Did Doctor Strange’s director accidentally tease this underwater character for the sequel?

Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson tweeted and then deleted a photo with a certain favorite Marvel Comics character. Could they be appearing in the sequel?

Fans are keeping a close eye on Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson’s Twitter feed as of late. The director is known to tweet about his film musings and even some behind-the-scenes info on Doctor Strange, but some look to his Twitter account for any morsel of information about Doctor Strange 2 that may or may not be there.

While those kinds of things are far and few at this point of its very early production, fans on high alert became suspicious about a now-deleted photo the directed shared featuring Doctor Strange and (drumroll, please) Namor, the Sub-Mariner.

The Twitter account SuperheroPOLL! Plus+, as CBR mentions, and r/MarvelStudios both mentioned the tweet, with the Twitter account screenshotting the tweet overnight before it was deleted.

It goes without saying, if Derrickson truly did tweet the photo and then delete it, that does make things suspicious. Wouldn’t it be fine for him to share a photo with the two Marvel characters, or did he have to delete it because he was oversharing a detail about Doctor Strange 2?

If Prince Namor were to appear in the movie, it could mean that Marvel Studios has finally ironed out the complications its had with acquiring back the rights to the character. In an IGN interview with Kevin Feige last year, Feige revealed putting Namor in the MCU would still be iffy, saying:

"I think there’s a way to probably figure it out but it does have — it’s not as a clean or clear as the majority of the other characters."

Marvel Studios needs to acquire the rights of the character back from Universal. And unless things have developed further since the April 2018 interview, Namor’s fate in the MCU could still be up in the air… That is unless Derrickson’s tweet is truly a hint that the studio can finally work him into the MCU.

Namor’s role in the sequel, if he were to appear, would be unclear since we know so little about the movie. (Technically, Doctor Strange is supposed to be dead right now, anyway. So of course no one’s saying much about a sequel.) But given Namor is a bit of an antihero, it’s hard to tell whether the MCU would put him on the good side, the bad side, or somewhere in between. The first Doctor Strange also seemed to set up Mordo as being some kind of antagonist in the sequel, so squeezing Namor and Atlantis into that narrative might be a bit of an odd choice.

As always, there’s also the clear possibility that Derrickson was just sharing a comic book that he liked (Fear Itself: The Deep #1, for reference). And any fan on high alert should still take this deleted tweet with a grain of salt. Until Marvel’s deal with Universal is completely worked out, DC’s Aquaman may be the only Atlantian we see on screen for a while.

Doctor Strange 2 likely won’t hit theaters until 2021 or later. But Doctor Strange will appear in Avengers: Endgame in theaters on April 26.