‘I‘m still so mad that they took this from us’: Wanda Maximoff almost served another ‘Endgame’ showstopper before Marvel went ‘snip snip’

What more can possibly be said about Avengers: Endgame — the film, the feat, and the cultural event — that hasn’t already been repeated ad nauseam? It was at once one of the most remarkable accomplishments in cinema that the quartet of Anthony Russo, Joe Russo, Christopher Markus, and Stephen McFeely managed to tie together over a decades’ worth of compartmentalized worldbuilding, creating not only a sensational hurrah, but also a series of satisfying ends to now-timeless character arcs.

And that was just the theatrical cut; who knows what other bits and pieces of this climax never saw the light of day? Well, we now know one of them, and the response will probably put off any further leaks in the future.

It’s not because the cut scene was bad, oh no, quite the opposite. As you can see in the clip above, there was a version of this film that included a moment where Wanda Maximoff — newly undisintegrated and out for Thanos’ blood — touched down on the battlefield before giving a chilling head tilt at the sight of the Mad Titan.

It very much gave the horror movie stylings Sam Raimi would eventually use to carry Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness as far as it did, and it’s because Elizabeth Olsen sells the moment as well as she does that fans are up in arms about only just seeing it now.

Others took it a step further by declaring their love/grief for Wanda as a character, who had a rather morbid cameo in the first episode of Agatha All Along (one that we would, however, probably be wise to not take at face value).

Exactly what the future holds for the Scarlet Witch is anyone’s guess. Some rock-solid rumors about a Scarlet Witch solo film are exciting enough, but it’s hard to ignore how many reparations Marvel needs to make with this character at this point. Multiverse of Madness jumbled her arc pretty severely, and given how immensely powerful of a character she is, Marvel would be remiss to not have a major role for her to play as we barrel toward Avengers: Secret Wars (for those of you familiar with the comics, she could very well step into Molecule Man’s shoes in this iteration of the storyline).

And if she’s going to be that prominent in the saga’s overarching narrative, it’s only logical that we should have some idea of where she stands as a character, which a well-executed Scarlet Witch film could accomplish (complete, perhaps, with a menacing head tilt that we should have gotten back in 2019). Here’s hoping, then, that Wanda’s future is indeed a bright one, because lord knows she and everyone else needs it.