For anyone upset about the Scarlet Witch’s treatment in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, it turns out that Elizabeth Olsen is just as surprised at Wanda becoming the villain in the 2022 Marvel Cinematic Universe movie.
The saga of Wanda Maximoff in the MCU has been, to say the least, interesting. It started in Avengers: Age of Ultron as she and her brother Pietro (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson) were given powers by Hydra and briefly aligned with Ultron. They turned on him when they discovered his plans to destroy humanity and joined the Avengers, although Pietro tragically died in the battle.
Wanda would continue with the Avengers before her powers caused a disaster that led to the events of Captain America: Civil War. She would work with Captain America’s side even while maintaining a relationship with the Vision (Paul Bettany), who was on Iron Man's side in the film.
Avengers: Infinity War would be a double blow to Wanda as she had to kill the Vision to save the Mind Stone, and was then turned to dust. WandaVision showed the character overcome with grief over all this and using her Hex powers to create a world where she and the Vision could be happy.
That ended with Wanda seemingly in a better place as she was honing her powers and hoping to find a way to recover her sons, Billy and Tommy, from limbo. Fans expected her to step it up in Multiverse of Madness.
Instead, Multiverse threw the twist that Wanda was the villain of the film, trying to capture America Chavez and use her powers to enter other realities to save her kids. That had Wanda on a rampage, wiping out the Illuminati before the Scarlet Witch seemingly died.
Many fans were taken aback at this sudden heel turn from Wanda. As it turns out, no one was more surprised than Olsen herself!
Elizabeth Olsen was as surprised as the fans to learn that Wanda would be the villain of Doctor Strange 2
At the L.A. Comic Con, Olsen revealed that she didn’t know about Wanda’s status as the main villain of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness until literally just before filming it.
“I thought that I was in an ensemble cast, and I thought that I was one of the good guys. And then three weeks before I was sent to London, they said, 'You're our lead villain!' And I had no clue. And I finished filming WandaVision, I was like, 'Huh, it would've been helpful to know that,' just so I could have pulled the thread through a bit. But I think that the story told itself, and I was able to kind of massage things in Doctor Strange to hopefully tell a different story for her."
This has resulted in fans revisiting the debate about the character's treatment in the 2022 movie. Many of them have noted that there does seem to be a disconnect between the Doctor Strange sequel and WandaVision writers in terms of where Wanda’s story was going. There were various issues involving the production of the 2022 movie, with the challenges of filming during the pandemic and shifts in the MCU schedule. It made some sense that Wanda’s grief and longing for her lost family would drive her to extreme measures.
However, the way it was handled was taken poorly by fans as the sudden turn seemed to come out of nowhere with little buildup. It also seemed a disservice to Wanda that, after all she’d been through over the movies, she was turned evil and then seemingly killed off. It was, without question, a terrible fate for the character.
As Olsen says, had she known about this being the plan, she could have adjusted her performance in WandaVision to hint at it. She could have shown how Wanda wanted this fake family so badly that she would do anything to save them and the movie could have built on it. Instead, the Wanda in Multiverse of Madness seemed a completely different person than the one in WandaVision and despite Olsen’s convincing performance, it just didn’t connect with fans - particularly because it felt like a poorer rehahs of her WandaVision arc.
While there are some hopes for a return like other MCU characters, the fact that Olsen herself didn’t seem to trust Wanda’s villainous turn is another reason the character arc is so unpopular. Fans are still holding out hope that she could return in a future project (Avengers: Doomsday or Avengers: Secret Wars perhaps?) and, after WandaVision spinoff Agatha All Along made the character's fate much less definitive, that could very well happen at some point in the MCU's future indeed.
WandaVision and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness are streaming on Disney+.