Marvel Phase 4 Has Finally Remembered Doctor Strange’s Greatest Tool

Warning! SPOILERS for She-Hulk: Attorney at Law episode 4.She-Hulk: Attorney at Law has finally remembered the Sling Rings are Doctor Strange’s greatest tool. Most viewers had assumed Wong’s role in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law had come to an end after his part in Abomination’s trial. Emil Blonsky had been useful to Wong during his trials to become Sorcerer Supreme, and (perhaps partly as thanks) Wong acted as star witness when he insisted Abomination had been unwilling to morph back into his monster form.

Surprisingly, though, Wong returned in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law episode 4. This time he became Jennifer Walters’ client, seeking her help confronting a rogue would-be sorcerer named Donny Blaze who had been thrown out of Kamar-Taj after just a week. Although Donny Blaze hadn’t had time to master any particularly powerful spells, he had left with a Sling Ring, and he knew how to use it to open unpredictable portals. It was only a matter of time before this went wrong, leading to an interdimensional invasion.

Until now, the MCU’s Phase 4 had forgotten Sling Rings allow travel through other dimensions. Sling Rings have essentially been relegated to a means of getting from A to B, with Masters of the Mystic Arts traveling the globe in an instant. This was even the case in Spider-Man: No Way Home, where Ned Leeds was able to pick up variants of Peter Parker who had already been brought to Earth-616. Doctor Strange had explicitly stated the Sling Rings could be used to travel the multiverse, and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law episode 4 remembered this. Donny Blaze accidentally sent Maddisyn to what seems to have been one of Marvel’s Hell Dimensions, complete with a Mephisto tease.

How Doctor Strange’s Sling Rings Could Have Changed Phase 4

The multiverse lies at the heart of the MCU’s Phase 4, but unfortunately Marvel tends to use words and terminology interchangeably, causing a great deal of confusion. The Sling Rings do not appear to allow people to travel between alternate timelines, but rather to other planes of existence (although it is possible a Master of the Mystic Arts could use the Quantum Realm as a waypoint, in a similar manner to Agents of SHIELD season 7). Oddly enough, this means the entire Clandestine subplot in Ms. Marvel could have been resolved by a single encounter with a common sorcerer, because they’d have been able to send them back to the Noor Dimension with ease. Thor could also have gone to the Masters of the Mystic Arts in Thor: Love & Thunder, because they could have transported him to the Shadow Realm with ease.

Ms. Marvel‘s interdimensional powers hint at just how powerful the Sling Rings really are. According to Kamala Khan’s best friend Bruno, it is indeed theoretically possible to create portals (or wormholes, perhaps) to other dimensions, but doing so would take the base energy of the sun itself. As he noted, that kind of power-level means the odds of something going wrong are very high indeed. That certainly explains why Wong was so worried about Donny Blaze in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law episode 4 – although it raises a curious question about just where a Sling Ring draws this power from. Hopefully, the MCU will eventually give an answer.