Daniel Craig’s Deleted Doctor Strange 2 Character Revealed in New Artwork

Daniel Craig almost appeared in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and now we know exactly how he would have looked.

Costume Concept Illustrator Darryl Warner revealed the concept art he produced during the making of Doctor Strange 2 via Instagram… and that includes Craig’s Asgardian character, Balder the Brave.

“Shame this character went no further than this watercolour,” he said, indicating that Craig’s cameo was cut fairly early in production. “Y’all know the story and if not just go and look it up online.”

As per earlier reports, Daniel Craig was originally supposed to join Doctor Strange 2 as part of The Illuminati – the group we briefly met during Strange’s reality-hopping adventure, that attempts to put a stop to Wanda Maximoff… with disastrous results.

However, contrary to the report, he wasn’t going to play Reed Richards.

Craig was set to play the Asgardian, Balder the Brave – the half-brother of Thor who has already appeared in the Marvel comic books. But when Craig was unable to commit to the film, his role was replaced, with Marvel turning to John Krasinski to give fans the Mister Fantastic they’ve long been asking for.

Unfortunately, this meant we never got to see Craig as an Asgardian hero… or his rather grim death scene that would have seen Balder forced to commit suicide by the Scarlet Witch. Not quite as dramatic as Reed Richards being noodled.

However, Warner also worked on an early concept for an alternate universe Doctor Strange known as Marvellous Melvyn – a simple conjurer who used performance magic instead of the real thing,

Unfortunately, this version of Strange was scrapped by the time Sam Raimi boarded the project, leaving Marvellous Melvyn relegated to his appearance in concept art only.

IGN’s Doctor Strange 2 review gave it 7/10 and said: “Are there aspects of Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness that could be better? Definitely. The script is downright hokey sometimes, and there are odd moments that are weird for the sake of it without adding anything to the overall lore or character development.”

Want to read more about Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness? Check out who the Scarlet Witch wants to team up with next as well as details of a scrapped Fantastic Four post-credits scene.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.