Five years ago, Marvel Studios introduced perhaps one of its biggest MCU recons of all time by changing the Scarlet Witch's entire backstory. Elizabeth Olsen's spell-slinging supe had been a part of Marvel's interwoven on-screen canon for nearly half a decade by the time her solo series, WandaVision, came to be. In that time, fans had come to learn that the Avenger's superpowers were the result of Hydra experimentation.
Captured as a young girl along with her twin brother, Scarlet Witch's Marvel Studios story was one of personal tragedy, with the character essentially tortured into developing her powers rather than being born with them as other heroes were. However, WandaVision completely changed that, suggesting that more may have been going on under the hood before fans met her in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
WandaVision Episode 8 (which originally debuted on Disney+ on February 26, 2021), took fans back to the beginning for Olsen's comic book hero. The show's 48-minute penultimate episode recounted Wanda Maximoff's first true interaction with her powers, revealing that she had them all along, not just after her time within Hydra's ranks.
The episode sees Wanda captured and taken on a magical trip through time and space by the evil Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), where she is brought back to her Sakovian childhood home. It is there that fans get a glimpse of Wanda's former family life, how she came to love the TV classics, and, of course, a first look at her souped-up magical abilities.
After a devastating explosion levels the Maximoff house, a young Wanda is left scrambling through the rubble. As she and her brother, Pietro, take cover, another Stark Industries armament falls from the sky. While Wanda had always assumed this bomb was defective and just never went off, that is not necessarily the case. Agatha reveals to Wanda that she had actually used a probability hex at the time and did not know.
The flashback then jumps to the Hydra facility, where fans first find Wanda and Pietro in the Captain America: The Winter Soldier post-credit scene and then again in Avengers: Age of Ultron. In this scene, a younger Wanda comes into contact with Loki's Sceptre and the Mind Stone (assumed to be the source of the character's powers).
While other test subjects had died by simply touching the mind-altering Infinity Stone, Wanda did not. Instead, it opens her mind to her true capabilities, showing her a vision of the Scarlet Witch that lay dormant within her, not giving her powers, but amplifying the powers that, as Agatha put it in the episode, "would have otherwise died on the vine."
This is a marked change from what fans knew about the character's origins to this point. Previously, it was said that both Wanda and her brother actually gained their powers from contact with the Mind Stone, not that they already had them and the intergalactic ingot had simply awakened them.
WandaVision is now streaming in its entirety on Disney+. The hit Marvel television series is set to get a follow-up later this year with the release of the Paul Bettany-led VisionQuest. As for Wanda herself, in the MCU continuity, she remains in the ether, seemingly perishing in a battle with Benedict Cumberbatch's Doctor Strange in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
Scarlet Witch's MCU Future Addressed
Since not long after WandaVision's debut, fans have been asking what is next for the character in the MCU. Elizabeth Olsen's beloved spell-slinger has appeared in only one live-action project since then, as the central villain in 2022's Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Since then, silence.
The character is assumed dead after her battle with Benedict Cumberbatch's good doctor atop the snow-covered Mount Wundagore, but that does not necessarily mean she will never be heard from again in the super-powered franchise.
According to a recent report from insider Daniel Richtman, Marvel Studios is actively developing a Scarlet Witch movie for release sometime after 2027's Avengers: Secret Wars. This would see the character brought back to life, likely by diving into what she has been up to over the last few years in the on-screen comic canon.
This comes after numerous teases of the character's potential return from Olsen herself. The Scarlet Witch actress previously remarked that she would love to return, especially if it meant working with Agatha All Along star Aubrey Plaza.
She also has mentioned wanting to come back as a "gnarly" version of the classic Marvel character, but who is to say that particular request will actually come to pass:
"You know, when I think about my dream version [of Wanda], it’s like 50 years later, and I have white hair— such a big, massive white wig—and gnarly face of wrinkles doing like a Tracy Ullman thing. And I am just like a creature that they find. And that’s how I imagine Wanda’s next journey."
Perhaps, with VisionQuest on the horizon, fans will get some more answers about Wanda's status in the MCU, finally laying the path for what the character's franchise future will look like.
