WandaVision makes Wanda the real Scarlet Witch through Marvel’s chaos magic

Since the introduction of Wanda Maximoff in 2015 Avengers: Age of Ultron, Marvel Comics fans are hoping that the character will achieve the power to shake up the universe of her comic incarnation, Scarlet Witch. AND WandaVision has done well with this, with Wanda taking control of an entire New Jersey city from the molecules upwards.

But this week, the Disney Plus series gave Scarlet Witch fans one more reason to celebrate and opened up the Marvel Cinematic Universe to a number of possibilities.

[Ed. Note: This piece contains spoilers for WandaVision through episode 8.]

Image: Marvel Studios

You could say that episode 8, “Previously On”, was also a tribute to classic television, if you could reimagine This is your life how This is your trauma. Under duress by Agatha Harkness, Wanda relived the moments of tragedy that led to her current inner turmoil, starting with the day her parents died, continuing with how she obtained her Mental Stone powers in a Hydra laboratory, and concluding with her increasing approach to and then lose sight.

It was all because Agatha had a hunch that Wanda was a real witch, not just a Hydra experiment, and an urgent need to find out how she had become so powerful. Agatha has been practicing black magic for over 400 years, but has never come close to the power or skill needed to control the mind and transform an entire city for weeks.

The episode ends with Agatha announcing its completion. “You should be a myth. A being capable of spontaneous creation […] This is chaos magic, Wanda. And that makes you the Scarlet Witch. ”

She said Scarlet Witch!

Until WandaVision, Marvel Cinematic refrained – some may say it shied away – from presenting Wanda’s powers as having their origin in magic. His psychic and telekinetic abilities were only present in the Mindstone during Hydra’s experiments, and no one ever said the words “Scarlet Witch”, his superhero name from the comics. But episode 8 of WandaVision it finally closes the loop and, interestingly, it’s almost a mirror of how the powers of the Scarlet Witch have evolved over time in the comics.

Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby as a villain of the X-Men, the first explanation for Wanda’s powers was that she was a mutant with control over “probability”. With its “hex” power, it could cause incredibly unlikely results, which means it could do just about anything the writers wanted, from making bullets fall from the air to breaking gas pipes and crumbling entire buildings.

Image: Marvel Studios

It was not until a decade or more after its first appearance that Avengers the writer Steve Englehart decided to do good in the “witch” part of the name of the Scarlet Witch, making her study magic (including in the comic version of Agatha Harkness). Wanda is not the only Marvel example mixing mutant powers and magic into a single character, but she certainly helped make this combination a central pillar of the X-Men’s continuity, so much so that the current Marvel X-Men book line contains a series about mutant magic, Excalibur.

Eventually, other writers gave Wanda’s type of magic a specific source: The Chaos-God-Transformed-Ancient-Demon-Transformed-Lovecraft-Scary-Force-of-Darkness-Locked-into-an-Alternative-Dimension Chthon. Chthon’s place of power was Mount Wundagore, a fictional place in Eastern Europe where Wanda happened to be born. This will probably not enter WandaVision, but places Wanda among the top managers of Chaos Magic in the Marvel Universe.

Chaos Magic has the power to change the very structure of reality. Do not ask how this is different from magic that makes fire or flowers or rabbits where they did not exist before: they are comics and it is magic. The rules are not very specific. All you need to know is that Chaos Magic is very powerful, very rare and very dangerous.

The episode also gave viewers a glimpse of what could be an updated version of Wanda’s Scarlet Witch costume, with a long skirt and a high-crowned helmet. At a glance of the Agatha story that we had in episode 8, when you use magic very difficult, seems to give you a kind of crown:

Image: Marvel Studios

Between that and a vision that Wanda had at the Mental Stone of a figure crowned in a long skirt, it seems WandaVision is making his own explanation for the Scarlet Witch’s two-pointed helmet. The chances that we will have a new makeover of Wanda’s costume before the season is over look solid.

The Scarlet Witch received another adjustment in the history of comics when she stopped being entirely mutant. Marvel Studios and 20th Century Fox struck a deal to share custody of the Scarlet Witch and Mercury, due to how the two occupied an overlapping area of ​​the X-Men and Avengers continuity. But the deal depended on Marvel Studios to keep all mentions of mutants away from Wanda and Pietro, and so Marvel Comics did the same. The same year that Avengers: Age of Ultron introduced Wanda and Pietro to the film audience, an edition of Uncanny Avengers revealed that the twins were not mutants, but normal humans who had experimented and then disguised as mutants.

Very embarrassing.

But that means that in the modern continuity of Marvel Comics, Wanda’s powers are entirely derived from magic. And it seems that the same applies to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It was a long way for a character to finally say “the Scarlet Witch” out loud, but we hope that some Wanda Maximoff fans out there today are celebrating.