Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness took us on a wild ride through the MCU's Multiverse, though it was our visit to Earth-838 that delivered the biggest surprises. It was there we met The Illuminati, a group consisting of a very interesting group of Variants (showing just how unique this particular Marvel Universe was).
For example, Peggy Carter was Captain Carter in that reality, though many fans were already familiar with that character after seeing her in What If...? That was a different Peggy, of course, meaning this one's death at the hands of the Scarlet Witch shouldn't spell the end of her story.
To mark the Doctor Strange sequel's upcoming release on 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD on July 26, we recently spoke to Costume Designer Graham Churchyard about his work on the movie.
In this excerpt, he reveals that they started creating a live-action Captain Carter costume long before What If...? hit Disney+, confirming that her inclusion in this movie was planned from the start and not just a kneejerk reaction to the hero's popularity. Churchyard also explains the huge amount of work that went into creating Hayley Atwell's first superhero costume.
Finally, the Costume Designer, who has crafted the outfits for the likes of Batman, Spider-Man, James Bond, and Jedi Knights in the Star Wars franchise, shares a very interesting connection between this suit and the one worn by Captain America in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Check out what Graham told us about Captain Carter below:
What was the biggest challenge in terms of translating Captain Carter's from an animated series like What If…? to live-action in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness?
"Getting to a design that everyone is comfortable with. Ryan Meinerding actually illustrated that out the back of What If...? because he was already working on that at the same time. Before that show was aired, we were already making the costume before we saw it in the animation. We'd already pretty much gone through our first fitting with Hayley Atwell. We saw her a few times in London. That probably sounds not unusual that you'd see actors, for an actual live fitting, but in the middle of COVID, there were so many fittings that were just done on Zoom. You get to the point where producers and studios have to understand the process that, if it's a store-bought item, then yes, you can just say, 'You're a medium, great.'
"I worked on Captain America: The First Avenger and Avengers: Age of Ultron, so made those costumes for Chris Evans from scratch with the new design for the latter, of course. I was in workshops in those days, and was the costume effects supervisor on those and many other films. Until then, for the five Marvel films, I'd been the guy in the workshop that heads up the workshop and gets the sculptors, clay sculptors, 3D modellers, people cutting fabric people, dying fabric, printing it, going out finding the fabric, and just dozens and dozens and dozens of people. We had 160 or 170 people on Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, so it was very intense. The making department was absolutely vast. It's so much work to get the detail into the costumes that everyone loves. You need to be so labour intensive and ideally, have a clear view of what you're doing so you don't waste 12 weeks and then make something in a rush at the end.
"Captain Carter came out of What If...?, and I'm really happy we give that to a Brit to almost reclaim the flag. I think some people would have been nervous about flaunting the Union Jack around on a character and, in the comics, he's a big guy so the gender swap with Captain Carter out of What If...? was a whole thing by itself. Because of What If...?, we didn't go all the way back to The First Avenger, which was very Second World War, and tried to blend it a bit more with the costume ideas that we came up with on Avengers: Age of Ultron for Captain America. This is trivia, but the fabric on her costume is exactly the same fabric that actually comes from the States. We printed it in London and there's a sort of importance that lifts the fabric if we do these raised prints on it.
"Trying to find the right combat pants that worked on Hayley and the proportion of the jacket...you just need those fittings in order to get to something as good as it looks now otherwise without fittings you're just making something, as I said, where we'll give you a small or medium and then people don't look good. I think we made like six or eight of those [Captain Carter costumes]. We have got up to 20 repeats on some costumes which is quite a lot because they're very labour intensive."
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is now available on Digital and will be released on 4K, Blu-ray and DVD July 26.