Wanda Maximoff aka The Scarlet Witch made her small screen debut in several episodes of the 1966 animated Captain America series which was a part of the Marvel Super Heroes series which also featured Thor, Iron Man, Hulk and Sub-Mariner. The Avengers were frequent guest stars on Cap’s show, both the original team and the second team of which Wanda belonged. It would be another 30 years to her next appearance, again on a team, this one Force Works, which was a part of the Iron Man cartoon in the mid 90s.
It would then be nearly 20 more years till Wanda (and her brother Pietro) made their way to the big screen, appearing in a cameo at the end of Captain America The Winter Soldier before being featured in The Avengers Age Of Ultron as villains fighting the Avengers with the mad robot Ultron. It doesn’t take long, though, before Wanda and Pietro turn against the AI and join the Avengers in trying to stop him. Unfortunately Pietro is killed in battle. Wanda remains with the Avengers and appears in Captain America Civil War, Avengers Infinity War and Avengers Endgame. While many fans called Wanda the Scarlet Witch, she never adopts this name in the MCU films. However, Wanda and Vision become the first MCU heroes to get their own television series, WandaVision, and it is here that we finally get the origin of The Scarlet Witch
Episode 8 (“Previously On”)
Agatha is holding Wanda in her basement dungeon. Agatha is extremely interested in Wanda’s abilities and she is using Billy and Tommy as leverage to make Wanda take a trip down memory lane.
First stop: Sokovia when Wanda and Pietro were children. Hiding in their apartment with their parents while the streets outside are a war zone, they pass the time watching old American sitcoms. Wanda’s favorite is The Dick Van Dyke Show. Abruptly, their building is destroyed by an explosion and the parents are killed. Wanda and Pietro hide under a piece of furniture and a missile lands in front of them but does not explode. On the side of the missile it reads “Stark Industries”. Agatha literally pulls Wanda back from the flashback. She thinks Wanda used a “probability hex” to keep the missile from exploding. In the comics for many years the only way they explained the Scarlet Witch’s powers was by saying her hexes influenced probability fields. So, when she used her powers they would typically cause things that normally wouldn’t happen to happen….such as a rock slide or ceiling caving in.
Agatha says “What I see here is a baby witch, obsessed with sitcoms with years of therapy ahead of her. It doesn’t explain your recent hijinks. Where’d you get the big guns, Wanda?” Agatha takes Wanda next to when she was involved in the terrorist organization Hydra.
The Hydra scientists have Loki’s scepter and they ask Wanda to touch it even though no one has yet survived doing that. When Wanda touches the blue casing around the Infinity Stone it shatters in a burst of amber colored energy. In it she sees a vague shadowy figure. It’s unfortunate that Marvel didn’t bring back Aaron Taylor Johnson to play Pietro in these scenes. If the Infinity Stone–the Mind Gem–unlocked powers within Wanda, then how did Pietro get his powers?
Agatha is building her theory but needs more info. For that, Wanda is taken next to Avengers Compound in a time that appears to take place right after Avengers Age of Ultron, the first home she and Vision shared. This occurs before their relationship began. Wanda is deeply mourning the death of her brother. She is tired and worn from being knocked down again and again. Vision comes into her room by phasing through the wall. He wants to comfort her but lacks the human experience…he has “never lost someone he loved”. He tells Wanda “What is grief, if not love persevering?” Heavy stuff from a synthetic man only a few weeks old. He lets out a chuckle watching The Brady Bunch with Wanda.
Agatha is still trying to grasp Wanda’s abilities, how she has accomplished what she has done. Parents dead. Brother dead. Vision dead. Wanda wanted Vision back. So the next memory reveal is of Wanda entering S.W.O.R.D. Headquarters…very calmly. She tries to reason with the man at the front desk. All she wants is a funeral for Vision. She is allowed to go inside and instead of buzzing her in, she uses her power to open the door. Get where I’m going? All of this is, of course, being videotaped. A video Hayward showed Monica and Darcy was edited and did not depict the way things really happened. Hayward makes it look like Wanda violently broke into S.W.O.R.D. and stole Vision’s body. Wanda heads down the corridors and enters the office of S.W.O.R.D. Director Tyler Hayward. Hayward takes Wanda to a balcony overlooking a science lab.
And in a scene taken right from West Coast Avengers, Wanda looks down and sees Vision…in pieces parts all over the lab, dismantled, an arm on a table, a scientist working on Vision’s severed head on a tray. The scientists are disassembling “the most sophisticated sentient weapon ever made” (Hayward). Wanda is only being allowed to say good bye here, they won’t allow her to take 3 billion dollars worth of vibranium and bury it in the ground. Hayward angers Wanda further after she says he’s all she has and Hayward says he isn’t hers.
So Wanda shatters the glass and floats down to the lab. Guns are pointed at her but she just quietly walks around the lab looking at the pieces of what’s left of the one she loved. She touches Vision’s lifeless head. “I can’t feel you” she says softly. Then she quietly exits the facility and dives off…ultimately coming to a stop in a town called Westview. A very quaint little town. She drives to an empty lot and gets out and stands there. She opens up an envelope and looks at the deed inside. There is a heart drawn on the deed and inside the heart it says “to grow old in-V”. This is where Vision intended to build a house for them to live in far away from the crazy life of super heroes.
Wanda begins to cry…then bursts forth with the full might of her power, creating a house on the lot and over-writing the whole town of Westview. With a full concentration of her hex ability, Wanda remakes Vision and then everything turns monochrome. Wanda now stands watching herself and Vision right there…on a stage. A clapping breaks the illusion and she is alone.
She hears the screams of her children and runs outside only to see Agatha floating in the air with her purple magic tendrils wrapped around the necks of Billy and Tommy like a leash.
Agatha: “I know what you are. You have no idea how dangerous you are. You’re supposed to be a myth. A being capable of spontaneous creation and here you are using it to make breakfast for dinner. Vision and the whole little life you’ve made…this is Chaos Magic, Wanda. And that makes you…the Scarlet Witch.”
After credits scene: S.W.O.R.D. Base, outside Westview…using some residual hex energy from the drone Wanda returned to them, S.W.O.R.D. is about to reactivate the ghostly white body of The Vision.
The finale of WandaVision picks up with Wanda confronted by Agatha Harkness who has her children. Once Wanda frees the kids she goes after Agatha who is absorbing every hex bolt Wanda throws at her. Wanda manages to temporarily sideline Agatha by tossing a car at her. When she turns around she sees a ghostly white Vision walking towards her…Hayward’s Vision…who then tries to crush Wanda’s skull until Westview Vision stops him. The Finale is a Big Battle episode. It’s Wanda vs Agatha, Vision vs White Vision, and Hayward vs Wanda and Vision and their kids.
When Agatha brings the fight to Westview’s town square she informs Wanda that there is a whole chapter devoted to her in The Darkhold (Marvel’s version of the Necronomicon). “The Scarlet Witch is not born, she is forged” Agatha recites. “She has no coven, no need for incantations. Your power exceeds that of the Sorcerer Supreme.” Agatha releases the town’s folk from Wanda’s spell and they all come walking up to her and begging her to let them go. Elsewhere, Monica is being held prisoner by Fake Pietro to keep her out of the fight. But she uncovers his real identity is Ralph Bohner, an actor, and severs his tie to Agatha.
Moved by the Westview residents pleas, Wanda attempts to open the Hex Barrier for them to escape. It’s a monumental effort for her as her powers have been weakened by Agatha. But she does manage to create some openings and Hayward uses this as a chance to get his S.W.O.R.D. team inside. But when Wanda sees what the effect of opening the barrier does to Vision, Billy and Tommy she closes it once again.
Wanda and Agatha take their battle to the skies above Westview while Monica, Vision and the twins watch below. White Vision attacks and he and Vision take their battle crashing into a building. Billy and Tommy disarm the S.W.O.R.D. team but Hayward steps up and takes a shot at the boys who Monica steps in front of in an act of sacrifice. But she isn’t killed when the bullets strike her, instead her body turns into some kind of energy which the bullets pass through and drop to the ground. She misses one bullet though but Billy easily freezes it in mid air.
Wanda fires a barrage of hex bolts at Agatha who just cackles and absorbs the power. Wanda is weakening fast, her face and hands taking on a corpse like look. Then Agatha turns to fire on Wanda and nothing happens. Zip. Wanda reminds Agatha of what Agatha told her in her dungeon. When runes are on the wall, only the witch who cast them may use their magic. Wanda reveals she has placed runes on the walls of her Hex Barrier.
White Vision tells Vision he is programmed to kill The Vision. But Vision proposes that White Vision is the real Vision. Then he asks White Vision for permission to share his thoughts with him. He touches White Vision’s head and floods him with all of Vision’s memories…from being created by The Avengers and Ultron to being killed by Thanos to his life in Westview. White Vision decides to leave so he can ponder on these new thoughts.
Wanda drains Agatha of all the power she took from Wanda. Wanda transforms into The Scarlet Witch complete with a really awesome new costume that stays true to her comic book counterpart while updating it from what Wanda wore on Halloween.
The Scarlet Witch shows mercy on Agatha. She turns Agatha back into Agnes so she can live out her days as the nosey neighbor of Westview. Darcy, meanwhile, arrives and stops Hayward by pinning him against her van. “Have fun in prison!” she yells to him.
The Scarlet Witch returns to Vision and her children. They all know it’s time for the barrier to come down. As it begins to collapse, the family walks home. Vision and Wanda put the kids to bed. This is where I began crying. I knew what was about to happen. This isn’t what I wanted to see happen but I fully understand the creator’s choice. But I couldn’t help thinking, why couldn’t they just merge Vision and White Vision so we could get him back again? Downstairs, Wanda and Vision say their final good byes. I am falling apart at this point screaming “No!” This is so heart breaking. Just thinking back to it I can feel tears wanting to come out. Vision and the Scarlet Witch have been my favorite comic book couple since I was a kid. It’s part of why I stopped collecting comic books when “Avengers Disassembled” came out. It was a horrible way to destroy the Avengers, a comic that drew me into Marvel for 4 decades. After what they did in the comic I decided it was time to get out myself.
As the barrier recession reaches their house, Wanda and Vision hold onto each other, sharing a love like no other. Then he is gone. The house is gone. And Wanda finds herself once more standing on the empty lot where she and Vision were supposed to live happily ever after. Wanda then leaves town, saying good bye to Monica and apologizing for what she did to her. Then, the Scarlet Witch flies away.
In the after credits scene of the WandaVision finale we see Wanda has gone off to a secluded cabin in the woods. Wanda is floating in the air going through the Darkhold page by page. Then we hear the ethereal voices of her two children Billy and Tommy crying out to her.
Will Wanda find her lost kids? Will she master the Darkhold? Why has Dr Strange sought her out? These answers and more await in Dr Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness opening this Friday May 6, 2022. ‘Nuff said!