Doctor Strange 2 Character America Chavez Was Originally Set To Appear In Spider-Man: No Way Home
This post contains spoilers for "Spider-Man: No Way Home."
The newest Marvel movie hero, America Chavez, played by Xochitl Gomez, can punch through reality in the shape of a star. She also wears one on her back, and she's using another one to open a portal for herself into "Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness," the upcoming 28th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. You've seen glimpses of Chavez in action in the new trailer, but what you might not know is that somewhere out there in the multiverse, there's a reality where she made her debut in "Spider-Man: No Way Home" instead.
In that reality, "Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness" was the 27th MCU film. It never got delayed, as it did here in our reality. This would have introduced audiences to Chavez sooner and allowed Marvel Studios to utilize a character in "Spider-Man: No Way Home" that people now already knew.
"No Way Home" was already crawling with Spider-Men and it was encircled by a hefty accretion disk of supervillains, to boot. But it seems that in the original script and concept art for "No Way Home," Chavez and her star portals might have been instrumental in helping some of those Spider-Men make the leap from one multiversal reality to another.
Concept artists Maciej Kuciara and Marek Okon have been sharing some pre-production images that they drew up for "No Way Home" on Twitter, and one now-deleted tweet (still viewable by screenshot via The Direct) shows that Marvel was at one point considering Chavez for inclusion in "No Way Home." This, coupled with previous comments that co-writer Chris McKenna has made, suggest that the abandoned mystery character guiding Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire into the MCU would have been Chavez.
Buckle Up For A Bumper Car Ride
The most revealing concept image — the one that's since been taken down — shows Chavez in costume in the middle of some kind of bumper-car set piece. Peter Parker (Tom Holland) has his back to us, but you can see the clear likeness of MJ (Zendaya), Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon, in a bumper car, no less), and even Flash Thompson (Tony Revolori) and Betty Brant (Angourie Rice). Chavez is levitating an open book of magic, which The Direct speculates is "likely the original design for Doctor Strange's cube."
The reason why this image was taken down may have something to do with the fact that, in it, Chavez's face is modeled on a different actress, Isabela Merced.
One image that's still up on Okon's account appears to show Chavez hanging off a crane in front of Lady Liberty, holding up the green antidote that will restore Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe) to sanity. The artist wrote, "One of the ideas for #SpiderMan #NoWayHome final battle was to slowly burn and destroy the scaffolding so as the fight goes on the Statue of Liberty underneath gets revealed."
One of the ideas for #SpiderMan #NoWayHome final battle was to slowly burn and destroy the scaffolding so as the fight goes on the Statue of Liberty underneath gets revealed.
This is one of the concepts I did for how it would look. More to come soon ;]#SpidermanNoWayHome pic.twitter.com/oP33c7VTyJ— Marek Okon (@okon_marek) January 7, 2022
I'm excited to see America Chavez in "Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness," but if she had shown up in "Spider-Man: No Way Home," the movie would have been even more crowded than it already was. Ultimately, it did just fine without her, scoring a billion-dollar box office haul that just keeps climbing ... rather like a wall-crawler.