MAJOR SPOILERS are ahead for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Catch the latest Marvel movie, now playing in theaters, before reading on.
After the fallout of WandaVision, we’ve been anticipating the return of Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch in the new Doctor Strange movie, but her being the villain now? Now that was a twist. In Multiverse of Madness, the powerful Avenger could just barely be stopped from taking America Chavez’s multiverse-jumping powers. Now that we’ve seen the movie, its writer, Michael Waldron, has shared his own thoughts on some of Wanda's choices.
Michael Waldron was asked about choosing Wanda’s path to the Darkhold in the Doctor Strange sequel, and here's what he had to say:
And I also think Wanda makes good points in this movie. That all these heroes are hypocrites. Stephen and these guys break the rules and they’re their heroes. She does it and she’s a villain. That doesn’t seem fair. And they push her to her breaking point and you see what happens.
While speaking to Gizmodo, Michael Waldron got blunt about Scarlet Witch having some solid points about the other heroes of the Avengers, and he agrees with her. During Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Wanda asks Strange why she’s the villain when she bends the rules when other heroes before her have done similar bending of the rules. The most recent one we can remember is in Spider-Man: No Way Home, when Spidey literally threatens the world with the multiverse opening because he couldn’t get into college (with Doctor Strange’s help, of course). Waldron expanded on his thoughts:
It’s an accelerated descent into madness for her, but one that felt earned by the fact that she walked away from WandaVision with the Darkhold and the knowledge that she was the Scarlet Witch. The last scene of that show, their tag, is her reading the Darkhold and hearing the voices of her children. I think [in] this movie the Darkhold has got its hooks into her and really what it’s preying on and is maybe even less than her grief but her anger. Residual anger from all the trauma that she’s faced in her life.
In WandaVision, Wanda's grief is really analyzed with the hero making an entire town her puppets for revolving TV show episodes as she processes the death of Vision. By the end of the series, she unlocks a new scope of her powers, but going into Doctor Strange 2, it’s apparent she’s not yet healing and goes on a rampage to be with her children. In turn, Wanda did a lot of damage, including killing off nearly all of the Illuminati on Earth-838.
It is interesting to hear her motivations from the mouth of the movie’s writer, who has previously created Loki and worked on Rick & Morty. There have been mixed reactions about the treatment of Wanda in the flick. Obviously she’s a badass villain, but after finding a complete arc in WandaVision, it’s a bit of a surprise she becomes a big bad, right?
You can examine the Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness ending with us here on CinemaBlend and watch our spoiler-filled review too. We’ll also keep you updated with upcoming Marvel movies and TV as they approach big screens and Disney+.
