Scarlet Witch deserves better than life as a convenient MCU plot device

A new fan theory suggests Scarlet Witch will become the next big villain of the MCU, but Wanda Maximoff deserves better than life as a plot device.

Very little is known about Marvel’s plans for Phase 4 of its ridiculously successful film universe. We know the lineup of films that are headed our way, but not much about how they will all tie together, or how the new slate of Disney+ television projects will affect what we see on the big screen. One of the projects we know least about is WandaVision, a series that will someone reunite Elisabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany as Scarlet Witch and the Vision, despite the fact that the latter died (twice!) in Avengers: Infinity War.

A popular fan theory suggests that WandaVision will somehow be the MCU’s version of classic comics saga House of M, a story in which Scarlet Witch breaks and remakes reality as a method of coping with an unimaginable loss. (Sound familiar? Yeah.) But another theory takes this idea even further, arguing that Wanda’s pain will not only drive the plot of WandaVision, but ultimately cause her to become the villain of Marvel’s next stage of films, ripping apart and altering the MCU we now know.

This idea claims that since reports indicate the plot of sequel film Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness will arise directly from the events of WandaVision that it’s actually Scarlet Witch herself who will create said multiverse in her attempts to resurrect Vision, an act that could have widespread consequences, including the (contractually mandated) erasure of Spider-Man from the MCU or the introduction of mutants (hello, X-Men!) to the Marvel film world.

These ideas all make sense, on paper, but from a character perspective, this twist is pretty much garbage. Because Wanda Maximoff deserves better than being driven mad to fuel other characters’ stories.

The MCU, as a whole, has never really wanted to deal with any of Wanda’s various traumas up until this point. (And there are a lot of them.) So it feels pretty darn convenient that the folks in charge suddenly want to start paying attention to her various internal traumas now, in order to set-up a Stephen Strange movie.

On some level, yes, it’s good that the the MCU will finally pay attention to Wanda and the fallout from everything that’s happened to her. For all that she’s demonstrably the most powerful Avenger – save perhaps, possibly, Carol Danvers – we know comparatively little about her. Her motivations have gone relatively unexplored, and despite all her world-changing abilities, she’s had comparatively little agency when compared to other characters in the saga. (Particularly and especially the men.)

Wanda’s suffered tremendous losses, more probably than any other MCU character. Tony’s weapons killed her parents and ruined her country. His pet project Ultron murdered her brother. She’s basically the reason the Sokovia Accords were written, and as a result she lived for two years on the run. None of the Marvel films to date have even remotely addressed how all of this has affected her, or how she’s lived with all these losses.

And that was before she had to kill the man she loved to save the world. Twice.

Of course Wanda is probably broken in ways she doesn’t even understand yet. But there are other ways to tell that story that don’t involve making Scarlet Witch a villain, and don’t necessitate mining her pain for the benefit of other people.

We absolutely deserve to see a real story about Scarlet Witch, and how her character has grown and changed from her first post-credits appearance up to now. But that story needs to be told about her, and not how it affects others. Making her a villain isn’t the same thing as actually addressing the things that have happened to her, and shouldn’t be seen as a method of “telling her story”.

Maybe Wanda will break reality. Or resurrect Vision. Or kill thousands trying to process her grief. But Marvel needs to show us why that happens, and how her decisions are rooted in her character, and not just what they need the plot of the larger universe to do.

WandaVision will debut on Disney+ at some point in the spring of 2021, and Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness hits theaters on May 7, 2021.