Balder The Brave was a long-rumored character to appear in Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness, and fun fact: CoveredGeekly’s first article, almost a year ago, discussed these rumors. We never thought we’d get an actual look at him on set, but here we are.
We know from Deadline’s Justin Kroll and Heavy Spoilers that Daniel Craig was originally set to portray Balder The Brave in Multiverse Of Madness, but he didn’t “think the quick shoot wasn’t worth risk of bringing back COVID to the fam”.
Even more evidence for Balder surfaced when in early October, Concept artist Darrell Warner went on Instagram to share his work on Daniel Craig’s Balder The Brave in Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness. He said that the “character went no further than this watercolor”, as seen below:
Storyboard artist Soren Bendt shared an early version of the Illuminati lineup which featured Captain Carter, Iron Monger, Captain Marvel, and guess who? Balder The Brave.
First Live-Action Look At Balder
A new video by Insider featured behind the scenes footage from 12 movies released in 2022, including Bullet Train, The Batman, Thor: Love And Thunder, Top Gun: Maverick, Uncharted, and Everything Everywhere All At Once. The video also included set footage from Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness.
In a particular shot from the compilation, we can see Wanda fighting Maria Rambeau, and just aside them, is a figure, impaled with a sword. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the impaled guy is Balder The Brave.
So..what is he doing there? It seems unlikely that they (they refers to everyone involved in production) would place a Balder placeholder on set if he never made it out of concept art. All we can do is speculate. Share your thoughts with us at MCU Covered on Twitter!