I have been bummed by how much Marvel has failed to handle Wanda Maximoff’s character in Multiverse of Madness. They abandoned all character growth she had in WandaVision just so they could have a villain. So I came up with a better way of how Wanda could’ve been handled in the MCU. She retains all the things she learned in WandaVision while still going on a path of villainy as her character so deserved.
WandaVision
Everything remains the same in this TV series. The show focuses on the life of Wanda Maximoff and the true origins of her power. She first encounters the Darkhold as it is used by Agatha Harkness to hijack her hex.
In this TV series, Wanda Maximoff accidentally creates an anomaly where she traps the town of Westview in different episodes of WandaVision, a sitcom where she lives her fantasy life with Vision and their twin sons Billy and Tommy. Agatha Harkness, a dark witch whose powers is absorbing other witches’ magic, hijacks this hex to try and siphon Wanda’s power for herself. Using the Darkhold and its prophecies, Agatha tries to coax Wanda into showing her full potential as the prophesied Scarlet Witch, whose destiny is to destroy the world. Agatha fails to absorb Wanda the Scarlet Witch’s powers. Instead, Wanda absorbs Agatha’s powers and puts a hex on her mind to eternally live as the WandaVision character Agnes the nosy neighbor, a character that Agatha created herself. Wanda puts the hex down, erasing both Vision and their twin sons from reality. She vows to learn about her powers and how to use it for good.
As written, nothing much will change with WandaVision. Everything is exactly the same except the post-credits scene where Wanda is shown to be astral projecting while reading the Darkhold. In this new version, Wanda is tending to her garden of apple trees. These are real trees, and part of Wanda trying to lay low as she is trying to learn about her powers. She suddenly hears the cries and screams for help of her nonexistent children inside her cabin. Wanda runs back inside to see what it was about, only to find the Darkhold floating and opening to the page where it prophesies about the Scarlet Witch. Finally, Wanda’s eyes are shown to glow red.
This film will be very different from what we got. Instead of Wanda, the main villain of this film will be Nightmare, as is the original plan. This will also come out after Spider-Man: No Way Home. In this film, Doctor Strange will mainly deal with the consequences of the multiverse being opened. The concept of incursions will be introduced by Mordo, who has now come back to the sorcerers’ help, in what he calls “a time of crisis.” This crisis, Mordo says, is the incursion between their universe and two other universes, that is, the universes where both Toby Maguire’s and Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Men came from. Left unattended, these universes would annihilate each other.
Wanda, who has now allied with the Sorcerer Supreme Wong in order to learn more about her powers, joins forces with him and Doctor Strange to close the voids between the universes that opened. In closing one of the voids, a creature called Nightmare seeps in from the Nightmare Dimension. He eats on the heroes’ biggest fears. Doctor Strange relives a nightmare involving the death of his sister when they were kids. Wong lives a nightmare where the events of the original Multiverse of Madness happened, that is, the one where the Scarlet Witch attacked the Kamar Taj. Wanda is able to resist the power of Nightmare, while Mordo is taken away by Nightmare.
By the end of the film, Mordo sides with Nightmare, but Doctor Strange convinces him to side back with them. In a full circle moment, Mordo goes against his moral inclinations, just as the Ancient One did, and used the power of the Nightmare Dimension to suppress Nightmare. Doctor Strange successfully sends Nightmare back to the void he came out of but Mordo gets killed in the process. Meanwhile, Wong and Wanda close the last of the voids, but the incursions have begun. In a last ditch attempt to fix everything, Wanda takes out the Darkhold and uses one of its spells to reverse the incursion and close the void. Wong takes Wanda back to Kamar Taj to try and reverse the corruption brought about by the Darkhold, to which Wanda seemingly responds positively.
In the post-credits scene, we see Wanda coming back to her apple garden and her cabin. She opens the door of the cabin and we see Vision in the exact attire he was wearing in the third episode of WandaVision, but he is wearing an apron and says he is cooking dinner for the both of them. The camera pans to Wanda in the same outfit she was wearing in that same WandaVision episode. The camera reveals that she is pregnant. The camera zooms into the cabin’s door knob; as Wanda closes the door, her fingers are shown to have the corrupted color we know the Darkhold does. Camera zooms out from inside the house outward, going through the door’s glass to show the entire cabin that has now transformed into the same house from WandaVision episode 3. The line “we’ll say hello again” from the finale of WandaVision echoes throughout the scene. As the camera zooms out, Wanda’s eyes glow red. She has now become fully corrupted by the Darkhold.
This TV series focuses on Agatha Harkness walking the Witches’ Road and building her own coven after successfully crawling out of Wanda’s hex. A lot of Agatha’s past is also explored, as well as the stories of each of her coven’s members. She successfully does so. Interestingly, Teen, played by Joe Locke, is later revealed to be Billy Kaplan, whose parents are both dead. In their adventures walking the Witches’ Road, Agatha decides to fortify herself against all mental spells, fearing that another Agnes situation could happen to her again.
In the end credits scene of the last episode, Agatha arrives at her coven’s headquarters. She finds everyone unconscious, except Teen, whose eyes are now glowing blue. Agatha tries to wake him up, but to no avail. Teen starts walking outside, and Agatha follows her to the city. Here, Agatha finds everyone in the city in all manners of costume, living life in a fictional world. She turns to Teen to try and wake him up again and ask him what was happening. Teen’s eyes that were glowing with blue magic now turns into red. The scene ends with Agatha saying “Not again!”
This is the first Avengers film after Endgame, and its main villain is rightfully Wanda. It picks up immediately where the end credits scene of Agatha All Along ends. In this film, Agatha reveals that Wanda has created a new hex, similar to the one she did in WandaVision. Only this time, Wanda intends to expand this hex to cover the entire planet. Wong reveals to Agatha that Wanda used the Darkhold, but Agatha explains that although they tried to reverse it, the Darkhold’s corruption is irreversible unless the Darkhold is destroyed. Doctor Strange asks for the help of Captain America, and together they assemble a new team of Avengers. This team includes Doctor Strange, Captain America, the new Falcon, Captain Marvel, the new Black Panther, and Shang-Chi.
The film also features Teen, and introduces Thomas Shepherd, an innocent bystander of the same age as Teen. The Avengers find out that Wanda is planning to implant her twin sons’ souls into these two kids in order to preserve them outside the hex. Doctor Strange, Agatha, Captain America, Falcon, and Shang-chi all try to stop Wanda. The fight continues, which incapacitates the Falcon and Shang-Chi. As the fight goes on, Agatha makes the most important decision of her life and destroys the Darkhold. She is incapacitated by the power that escaped the Darkhold, but she doesn’t die.
Wanda takes the twins to Kamar Taj to get Wong. The scene from the original Multiverse of Madness where Wanda destroys Kamar Taj also happens in this film. Wanda incapacitates Doctor Strange and Captain Marvel, taking them both as hostage so Wong would talk about the original copy of the Darkhold. Wong reveals it to be Mount Wundagore. Wanda takes him along with the twins to finalize the spell of soul implantation.
Soon after, the Avengers follow to save Wong. Wanda successfully implants her sons’ souls on the kids, but it backfires. Out comes the resurrected Chthon. Realizing her mistake, Wanda sides with The Avengers and asks for their help in suppressing the demon. In a last resort, Wanda pushes everyone out of Wundagore and destroys the mountain itself, killing Chthon and herself in the process.
In the end credits scene, the hex is shown to slowly break down and everything goes back to normal. However, not everyone remained the same. Some people came out of the hex with amazing new abilities and powers. The age of mutants has begun.
In this TV series, the backstories of each of the Young Avengers are explored each episode as they prepare to fight a variant of Kang the Conqueror. The initial Young Avengers lineup are Wiccan (Billy Kaplan) whose powers got enhanced from Wanda’s hex, Speed (Thomas Shepherd) who emerged as a mutant from Wanda’s hex, Kate Bishop, Cassie Lang, Miss Marvel, Patriot (Eli Bradley), and Ironheart.
First episode details how the Young Avengers assembled. Nathaniel Richards arrives in the current year to stop himself from becoming Kang the Conqueror in this timeline. He introduces himself as Iron Lad. First episode ends with Wiccan introducing a new member of the lineup: America Chavez. Her origins are kept a mystery. Throughout the series, other Young Avengers notice the secret conversations Wiccan, Speed, and America Chavez have that exclude other members. In her episode, America Chavez’ story is explored, from her birth, as well as the death of both of her mothers when she first discovered her powers. However, nothing more than this is explored by the series. The series ends with the Young Avengers defeating a Kang variant from the future.
In the end credits scene of the final episode, Wiccan, Speed, and America Chavez are all forced to share their conversations with the Young Avengers. America Chavez reveals that the reason she got into this universe was because she was used and manipulated by a forceful entity from another universe who used her body to travel between universes. When asked who this entity was, America reveals that it was the Scarlet Witch.
I have always wanted Wanda to have a trilogy of her own before she’s sent off for good. Scarlet Witch in the Nexus of All Realities is the first film in this trilogy, and although it releases after the first season of the Young Avengers TV series, it happens before it. The film begins with America Chavez arriving at a different universe. She knocks at a door and asks the woman living in it if she was Wanda Maximoff. When she answers affirmatively, another Wanda Maximoff variant appears and kills her brutally. America opens a new portal, and both her and this evil Wanda variant enter.
This film shows Wanda emerging from the rubble of what used to be Wundagore, revealing that she didn’t actually die in the last Avengers film. Agatha and her wife Rio Vidal returns to Wundagore to retrieve Wanda as they see it their responsibility to make sure that the powers of the Scarlet Witch never harms anyone again. Agatha and Rio both recruit Wanda into their newly formed coven in order to teach her about her powers.
America Chavez arrives to Earth-616 and the evil Wanda variant that came with her attempts to kill Wanda the Scarlet Witch. She fails, and the Scarlet Witch ends up killing the Wanda variant. America Chavez explains that there is an even stronger Wanda variant out there who has taken her and this Wanda variant hostage. According to America, this even more evil variant is on the hunt to kill every Wanda Maximoff in the multiverse. She explains that the identity of the Scarlet Witch is a Nexus Being, that is, a being that only exists in one out of the infinite universes in the multiverse. In order to ensure she gets to be the Scarlet Witch, the Wanda variant has been using America to jump between universes, and the Wanda variant who just died to do the dirty work for her.
In the span of the film, the Scarlet Witch and the evil Wanda variant end up in the Nexus of All Realities, the intersection of all realities and dimensions. Earth-616 Wanda meets the Watcher, that is, the same one from the What If…? animated series. The Watcher fears for the safety of the multiverse with the existence of this Wanda variant. He informs Wanda that although the variant has failed to become the Scarlet Witch, her power is now on a multiversal level after acquiring her dead variants’ powers. In a fight, the Wanda variant successfully unleashes a spell that kills all the Wanda Maximoff variants in the entire multiverse. However, seeing that they are outside of the multiverse at the Nexus, 616 Wanda is unaffected; being the Scarlet Witch, the spell wouldn’t have worked on her anyway.
The Scarlet Witch defeats her evil variant. However, 616 Wanda realizes that the evil Wanda variant had gone through a far worse fate than she did. So instead of killing her, Wanda brings her variant back to her original universe and removes all her magic, as well as the ability to learn magic in the future. Wanda comes back to the Nexus of All Realities and asks for the Watcher’s help returning to her universe. Meanwhile, the variant kills herself. Wanda knew nothing about this, and although she knew this could happen, she’d rather not find out.
In her own universe, Doctor Strange and Wong arrive to check up on Wanda. She promises that she’ll stay hidden to prevent a global panic, considering she put the entire planet on a TV show the last time she was in her prime.
The mid credits scene shows the arrival of Loki the God of Stories from Loki Season 2 at the coven to enlist the help of Wanda. The post credits scene, on the other hand, shows the reveal of Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom towering over hisd esk with piles of folders. At the very top, a picture of young Wanda Maximoff is seen. Ideally, this reveal is the first time the world finds out that RDJ is returning.
Secret Wars and the future
After the events of the first Scarlet Witch movie, Wanda Maximoff is the last remaining variant of herself in the entire multiverse. In the comics, Doctor Doom uses a character called Molecule Man to siphon the powers of the Beyonders to preserve the Battleworld he created. In this film, he successfully nabs the Scarlet Witch instead as the entire multiverse collapses on itself. She eventually escapes and helps the Avengers defeat Doctor Doom. Battleworld collapses and a new prime universe emerges.
The future could literally go anywhere from here. I said I wanted a Scarlet Witch trilogy, but honestly, after Secret Wars, I have no idea where Wanda could go next. I don’t want to see her go through more character development because at this point, her story is done, or it should be. At first, I wanted her to go through another redemption arc after her hijinks in Seasons of the Witch, but the promise of Secret Wars is that it is a completely clean slate for everyone. Maybe Wanda leads her own Avengers team. Or she could join forces with God of Stories Loki to guard the newly reborn multiverse. I could see her settling down on her orchard, tending to her apples, and finally putting the magic behind her for real. Or an even better idea, adapt one of the Scarlet Witch comics into films before retiring the character for good.
That’s it. What do you think? Is it good? Is it meh? I just did this for fun, but I definitely welcome comments!