A common complaint about Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is that it completely undercuts Wanda’s arc in WandaVision, and indeed the entirety of the Disney+ show. As a major WandaVision fan (I still regard it as head and shoulders the best Marvel television oꩲffering), I find this idea perplexing, and people seem to 𒐪have confused liking Wanda as a character with her being a good person.
Wanda is (was?) one of my favourite characters in the MCU, but that’s what makes her such a perfect villain. Bad guys who are bad for the hell of it, or who have contrived, plot-centric reasons to be the antagonist, always fall fla✨t. Killﷺmonger is such a memorable hero because he is largely justified in his stance, if not in all of his actions. Wanda just wants to be a mother, and that’s something we can all get behind - it’s in the way she carries out her plan that sees her shift from sympathetic hero to unsympathetic villain.
To fully understand her journey in WandaVision, we have to go back to Avengers: Infinity War. Despite being the strongest Avenger (Multiverse of Madness seemingly answers the question of Wanda vs. Captain Marvel in her favour), Wanda spends most of Infinity War on the bench. This is all in her quest to protect Vision, which eventually results in her having to perform torturous 🐠surgery on her husband, without anaesth♌etic, to remove the Mind Stone from his head. The operation is extremely painful and done in the heat of battle.
Then, thanks to the Time Stone Doctor Strange willingly gives Thanos as part of a long-term game so that it all lines up for Iron M💧an’s Endgame snap, Thanos rewinds time. Vision experiences the same painful surgery in reverse while Wanda watches, help🥂less, then Thanos rips the Mind Stone out, killing him. There is no debate about these facts, but it is important to understand a) how severe Wanda’s trauma is and b) that Strange is to blame. It probably doesn’t help that, unlike Tony, Natasha, and Steve, the latter of whom gets a happy ending anyway, Vision does not appear to be widely remembered as a fallen hero.
Enter WandaVision. In it, Wanda constructs a fake reality and forces an entire town to play the part of extras in her sitcom fantasies as she plays happy families with Vision, right down to raising her two boys. She eventually realises what she’s doing and sets the town free, repenting and becoming the good guy again. At least, that’s how everyone seems to remember it. But that’s not what is happening. Instead, Wanda is very happy to continue living out this fantasy; it’s only when she discovers it was Agatཧha All Along that her plans change.
She does free everyone, true, but she also locks Agatha into a cruel fate worse than death, brainwashing her enemy in a very unheroic way. She also faces zero consequences for any of the massive psychological torture she has inflicted on an entire town of people. She shows no real contrition or guilt beyond immediately letting them go. It’s easy to forget with Elizabeth Olsen’s public persona being so bright and bubbly, but Wanda is a horrible person. At the time, the WandaVision e♍nding annoyed me as it felt like she had gotten awaꦅy with it and would be folded into the Avengers line-up again like nothing had happened. Now that Marvel has admitted she is a villain (even if some viewers won’t), 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the ending makes more sense.
Wanda’s arc in WandaVision was not to stare into the abyss and learn from it, turning into the better, stronger, nicer hero some of us want her to be. It was a descent. The🍎 final scene of WandaVision shows her in isolation out in the wilderness, to all outside appearances living a peaceful, solitary life - but in reality still practising witchcraft and reading the Darkhold, sear🌸ching desperately for Tommy and Billy.
Her motivations (w🐟anting to be a mother) align with the good person she sees herself as. Her actions (violently killing all who stand in her way and possessing her sweeter, kinder, alternate selves) align with the bad person she is. If you think this is out of character, you have been tricked by her. Wanda was a bad person at the start of Wand✃aVision and she’s still a bad person at the end. We just don’t see her inflict this onto anyone of note until Multiverse of Madness.
