Welcome back to another Marvel Monday. This time, I’m wrapping up my look at the boxed figures in the What If? inspired Watcher Wave with Strange Supreme! Like a lot of figures in this assortment, this is one that I wasn’t particularly excited about, but as we’ll see it surprised me in some ways. Let’s jump right in!

I really tried to go through and again try to watch each episode before reviewing the corresponding figure, but in this case I just didn’t make it far at all. These Disney+ Marvel shows haven’t been able to grab me enough to invest the time, and that trend doesn’t seem to be changing, as I barely made it fifteen minutes into the first episode of She-Hulk, before I seriously asked myself, “Why am I watching this?” and noped out of it. Anyway, the idea here, as I understand it, is that Strange crosses the line between good and evil in order to save Christine Palmer and we get a very sinister version of Strange corrupted by the dark magics.

And here’s another example of me not having to be invested in the source material to really like a figure, because this guy is all sorts of awesome. I’ve been really fixated on the beautiful colors in this wave (except for you, Sylvie), and I’m impressed at how they’ve managed to keep that going even in a figure that is supposed to be all kinds of grimdark. I’m sure the temptation was to go with a lot of dark colors, but even evil Doctor Strange has a costume that just pops beautifully with some blues, purples, reds, golds, and even some orange!

The sculpt here is excellent, and I particularly dig the sculpted tunic, which looks a bit like a tabard that a Templar might have worn, complete with a sculpted emblem on the front. If you get in real close, you can see it even has a cloth like texture. There’s also a lot of detail in the complex system of belts cinched around his waist. My only gripe here is that I wish each of these were painted instead of left the same color as the tunic. It looks kind of unfinished the way it is.

The cloak is really the showpiece of this figure. It pegs into the back and rests on the shoulders for a decent fit, and I love the way it billows out and practically frames the figure itself. The outside is black while the inside is a very regal high-gloss purple, with some gold trim and a network of gold striping running throughout. It looks fantastic!

The portrait is pretty stylized, reflecting the art direction of the show, but I still wouldn’t have a problem putting this figure on any of my comic-based Legends shelves. As with the cartoon design, the likeness is clearly based on Cumberbatch, but with a bit more severity to the facial features, making him look all the more sinister. The hair sculpt is really good, with a couple of stray swirls spilling over his forehead, and the beard is well defined and neatly painted. The eyes make use of half-tone printing and the dark patches under them add to his more sinister nature. And once again, the cloak just does a beautiful job of framing the portrait. Unfortunately, there’s a patch of mold flashing or something just above my figure’s left ear, which I’m hoping will clean up.

While Strange looks amazing, I have to report that he’s not all that fun to play around with. Sure, he has all the usual points of Legends articulation, but his plastic tunic really hinders all those points in the lower legs. As a result, I felt a little limited on what I could do with him. He does have full range of movement in the arms, even with the cloak on, and his hands are sculpted in a spell-slinging fashion.

Strange comes with one accessory, and that’s an extra right hand with a permanently attached magic effect part. I’m pretty sure this is recycled from the Infinity War boxed set that came with Iron Man, Strange, and Thanos, or at least sure enough that I’m not going to digging through boxes to find it and do a comparison. I’ve got no problem with Hasbro reusing this part, as we’ve only seen it once before, it’s a very nice piece, and it really does look fantastic on this figure.

Strange Supreme is a beautiful figure, but he’s not going to be spending a lot of time on my desk before getting placed onto the display shelves. That honor is reserved to figures that I enjoy fiddling with and posing in my downtime. Nope, this one is more of a looker than a poser, and that’s fine, especially when he displays as well as he does. I didn’t expect to really like a lot of figures in this assortment, but most of them surprised me in the end, and Strange Supreme is definitely one of those! And now that I have the final piece I need for The Watcher BAF, we’ll wrap things up next week with a look at that figure!