Fans may have a hard time remembering this, but early in their MCU journey in Avengers: Age of Ultron, Wanda Maximoff also known as Scarlet Witch, played by Elizabeth Olsen, had a very heavy foreign accent, as she was supposedly from the fictional land of Sokovia, Russia. In a recent interview with Collider, Olsen explained why Wanda’s accent was gradually disappearing, being replaced by a fully American accent in WandaVision.
“The Sokovia accent was created by me, Aaron and our dialect trainer because it is a fake country and we could find different sources of Slavic sounds. And we wanted to make sure it didn’t sound Russian because Black Widow speaks Russian, and so just needed sound more like Slovak. So we created these sound changes that worked for Aaron’s British accent going to Slovakia basically and my American accent so that we looked alike. And then, all of a sudden, all these different characters had to say this different films . [Laughs] So the Sokovian accent took too long. It went nowhere. There were reasons for everything. This became lighter when she started living in the United States, and on WandaVision she is playing the role of being on an American sitcom and so it is not over. He’s still absolutely there. “
So it seems Elizabeth olsen had not simply decided to stop using the Sokovian accent because it was too complicated, but a conscious decision to use an American accent to WandaVision, while maintaining the Sokovian accent behind Wanda’s personal story, which can be trotted again when the occasion calls for it. Joe and Anthony Russo, who directed Captain America Civil War, which was one of the first times that Wanda’s accent started to slip, came up with his own explanation for the change in accent.
“We intentionally tried to remove that accent for a few reasons. One is that you’ll notice at the beginning of Civil war that the Black Widow is training her to be a spy, and two is that she is on the run, and one of the most striking features she has is her accent. So if you’re going to try to disguise yourself or hide or not get caught, you’re going to try to limit the warnings that would make it easier for someone to identify you, which would include her accent. “
Like WandaVision continues, it’s becoming more and more apparent that the healthy, all American reality that Wanda created for herself and Vision is starting to disintegrate, so fans can still see the superheroine returning to the Sokovian accent as she struggles between illusion and reality .
Written by Jac Schaeffer and directed by Matt Shakman, WandaVision stars Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff / Scarlet Witch, Paul Bettany as Vision, Randall Park as agent Jimmy Woo, Kat Dennings as Darcy Lewis, Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau and Kathryn Hahn as Agnes. New episodes air on Fridays on Disney +. Read the full interview on Collider.
Topics: WandaVision