Tilda Swinton discutiu isso em uma entrevista de 2016 com o Screen Crush ; de acordo com ela, a história do Ancião é deixada intencionalmente obscura, com as cicatrizes destinadas apenas a sugerir um passado violento de alguma natureza:
The Ancient One's fairly mysterious in terms of her background, and that’s sort of how it stays in the whole film. I'm curious: Was there more backstory written for you to draw on, or did you have to come up with your own backstory?
I'm pretty constantly dropping hints in Kevin Feige's ear about a prequel. I’m constantly harassing him about that. I don’t know if it’ll get anywhere, actually. But, no, really we didn't think about it at all. In fact, we went out of our way not to, because it’s important that the Ancient One is entirely shrouded in mystery. I suggested the scar on the back of her head, which I like very much because they represent the kind of violence in her past and that she’s a survivor. There's something very brutal about that and the feeling that she is at least seven hundred if not a thousand years old. If you live that long in the way in which she's lived, then you can be sure she's carrying with her a few bruises and scars. So, that was about as far as we got really. But, we kept it nice and oblique even for ourselves.
É claro que podemos aprender mais se essa prequela de Swinton continuar esperando, mas eu não prenderei a respiração.