit so they looked less like kitchen gloves,” added another.
Why Did Doctor Strange’s Gloves Make One MCU Appearance?
The reasoning for the gloves appearing in Thor: Ragnarok is two-fold. Not only was it a fun Easter egg that paid tribute to Steve Ditko’s classic character design from the comics, but it also saved the Ragnarok makeup department a bit of time. Since Benedict Cumberbatch was wearing gloves, the crew didn’t have to put makeup on his hands to create Doctor Strange’s hand scars. In Doctor Strange, Stephen Strange is in a car accident and badly injures his hands, rendering him unable to operate. The scars are visible in other MCU projects, including Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. So, why did Marvel go out of its way to hide them in Thor: Ragnarok?
Conventional wisdom dictates the makeup departments on other MCU movies could have been spared some extra work if Marvel decided to keep Strange’s gloves, but they obviously went in a different direction. It’s important to keep in mind that Strange has what amounts to a glorified cameo in Thor: Ragnarok, getting only a precious few minutes of screen time. It’s possible the shooting schedule was planned around Cumberbatch’s availability, and in the interest of saving time and getting the sequence done as soon as possible, the filmmakers decided to incorporate the gloves. In Cumberbatch’s other MCU appearances, he is either the headlining star or a key supporting player who plays a significant role, so doing full makeup for Infinity War or Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was more tenable.
Removing the gloves from the equation also allows the filmmakers to better highlight Cumberbatch’s fingers in sequences where Doctor Strange is casting spells. His intricate movements and gestures are signature staples of the character. You would still be able to depict Strange’s spell casting with the gloves on, but things wouldn’t be quite as detailed as they are with the bare hands. From a practical filmmaking perspective, Cumberbatch might have had better range of motion in his fingers without the gloves, allowing him to be more elaborate in scenes where Strange casts spells.
It’ll be interesting to see if the gloves ever make a return. Odds are they won’t, at least for the Sacred Timeline’s version of Doctor Strange. It’s been nearly a decade since the gloves last appeared, and in that time, Cumberbatch has appeared in two Avengers movies, a Spider-Man sequel, and his own solo sequel. If he was going to wear the gloves again, it probably would have happened by now. However, that doesn’t mean he couldn’t don the gloves if he were to portray a Doctor Strange variant in Avengers: Doomsday or Secret Wars. There are rumors that a version of Strange from another timeline could be working alongside Doctor Doom. Perhaps that iteration will wear the gloves, marking a key difference between the heroic Strange and one who’s more villainous.
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