Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness might have Stephen Strange’s name in the title, but in many ways it’s more integral as a part of Scarlet Witch’s MCU journey. In fact, it could be said that it represents the apex of everything the franchise has been doing with the character to date, as it finally sees Wanda Maximoff go off the deep-end and become the apocalyptically powerful villain comic book readers knew she was destined to be.
Seeing Wanda fully break bad came as a shock to a lot of folks, especially after she was the hero of last year’s smash-hit WandaVision. However, it turns out that we really shouldn’t have been surprised by the movie’s twists as star Elizabeth Olsen accurately predicted the plot of Doctor Strange 2 in a resurfaced interview from way back in 2015.
In this dusted-off segment from the Avengers: Age of Ultron press tour, Olsen is asked where she wants Wanda to go next. Hilariously, the actress proceeds to outline exactly what happens to her character in DS2 — but then dismiss it as “too dark” to ever actually occur in the MCU! Here’s Olsen’s reply:
“I mean, my favorite is House of M, but that would never happen… If she could have two fake babies and everyone tell her that they don’t really exist and then her just go nuts, that would be unbelievable. But I don’t think they’re gonna do that [laughs]. That might be a little too dark for the Marvel universe. When she loses her mind is my favorite thing in the comics.”
This is a pretty uncanny response from Olsen as she could’ve highlighted the many other elements from House of M that have yet to be adapted for the screen, like Wanda’s iconic “No more mutants” line, but instead she picked out the exact parts that were lifted almost verbatim from the page for DS2. Strange even repeatedly tells Wanda that her children aren’t real, just as Olsen predicts here.
The star’s assertion that such a plotline could never play out in the MCU, though, just goes to show how the franchise has got more dramatically robust since its first couple of phases. Doctor Strange 2 is certainly the darkest Marvel offering yet, what with its many horror-esque moments. But is Olsen’s accurate guess just a coincidence or did Kevin Feige pinch the idea from her? We’ll never know.
