If you’ve revisited some of Scarlet Witch’s earlier MCU appearance since the two-part premiere of WandaVision debuted on Disney Plus last week, you might’ve been reminded about a weird mystery to do with the character: what the heck happened to her natural accent? She has it when she’s introduced in Avengers: Age of Ultron, which established that her and brother Pietro are from the fictional Eastern European country of Sokovia, but by Avengers: Infinity War, Wanda Maximoff was depicted as speaking with an American accent at all times.
While chatting to Collider, actress Elizabeth Olsen was asked about this and took a moment to formulate an answer, but went on to explain that the Sokovian accent was a struggle to maintain and keep consistent, so that’s why it was phased out. But at the same time, Olsen believes it makes sense within Wanda’s character arc. What’s more, she stressed that the heroine’s accent has not disappeared forever.
“The Sokovia accent was created by me and Aaron and our dialect coach because it’s a fake country and we could find different sources of Slavic sounds. And we wanted to make sure it didn’t sound Russian because Black Widow speaks Russian, and so we just needed to sound more like Slovakian. So we created these sound changes that worked for Aaron’s British accent going to Slovakia basically and my American accent so that we sounded related. And then all of a sudden, all these different characters had to speak it in different films. [Laughs] So the Sokovian accent took a lot of time. It hasn’t gone anywhere. There have been reasons for everything. It lightened up when she started living in the States, and in WandaVision she is playing the role of being in an American sitcom and so it’s not gone. It is absolutely still there.”
Directors the Russo brothers previously offered their own explanation for Scarlet Witch’s changing voice when Infinity War came out. The filmmakers said that Black Widow, who had already trained herself to ditch her Russian accent to be a better spy, had taught Wanda how to lose her own accent once she joined the Avengers, and especially when they all became fugitives after Captain America: Civil War.
Olsen suggests, though, that the Sokovian accent could make a return, possibly in WandaVision. Maybe a stranger explanation for Wanda’s new US vocal patterns will be revealed over the course of the season. After all, the series certainly suggests that her and Vision’s reality is being manipulated by a very powerful force.