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The fourth episode of What If sees Doctor Strange’s girlfriend Christine becoming a “woman in a refrigerator.”
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for What If…? Season 1, Episode 4, “What If… Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?,” streaming now on Disney+.
The fourth episode of Marvel’s animated Disney+ show What If…? ponders what would happen if, instead of his hands, Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) lost his “heart” in the pivotal car accident that set off his journey. This doesn’t mean literally suffering a heart injury, immediately losing his compassion or having a near-death experience, though. It means losing his girlfriend Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams) — and because of her loss, going down a much darker path.
Though some critics and fans have praised the episode for being darkly emotional and intensely poignant, there have been valid criticisms about the way Christine is handled in the story. Christine’s death being the catalyst for Strange’s pursuit of power and ultimately his evil is a pretty standard example of the “women in refrigerators” trope. Originally coined by notable comics author Gail Simone, the name refers to a 1994 Green Lantern story where Kyle Rayner’s girlfriend is killed and literally stuffed in a fridge, which furthers his development as a character.
Simone and her circle identified a pattern of harming and killing female characters to make male characters grow, now simply called “fridging,” and criticized its commonness in comic books and fiction. Other cinematic examples of fridged superhero girlfriends include Gwen Stacy in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (echoing her famous comics death), Rachel Dawes in The Dark Knight and Vanessa in Deadpool 2.
Christine dying to push Strange into eventual villainy is a classic example of fridging, and that’s bad in and of itself, but the plot of the What If…? episode also shows Strange using magic to reverse time and undo her death — something he does over and over. Instead of eventually seeking out Kamar-Taj to heal his severely injured hands (which was also seen by some as veering toward fantasy ableism) he tries to become a sorcerer in order to save Christine. He immediately shows interest in the Eye of Agamotto and its time-shifting properties, but he’s warned by Wong (Benedict Wong) and the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) against using it for those purposes.
He eventually uses the Eye in an attempt to save Christine, but the Ancient One cautions him that Christine’s death represents a fixed point in time and therefore cannot be undone. (It must be noted that fixed points are, at least in this story, only applicable to specific timelines: Christine’s death is a fixed point in the specific multiversal branch shown in this What If…? episode, but that doesn’t mean she has to die in every single universe.) Keeping Christine alive would create a time paradox, because, as the Ancient One explains: “Without her death, you would never have defeated Dormammu and become the Sorcerer Supreme.” This literally frames her death as necessary for Strange’s heroic progression. Who she is isn’t important to the story; what she’s done doesn’t really matter. It’s just the tragic loss of her that motivates Strange and pushes him down the necessary path. That’s textbook fridging, and the only thing worse than that is the way the episode kills Christine over and over as Strange attempts to save her and is thwarted each time.
In the end, Strange rebels against the Ancient One and goes to the Lost Library of Cagliostro to learn how to save Christine. Its librarian, O’Bengh (Ike Amadi), tells Strange that he might be strong enough if he absorbs other magical beings, so he begins to do just that. He also, however, learns that the Ancient One split him into two halves, essentially light and dark, to weaken him. She believed that the light side would overcome the dark, but Strange is far enough gone on that the opposite happens. Once he’s whole again, he reverses Christine’s death and creates the exact kind of time paradox he was warned about. Later, when he realizes what he’s done, he asks the Watcher (Jeffrey Wright) to intervene, but the Watcher refuses, and the rescued Christine disappears along with the rest of the universe, which leaves Strange alone in the void.
In 2019, a Tom King-authored Superman comic featured twelve pages of Superman imagining Lois’ many potential deaths, and there was an understandable uproar from readers, particularly parents who thought the graphic depictions of death were inappropriate and fans who said it reflected the “women in refrigerators” trope. This What If…? episode has a similar structure, the time loop centered on a superhero girlfriend’s death, and critics (Sam Barsanti of The A.V. Club, Rosie Knight of Den of Geek, Rachel Leishman of The Mary Sue) have certainly mentioned the fridging problem.
It’s also worth noting that the third episode of What If…? features fridging as well: Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) seeks revenge for the offscreen death of his daughter Hope, who in that universe was a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. It’s not a wonderful pattern for the show to fall into, but there’s still time for the other episodes to redeem the series.
New episodes of What If…? premiere Wednesdays on Disney+.
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