Before heading over to the MCU, Wanda Maximoff was already a complicated figure. Daughter to Magneto, one of the most powerful mutants in the X-Men canon, she takes after her father.
With the ability to rewrite reality, Wanda’s instability becomes a problem. Unable to cope with the loss of her children, she snaps and creates a world of her own. This storyline is adapted loosely in Disney Plus’ most acclaimed Marvel series, WandaVision, following Vision’s (Paul Bettany) death in Avengers: Infinity War. And while this was one of the more intense moments that Elizabeth Olsen has portrayed in live-action, she has had many throughout her career as the Scarlet Witch.
1. Wanda Destroys Ultron
Wanda’s tragic love story with Vision is unfortunately not her first bout with heartache. After losing her parents at 10 years old, all she had was her twin brother, Pietro (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). The two had a close relationship that came to a heartbreaking end after he was shot to death in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Wanda wastes no time taking her revenge the only way she knows how. Rightly blaming the sentient robot for causing the death of her brother, she takes pleasure in ripping out his internet core with magic. This moment was the first time Wanda let grief overcome her spells, but certainly not the last.
2. Wanda Confronts Thanos
Many lives were lost during Avengers: Infinity War, but Wanda was most disturbed by losing her robot lover. In a last-ditch effort to stop Thanos (Josh Brolin) from eradicating half of all life, the Avengers plan on destroying the Mind Stone in Vision’s head. At first, they try to remove it safely, but they run out of time. Wanda is the only one strong enough to destroy the stone and must do it while it’s still attached to Vision. Unfortunately, it is all for naught as Thanos reverses time and gets the stone anyway.
The first thing that Wanda does after she returns from being Snapped is set her sights on Thanos. While everyone in Avengers: Endgame is trying to defeat him, Wanda is a little more heated. Telling Thanos that he took everything from her, she is much more vengeful than anyone else as she uses her powers against him.
3. The Confrontation With SWORD
For the first few episodes of WandaVision, the audience is as much in the dark as Vision. But after watching episodes that harken back to the golden age of television, viewers and Vision understand that Wanda is behind it. Suffering in grief from Vision’s death, she creates a reality where they can be together. The only problem is the government agency SWORD trying to liberate the normal citizens of Westview trapped in Wanda’s spell.
After they make the mistake of aiming an armed drone at Wanda, she approaches them on the outskirts of the city. This confrontation is the first instance when audiences see how insidious Wanda has become and how much she is willing to sacrifice just to keep her reality spinning.
4. Showdown With Agatha
Wanda certainly appears to be the villain of WandaVision, but that pales in comparison to the machinations of Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn). Willingly entering Wanda’s hex to observe her power, Agatha plots to take the magic of the Scarlet Witch herself. She throws Wanda curveballs like the Fox version of Pietro (Evan Peters) and uses her children against her. But in the final confrontation of the series, Wanda finally comes to terms with herself.
She understands that she has to let go of Vision and finally become the person she was meant to be. The power she expends to fight off Agatha is for once not powered by grief, but by Wanda herself. Telling Agatha that she is her own person, Wanda becomes the Scarlet Witch in earnest.
5. Everything in Multiverse of Madness
Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness takes Wanda’s emotional journey in WandaVision and turns it on its head. First appearing as an ally, Wanda quickly reveals herself to be the one intending to use America Chavez’s (Xochitl Gomez) universe jumping to her benefit. Intent on finding a universe where her children are still alive so she can be with them, she makes use of the Darkhold to put her black magic into play.
In the Multiverse of Madness is the most horror-inspired Marvel film and there is rarely a scene where Wanda is not contorting her body or turning other heroes into spaghetti. The Scarlet Witch is at her fiercest in this film, only at the end realizing the error of her ways and getting squashed to death.
