Rachel McAdams returns in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness for her second MCU outing (in live-action, anyway, it’s her third if you count What If…?). And thankfully she’s getting a little bit more to do this time around. Whatever your thoughts about the first Doctor Strange, it’s fair to say McAdams was underserved as Christine Palmer, the good doctor’s fellow physician and love interest.
In fact, McAdams gets twice the material to work with in Doctor Strange 2 as the actress has revealed that she plays two distinct versions of Christine, thanks to the sequel’s multiversal purview. That said, at one point, she was on call to play three Christines, until plans were simplified. As McAdams explained to IndieWire:
“It did change a little bit from what I was originally told, [which was] that it would be three different versions, and we wound up with two different versions in the end. But they said I’d be playing a very different version of the Christine Palmer I played in the first film, that I wasn’t an emergency room doctor, just a completely different person with a completely different life experience.”
So who are the two Christines we’ll meet in DS2? Well, the first is obviously the prime universe’s Dr. Palmer. As we’ve seen in the trailers, she’ll be walking down the aisle in this movie — but not with Stephen. The second has also been glimpsed in the marketing — a red-headed variant wearing some kind of all-blue uniform which may be medical in nature, so she likely has some things in common with the Christine we know.
Although it’s a shame McAdams didn’t get to stretch herself even more and play a third Christine in the film, she has actually played three separate iterations of the character. In the aforementioned animated series What If…?, she voiced a Christine who died in the car crash that typically causes Strange’s hand injuries. As for the Christine who got deleted from Doctor Strange 2, maybe some additional info will come out about that in time.
