Scarlet Witch acolytes who were convinced that Wanda Maximoff wasn’t dead — despite Agatha All Along trying to convince us otherwise — your faith has paid off. Marvel has finally revealed the truth about what happened to the sorceress following her apparent demise in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and the full story appears much more complicated — and may just tease her return in next year’s Avengers: Doomsday.
Despite appearing in two of Phase Four’s most popular projects, Elizabeth Olsen’s (anti-)heroine hasn’t turned out to be as major a figure of the Multiverse Saga as we expected. Needless to say, the makers of MoM face flak for that on social media daily, as executing such a powerful and influential character is widely regarded as the movie’s biggest mistake (and this is a film that killed off John Kransinski’s Reed Richards after five minutes!). Luckily, it now appears that Wanda isn’t dead, after all. Everybody, thank the TVA!
The MCU’s Scarlet Witch is confirmed to be alive (we think…)
The TVA has captured the Scarlet Witch in ‘TVA’ Issue #3
— Austin Medeiros (@Austin_Medzz) February 26, 2025
The comic book series is canon to the MCU and may have just revealed how Wanda Maximoff survived the events of Multiverse of Madness pic.twitter.com/d8zUfrr4ej
In a bizarre twist, the true fate of the MCU’s Scarlet Witch has been revealed not in a Marvel Studios project but in the pages of a Marvel comic. The ongoing TVA comic book series is a neat blend of MCU continuity and the unlimited potential of the comics medium, as it follows the Time Variance Authority after the events of Loki. Along with appearances from familiar characters like Mobius, Sylvie, and Hunter B-15, TVA focuses on the organization’s Research & Advancements Department, staffed by such multiversal variants as Spider-Gwen/Ghost Spider, Captain Carter, and Gambit.
In TVA #3, a psychological sickness known as the Madness is sweeping the multiverse, and in order to find the culprit, Gwen retraces the walk she took through the TVA in a hallucinatory dream. This leads her to discover the forgotten Department of Deferment in the TVA’s bowels. On the comic’s jaw-dropping final page, the department is revealed to house the MCU’s Wanda in stasis (see above). Note the identical character design to the Scarlet Witch’s MoM look!
Given this Wanda’s identical resemblance to the MCU character and the fact that writer Katharyn Blair is an MCU veteran herself — having written for the Loki TV series — there surely is no other way to take this than as an in-canon confirmation that reports of the witch’s death have been greatly exaggerated. In reality, the TVA must’ve removed her from the timeline before she could be crushed by the collapsing Mount Wundagore. Just in case you were in any doubt, artist Pere Pérez confirmed in an Instagram comment that this is indeed Olsen’s Scarlet Witch variant.
Marvel Comics artist Pere Pérez confirms that the Scarlet Witch in the TVA comic is indeed Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda! pic.twitter.com/sH4jpaYq1A
— MCU Film News (@MCUFilmNews) February 27, 2025
After Deadpool & Wolverine reaffirmed the TVA’s importance to the ongoing narrative of the Multiverse Saga, it’s not a stretch to imagine them returning for Doomsday. And now it’s not hard to imagine how the TVA could reintroduce Wanda onto the Avengers’ roster in that same film. Maybe Mobius warns the heroes that Doctor Doom is coming and they need to accept Wanda back on their team in order to defeat him?
TVA #3 is on sale now, with issue four coming in March before the five-part series reaches its conclusion on April 30.
Published: Feb 27, 2025 8:25 PM UTC