When Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) first joined the MCU in 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, her potential was theoretically limitless. Her nonetheless nascent magical powers had been a substantial boon for the (principally) science-based Avengers workforce, whereas the character’s emotionally arduous journey all through five decades of comic book history supplied loads of dramatic materials for the MCU to mine. Regardless of having a blueprint for fulfillment, Marvel Studios’ method to Wanda has been inconsistent, largely outlined by missed alternatives and stunning cognitive dissonance. Her bumpy journey from not-quite antiheroine, to heroic aspect character, to ruthless villainess ended along with her redemptive “death” in 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and no exterior bulletins about her future thus far — an odd place to depart one of many Infinity and Multiverse Saga’s mainstay characters.
Naturally, rumors a couple of Wanda solo movie have abounded within the two years since Multiverse of Insanity and gained recent depth with the premiere of creator Jac Schaeffer‘s Agatha All Along, a collection placing Wanda’s WandaVision antagonist, Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), within the driver’s seat. The revitalized curiosity is much more apropos contemplating how WandaVision, a venture Schaeffer additionally helmed, lastly solved the MCU’s scattershot method to Wanda by being the primary and solely venture to focus solely on her wealthy psyche. Along with her prospects as soon as once more seemingly in a creatively confused limbo, it is by no means been clearer {that a} movie bringing Wanda to the forefront may — and may — take comparable corrective and clarifying measures.
Wanda Maximoff All the time Will get Misplaced within the MCU’s Bigger Story
Admittedly, Wanda’s quick appearances post-Age of Ultron are ensemble options. Nevertheless, these movies’ incapability to discover the occasions that inspire her, not to mention flip her into an energetic contributor, sideline Wanda into an interesting however insubstantial presence — little greater than an motion determine who loses everyone she loves in a twisted loop. WandaVision, nonetheless, exists outdoors the necessities of establishing the following plot level. Free to be a personality research initially, the collection presents an unflinching, empathetic, and invigoratingly inventive portrait of Wanda’s trauma and the dark costs of extreme cumulative grief.
Consequently, Wanda emerges as a totally fleshed-out girl and one of many franchise’s most compelling and relatable figures; she will be able to nurse an agonized coronary heart and warp actuality with a flick of her hand. WandaVision holds her accountable for how her rage harms innocents however by no means makes a spectacle of her agony or reduces her plight to that of the simplistic “mad girl” stereotype. Moderately, Wanda leaves Westview after gaining some closure and embracing her identification in all its fractured components.
Regardless that WandaVision‘s final scene teases Wanda falling into the Darkhold’s corrupting clutches, Multiverse of Insanitycompromises the nuance WandaVision so studiously and retroactively applies. Seeing the Darkhold poison Wanda’s despair over time might need reworked her fall from grace right into a convincing tragedy as a substitute of middling narrative convenience. However Multiverse instantly catapulting Wanda from haunted heroine to callous antagonist permits no transitional respiratory room from somebody who frees Westview by sacrificing the family she created to a girl keen to slaughter an harmless teenage lady in her single-minded sorrow. But once more, Wanda strikes to the place Section 4’s plot tells her — a narrative that also hasn’t included an final function for her downfall or dying.
A Solo Scarlet Witch Film Can Restore ‘WandaVision’s Nuance
Whereas selling her new movie His Three Daughters on Dublin’s FM104 radio station, Olsen mirrored on her time within the function to this point:
“It’s a personality that I like going again to when there is a means to make use of her properly, and I feel I’ve been fortunate that after I began I used to be used properly inside
Age of Ultron.
After which,
I feel folks didn’t know what to do with me for a second there
.”
These feedback align with a few of Olsen’s earlier statements, like a Variety interview the place she expressed her reservations about enjoying out Multiverse‘s “repetitive” character beats as a substitute of constructing off the brand new alternatives WandaVision afforded. As for whether or not Wanda may authentically return underneath sure situations, Olsen not too long ago told Jimmy Kimmel Live: “We have to discover the neatest writers to determine how one can make this all make sense.”
The MCU’s strongest go well with has at all times been its character roster and the actors portraying them. Though Wanda is morally advanced, WandaVision proves that each one Marvel wants to interrupt its underutilization sample and satisfactorily unlock her depth is the extent of refined focus only found in side projects. It is a disgrace Wanda should redefine her title for the second time, however giving the Scarlet Witch her personal title can as soon as once more reduce away extraneous components and provides Wanda’s sides their applicable due. Flashbacks would possibly fill in Multiverse‘s gaps by depicting the Darkhold’s erosive grip, whereas the current timeline may see Wanda grapple with intense guilt, re-assemble her damaged items, and totally defy the Scarlet Witch prophecy. Hopefully, the constructive adjustments stick this time. The choice could be much more of a baffling misstep than her zig-zagging depiction: shedding the MCU’s (arguably) most powerful character, its main feminine presence, and a personality magnificently rendered by Olsen’s kinetic talents.
WandaVision is offered to stream on Disney+ within the U.S.
