Feats N' Faults, MCU: The Doctor, The Witch, and His Wardrobe

The Magical MCU

Dec 19, 2024

Welcome back to Feats N’ Faults, where we use our Tiered Point System to rank and record our favorite characters based on their achievements and deeds. For a more in depth look on how points are awarded, please check the About page. Below is our Tier System for quick reference.

We are getting some heavy hitters in before the year ends! Some major players in this week’s feed. Today, we are covering some more magical characters in the MCU. The doctor being Doctor Strange. The witch being Wanda Maximoff, and the wardrobe being the Cloak of Levitation. That’s right, I tracked a piece of clothing in the MCU. You guys already know I am crazy after the Ad Mascot post. Nothing should surprise you anymore. I also added a bonus character, Quicksilver. I could not think of a better feed to put him in, so I decided to talk about him whenever we focused on his sister, Wanda.

Alright, you know the drill. If anyone is playing at home, go ahead and list Doctor Strange, Wong, Baron Mordo, Dormamu, Wanda Maximoff, The Cloak of Levitation, and Quicksilver from least to greatest. Let me know in the comments your lists! I am curious what everyone will guess. It is a tricky one this week. Some scored higher than I expected, while some were much lower than they should be.

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                                                             Let's Get Started!

7th Place, Baron Mordo: 5 FN’F Score (2016) 1 Movie

Mordo did not get a lot of time to shine. He was in the Doctor Strange origin story and set up as a recurring villain. The problem is so much time passed we never got to go back and visit him. Another variant of him is in Multiverse of Madness, but that’s all we got. This rivalry between him and Strange was never established beyond the first setup. I think he will be a forgotten character moving forward, so I don’t expect that score to get much better. He did worse than a piece of cloth. How embarrassing.

6th Place, Cloak: 9 FN’F Score (2016-2022) 5 Movies

I think this is the perfect barometer for determining whether a person's score was terrible or not. If you can’t score higher than a piece of clothing, you have no right to compete in Feats N’ Faults, haha. It’s just silly. This little guy flies around like Aladin's magic carpet and has done some incredible things. It stopped Drax and caught Spider-Man. Two things that a lot of characters have struggled with. It is magic, but still. It has to be pretty strong if Drax couldn’t just rip it in two. Cloak, you did well so far. To put it into context, this flying piece of cloth beat Ebony Maw and Sarah Sanderson! That’s crazy! I’m looking forward to seeing what you can accomplish in the future. Keep flying high, my friend!

5th Place, Wong: 14 FN’F Score (2016-2022) 5 Movies, 3 ep.

I expected Wong to score higher. He has been in enough stuff, but always as a side character. He’s never really had his own story to shine. In the future, he might get more of the spotlight. I can see a world where they choose Wong as the leader of the Midnight Sons, at the very least be a part of it. I love whenever he pops up, and I look forward to seeing a lot more of him. He is our Sorcerer Supreme now. He is the one protecting us from the magical realms.

4th Place, Dormamu: 16 FN’F Score (2016) 1 Movie

Good old Dormamu. We already covered him in the Marvel Villains series. He is a huge threat, but he’s only at the climax of one movie. The poor guy got stopped before he could even get started. He killed Doctor Strange a lot, but that’s about it. There’s just not much more to say about this floating head. He talked a big game, but just like the rest of us, time got the better of him.

3rd Place, Quicksilver: 19 FN’F Score (2015) 1 Movie

Quicksilver is one character that does not fit a mold in the MCU. He does not stick around to be in a million other projects. He’s also not a one-off villain. In the end, he isn’t even really a villain. He turns out to be a hero who sacrifices himself to save an Avenger.

Back in the day, Quicksilver and Wanda were the closest thing they could get to Mutants in the MCU. There was a grey area with these characters. Yet, Marvel probably didn’t want to risk jumping through hoops for multiple movies. That is probably why they decided to kill him off right away. However, he did really well, all things considered. He did better than a piece of fabric, so that’s all that matters.

2nd Place, Doctor Strange: 104 FN’F Score (2016-2022) 5 Movies

Wow, look at that point differential. Doctor Strange is our second-place spot. I bet that surprised a couple of you—especially those who might have missed some of the more recent MCU projects. Still breaking the hundreds is a big feat in Feats N’ Faults. It almost guarantees you a spot on our yearly Top Tier list that will be coming out to celebrate the new year.

Strange has saved the world on multiple occasions in the MCU. Some were mistakes from teenagers, and others were world-changing monsters. Before the blip, he was our Sorcerer Supreme, but Wong recently took over that title because of a technicality. However, I believe Wong is probably better suited to hold that role. Strange is a powerful magician, but I trust Wong a bit more. One example would be Strange taking out his mild frustration on a simple food vendor, making the poor man punch himself for weeks for no real reason. It was a hilarious cameo by Bruce Campbell but an awful fault for Strange. Speaking of Bruce, we should look at the Evil Dead franchise sometime soon. If you’d like to see that, let me know in the comments.

1st Place, Wanda Maximoff: 326 FN’F Score (2016-2022) 6 Movies, 9 ep.

Wanda is a tricky one. She starts off as a villain, becomes an Avenger, and then turns back into a villain. It becomes a little tricky to score. How I handle characters like this is scoring them by their motivations. So, anything before Hawkeye makes her an Avenger I scored as a villain, and then from the moment she starts studying the Darkhold I also score her as a villain. Anything in between is scored like a hero. Then, I take her Hero and Villain scores and put them together to bring you her final score.

As a hero, Wanda struggled. Looking at her entire run in the series, you can see why. She is a villain; she makes a great villain. She tries to be good. Inspired by Hawkeye and the Avengers, she wants to make everyone proud. Then she falls in love with Vision, but she spirals back into her nature when that anchor disappears. As a villain, she thrived. This has to come from how she was raised and experimented on. She never got that foundation of love. That is why she wants her children so badly. To feel that love that she never had as a child. That kind of unconditional love. This drove her to use the Darkhold, risk entire universes, and kill off major characters. She was a force to be reckoned with. As a villain, she was able to score 45 FN’F Score.

As a hero, she tried her best. Scoring 25 FN’F Score. Even though she had pivotal roles in stopping Ultron and Thanos, she just had a lot of fumbles. She started off Civil War by throwing a bomb into a building. After Vision died, she went crazy and held an entire town captive. She also played god and brought Vision back to life even though he asked her not to. The biggest thing she did was destroy the Darkhold in every universe. This saved multiple universes as it stopped Dream Walking, which led to incursions. It's a pretty big feat worth 256 points! This was the majority of the points Wanda scored, but I could not tell which one was at the wheel. Was it Wanda or the Scarlet Witch? I couldn’t decide, so I just added it to her final score. Since that’s really the only score that matters.

In the end, it was a tremendous score. She beat out both Iron Man and Captain America, putting the rest of her fellow Avengers to shame. She also beat other front runners like Obi-Wan Kenobi and John Wick by more than 100 FN’F Score! Her powers are impressive, and she knows what she is capable of. Her return to the series is still questionable, but her place on our Top Tier list is not.

Review:

Doctor Strange: 7/10

Doctor Strange has been a pivotal part of the MCU. He has been a main focus in multiple films but this review is just going to focus on Doctor Strange and Multiverse of Madness. We can cover the other movies later when we cover Sider-Man.

Doctor Strange was a good origin story. I liked it more than most when it came out. I’ve just grown to appreciate it more. My favorite aspect is the final fight. For once, the villain is not just a carbon copy of the hero or a giant laser fight. Instead, Strange uses the knowledge he has earned throughout the movie to trick his enemy. He is willing to die over and over again to save the earth. It is not a grand fight. No sparkles or lasers shooting everywhere. No building crumbling with lots of collateral damage. Just two men, stuck in a void, talking to each other. It was a fantastic change of pace and the perfect ending for a character who has finally mastered the mystic arts.

Multiverse of Madness was a lot of fun. I love Sam Raimi and was thrilled when he was making his return. My only problem is that his style felt watered down. There are moments you see him come through. Like when Strange is a zombie version of himself or when Wanda is trapped in the mirrors and trying to break out. In those moments, the film really shines. However, some of it just felt bloated. It's a tad too much fan service without any substance. I am more excited for the third one if Raimi is coming back to direct. Then maybe we can have a more focused story about Doctor Strange with Raimi’s distinct vision. Just let the man shine, he’ll make yah a great looking film.

Recommendation: Absolutely, it’s magical!

WandaVision: 7/10

WandaVision is unique. They tried something new when making this and it shows. I am not sure if the title came first or the show's idea, but they are a perfect match. The recreation and celebration of sitcoms is a really fun idea. That mixed with the creepy body horror going on in the background makes for an engaging watch.

Recommendation: A hesitant yes.

If you do not like sitcoms, the first couple of episodes might be difficult for you to get through. But I still think it is worth a watch!

Thanks again for tuning into Feats N’ Faults this week! Next week is Christmas already. It is crazy how fast time has flown by. That means Feats N’ Faults has finally hit its one-year anniversary! I want to thank you all again for being a stellar community, and I look forward to engaging with all of you when we release the yearly Top Tier list. Next week, we will have a brief change in schedule. Instead of releasing it on Thursday, we will release it on Tuesday because of the Holidays. So, we will be releasing on Christmas Eve! I have a fun Christmas classic next week so don’t forget to subscribe to stay up to date with everything Feats N’ Faults.