WandaVision: Benedict Cumberbatch Gushes Over Doctor Strange 2 Co-Star Elizabeth Olsen's Marvel Series

Benedict Cumberbatch cast a spell over Marvel's virtual WandaVision event on Thursday to praise [...]

By Cameron Bonomolo

Benedict Cumberbatch cast a spell over Marvel's virtual WandaVision event on Thursday to praise his Doctor Strange 2 co-star Elizabeth Olsen ahead of her "addictive" new series WandaVision. The first Marvel Studios series, which premieres Friday on Disney+, sets up Olsen's return to the feature film side of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The Sam Raimi-directed 2022 sequel forms a loose trilogy with WandaVision and Marvel-Sony's Homecoming 3 — featuring Cumberbatch in a guest-starring role as a mystic mentor to Spider-Man (Tom Holland) — and has connections to another Marvel series, Loki, premiering later this year on Disney+.

"Paul [Bettany] and Lizzie, my friends, you are so good in this," Cumberbatch said when calling into the WandaVision Virtual Launch Event as "Ben in London," where Multiverse of Madness has paused production due to COVID-19 lockdowns.

"It's a hard enough ask to bring off that concept, let alone to riddle it with all the excitement that all us fans are waiting for to see what happens to Wanda next," Cumberbatch continued in his rapid-quick cameo, which you can see in the video below. The Stephen Strange actor then called the sitcom-inspired WandaVision "addictive television."

Cumberbatch starred opposite Olsen and Bettany in superhero ensembles Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, which concluded the Infinity Saga in 2019. Whatever happens across the nine-episode first season of WandaVision, the reality-bending series from showrunner Jac Schaeffer (Black Widow) and director Matt Shakman (Game of Thrones) is a "natural" prequel to the events of Multiverse of Madness.

"There's never much we can talk about in Marvel, but I do think WandaVision is a natural progression into what happens in Doctor Strange 2," Olsen said during a recent appearance on Good Morning America. "I think [Marvel Studios president and producer] Kevin Feige is doing a really amazing job intertwining the television format with the films so that we can tell more interesting stories moving forward."

Starring Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Kathryn Hahn, Teyonah Parris, Kat Dennings, and Randall Park, new episodes of Marvel's WandaVision premiere Fridays on Disney+.

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