Favorite Characters: Karl Mordo (Doctor Strange)

It’s disappointing that, even though I love pretty much everyone in the cast of Doctor Strange, Chiwetel Ejiofor’s performance is that only one that I’m able to really love unreservedly.  For various reasons (Rachel McAdams has hardly anything to do, Tilda Swinton’s casting is insensitive, and so forth,) I can’t quite settle in and just enjoy these actors doing their thing.  Ejiofor’s Mordo, though?  Awesome.  Between this movie and seeing Chadwick Boseman in action in Civil War, I’m now officially okay with Ejiofor not getting cast as Black Panther (a few Mordo-related spoilers and one villain spoiler for Iron Fist.)

Mordo serves as Stephen’s introduction to Kamar-Taj – he helps dispatch some muggers for Stephen on the streets of Kathmandu and then brings Stephen to the monastery he’s been searching for.  During Stephen’s first moments at Kamar-Taj and through the earliest days of his training, Mordo constantly urges Stephen to reassess his perceptions of the monastery and the Mystical Arts.  Throughout, his tone hits just the right note – he’s bemused but not mocking, sagelike but not arrogant.  Mordo freely admits that he was once much like Stephen, assuming he knew everything and casting aspersions on Kamar-Taj based on his ideas of what he thought the Ancient One and the Masters were about.  As such, his guidance comes, not simply from knowing better, but from having learned better, of being farther down the road of his journey that Stephen is.

Admittedly, a lot of what Mordo does is about guidance, training, or rebuking Stephen, it being Stephen’s movie and all.  But he’s still super-cool while doing it – I love the scenes of him sparring with Stephen and conjuring mystical weapons, and I enjoy his dry rejoinders whenever Stephen gets snarky about “Eastern mysticism” (case in point:  when Stephen derisively asks if the piece of paper Mordo has given him has his mantra written on it, and Mordo simply informs him that, no, it’s the WiFi password.)  He’s highly-skilled in battle and keeps Stephen alive more than once.  But really, in amongst the stuff about Stephen, we learn a little about Mordo as well.  We learn that he originally came to Kamar-Taj for similarly self-serving reasons (while Stephen wants to heal the nerve damage in his hands, Mordo wanted to avenge his wife’s death,) but that the Ancient One instead taught him to confront his inner demons and devote himself to the service and protection carried out by the Masters. 

We also learn that the laws of the mystical arts are sacred to him, unwaveringly so.  Because he’s seen the capacity for destruction wrought by the likes of Kaecillius, he believes the Masters’ code must be followed to the letter at all times – anything less will inevitably lead to corruption and death.  However, it’s this rigidity that ultimately makes him break with Stephen and the other Masters.  He’d dedicated his life to following the Ancient One, and he can’t reconcile the fact that she broke the very laws she espoused.  (In a way, I’m reminded of Davos on Iron Fist, the true disciple who’s internalized the doctrine much more thoroughly than the protagonist, who’s close friends with the protagonist until ideological differences drive them apart.)  Now, Mordo is on his own, trying to singlehandedly reshape the world of Masters and magicians to align with his standards.  In moving forward with Doctor Strange, this is the part of the story that most interests me.