The Natural Progression of The Scarlet Witch
Is where Wanda Maximoff ends up in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness all that surprising? Not when you consider where she has been in the MCU.
SPOILERS FOR DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS, WANDAVISION, OTHER MCU MOVIES, AND SOME COMICS BOOKS TOO. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED BY THE ALL CAPS AND BOLD FONT.
Watching some people on Twitter react to the character arc of Wanda Maximoff in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness this weekend has been wild. It’s honestly far more wild than anything that happened in the movie. At least what happens in the movie makes logical sense within what’s happening on screen. The Twitter reaction seems to be emotional, which is fair, but straight up calling writer Michael Waldron a sexist is mostly certainly unfair.
What’s the cause for this reaction? Well, and remember you have been warned, but Wanda Maximoff aka The Scarlet Witch, the infamous sometimes villain in the comic books, is the villain of the film. Well, I suppose we could split hairs about whether she is the “villain” or the “antagonist,” but either way she has gone bad.
Now, on one hand the negative reaction to this totally organic character development is understandable. Elizabeth Olsen has done a fantastic job playing Wanda Maximoff and the audience loves the character as a result. WandaVision put both her and her grief front and center, making her a very sympathetic character. Olsen has done such a good job that the audience ended up siding more with her in WandaVision than the citizens of Westview that she enslaved.
Last year after the WandaVision finale aired culture critic Sonny Bunch had the “audacity” to say that what Wanda did was wrong and the Twitter reaction was wild. Somebody screenshot both the piece he wrote and evidence that they had blocked him for it. Which for those of you that are wisely not on Twitter, is a declaration that somebody has crossed the line and there is no going back. You are snapping them out of your Twitter existence.
All of this is to say that the reaction to Scarlet Witch breaking bad is not surprising, but is the fact that she broke bad actually that surprising? Not for comic book readers, no.
When she was first introduced both her and her brother Quicksilver (Pietro) were part of the “Brotherhood of Evil Mutants,” before they turned good and became Avengers. Later, Wanda lost control of her powers and almost destroyed The Avengers. Oh, and she also reset reality to her liking during the “House of M” comic book event. I think she might be totally good again now, I’m not sure.
Okay, but setting aside the comic books, it’s not too surprising where she ended up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe either. Her first appearance is in Avengers: Age of Ultron and both she and Pietro got their powers by volunteering for a Hydra experiment. Their motivation is that their family was caught in the crosshairs of a military conflict, which killed their parents. One side of the conflict used Stark branded weapons, so they hate Tony Stark aka Iron Man.
She, along with her brother Pietro, are two of the antagonists in that film and she sets the events of the plot in motion by messing with Tony Stark’s brain and then working with the villain, Ultron. Of course, she realizes her error by the end of the film. Both her and her brother become Avengers, but sadly Pietro dies. Wanda is somebody that lost her entire family, but finds a new one in The Avengers.
Of course, that family is promptly torn apart in Captain America: Civil War after Wanda’s actions inadvertently causes the deaths of civilians. Wanda ends up on “Team Cap” and falls in love with the android named The Vision.
However, by the end of Infinity War, Wanda has to kill Vision in order to prevent the Infinity Stone that helped create him from falling into the gauntlet of Thanos. She kills him, but it doesn’t matter because Thanos is able to reverse time and kill him all over again.
From there, Wanda is left truly alone and full of grief. In WandaVision, she inadvertently uses her massive powers to create a more idyllic reality based on the sitcoms that she loved in her youth. In that reality she is able to have a family with a resurrected Vision and they even have two sons. Her perfect ending is at the cost of the hundreds of people that she has trapped in the small town of Westview. They are unwilling participants in her denial of reality.
Eventually Wanda is confronted with what she has unknowingly done and she is forced to “give up” the family she conjured up with magic in order to free the innocent civilians she captured. Vision and their sons, Billy and Tommy, might not be technically real, but her love for them most certainly is real. This is a person that has lost her parents, brother, surrogate family, husband, and children.
By the time we get to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness her pain and anger is most certainly justified. Her plan to regain what she has lost, is not. She knows that her sons Billy and Tommy exist somewhere in the infinite multiverse. Fueled by a toxic combination of her grief and the influence of dark magic, she will do anything and kill anybody to get to them. This, it needs to be noted, includes stealing the sons from the version of herself that gave birth to Billy and Tommy in a different universe.
By the end of the film Wanda is on the cusp of achieving her goal to be reunited with some version of her sons. However, this version of Billy and Tommy know that our Wanda is not their mother. (This makes sense, trust me) In fact, they are horrified by her and this finally breaks through to our Wanda. She realizes the error of her ways and apparently sacrifices herself to destroy the dark magic that has corrupted her.
When it is all laid out like this it’s clear that writer Michael Waldron, director Sam Raimi, producer Kevin Fiege, and Elizabeth Olsen, took Wanda through the natural progression of her character. In fact, Olsen herself believes that the state of Wanda in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is totally in line with the character:
“Even in WandaVision — really all of the films I’ve gotten to do — she’s constantly straddling this line and usually her biggest emotive losses or griefs are when something’s born. That’s kind of been the trend, and I do think we get to further that in this film, which is something that I’m happy about.” - Elizabeth Olsen
Why is it so hard for some fans to accept this? Well, because I think they genuinely like the character and it’s hard to see somebody you like do bad things. Again, this is a testament to how the storytellers and Olsen have presented the character.
However, when storytellers take a character down a difficult road, you don’t have to like it, but it doesn’t mean they are doing anything wrong. They aren’t ruining anything. They don’t suddenly become monsters.
Take a step back for a moment. If Wanda Maximoff showed up in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, without either processing the grief that has consumed her or facing the consequences for what she did in WandaVision would that be fair to her? Wouldn’t that make her far less interesting? What Waldron, Raimi, Olsen, and Fiege do here is finally let Wanda process her grief. She finally has to confront it.
I don’t believe we have seen the last of The Scarlet Witch. When we do see her again, whether on Disney+ or in her own film, she will be reborn. She will be free to move forward as a character.
It’s important that fans allow the storytellers space to take the character to where they naturally want to go. Stories are organic and trying to make characters avoid difficulty, conflict, or consequences will ultimately do the most harm to them.