Why Scarlet Witch Is So Different In Doctor Strange 2 From WandaVision
Elizabeth Olsen has said that Scarlet Witch is a very different character in Doctor Strange 2 than she was in WandaVision. Let's take a look at why.
Elizabeth Olsen has said that Scarlet Witch is a very different character in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness than she was in WandaVision, and there are a few likely reasons why. First introduced to the MCU in 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, Wanda Maximoff spent several years on the sidelines before leaping into a starring role in Phase 4. It looks like Scarlet Witch will only become more important to the overarching story going forward, but how exactly that evolution will take shape remains to be seen.
In WandaVision, Wanda finally finds a moment of respite after years of personal loss and cosmic battles, though that opportunity only ends up triggering her built-up trauma. By the end of the show, Wanda manages to make peace with her grief and comes into her full power as the Scarlet Witch. Now that she’s risen up as one of the MCU’s most powerful characters, Wanda’s future could hold many surprises in store.
Scarlet Witch’s next onscreen adventure will be Doctor Strange 2, and according to Olsen, the film will show a very different Wanda than the one in WandaVision. That makes sense, as the character underwent a pretty serious transformation (both physically and emotionally) at the end of the Disney+ series. WandaVision is all about how her immense grief allowed her powers to control her, but by end of the finale, she was fully in control of her powers and learning more about them by the day. That personal empowerment is enough to justify a major character shift, but it isn’t the only reason Wanda will be very different in Doctor Strange 2, which is set to embrace the horror genre in the MCU.
In addition to her emotional growth and power increase, Scarlet Witch also enters a different kind of story at the end of WandaVision. Before, she was always responding to or running from something – her traumatic childhood, the death of Pietro, the events of Civil War, the death of Vision; the list goes on. But now, going into Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, she’s finally done running. Instead, she has a clear goal she’s moving toward – saving her children, by any means necessary.
Because the franchise mostly consists of action movies, individual character arcs in the MCU are often slow and incremental. But because of the deft writing and unique structure of WandaVision, Scarlet Witch has now been given one of the fullest and most compelling storylines in the entire series. It should be exciting to see how the character continues to grow in the multiple dimensions visited in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness and beyond.