Marvel Confirms Scarlet Witch’s MCU Fate (But Is It Canon?)

It’s about time. 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness — MOM for short — picked up where WandaVision left off: with mom Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) using the Darkhold’s dark magic to find her children, Tommy and Billy Maximoff. The corrupted Scarlet Witch then clashed with Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) when she sought out America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) to steal the teen’s ability to traverse the multiverse, a power she would use to leave her reality for one where she could reunite with her sons. As she came to her senses — Wanda is a mother, not a monster— MOM ended with Wanda’s death as the Scarlet Witch collapsed a castle atop Wundagore Mountain, destroying every copy of the Darkhold throughout the multiverse.

Agatha All Along seemingly confirmed Wanda’s death when the spellbound witch Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) was freed from the Scarlet Witch’s spell that stripped her of her powers. But Marvel made the mother of all reveals in the latest issue of TVA, a five-issue comic book blending the Marvel Comics version of the Time Variance Authority with its counterpart in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (as seen in Loki and Deadpool & Wolverine):

The Scarlet Witch is alive. Or, at least, not dead.

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TVA #3, from Loki writer Katharyn Blair and artist Pere Perez, picks up after the events of last issue, which ended with Owen Wilson’s TVA Agent Mobius M. Mobius being attacked by a green-cloaked killer he mistook for Tom Hiddleston’s Loki (who disappeared into the multiverse in the Loki series finale). Mobius survives, and it’s determined he was stabbed with the remnants of a reality shard: a sliver of the Reality Stone, one of the Infinity Stones with the power to rewrite reality.

As Wunmi Mosaku’s B-15 has the TVA search the timeline for any and all traces of reality shard activity, Sophia Di Martino’s Loki variant Sylvie Laufeydottir enchants Mobius’ mind to track down his would-be killer.

Meanwhile, the TVA’s Research & Advancements Department field team — which includes universe-displaced castoffs like Gwen Stacy/Ghost-Spider, Peggy Carter/Captain Carter, and Remy LeBeau/Gambit — has been investigating a series of mass hallucinations that have been spreading across the multiverse like a virus: the Madness.

This turned out to be real manifestations of people’s worst fears, and the Madness is connected to the “hallucination” stalking the halls of the TVA. The figure led Gwen to a mysterious secret department below R&A in a dream, and Mobius saw the same vision before he was attacked. The TVA’s investigation leads to the arrest of the mutant James “Jimmy” Hudson, the son of Wolverine and the half-brother of twin siblings Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver from the original Ultimate Universe.

Jimmy has an alibi, so Gwen sets out to prove his innocence by investigating the hallways she saw in her dreams. Realizing that the “hallucination” is leading her to the department below R&A — perhaps through dreamwalking? — Gwen’s investigation brings her to the Department of Deferment. There she finds the Scarlet Witch encased in stasis, appearing just as she did in MOM.

On Instagram, Perez answered in the affirmative when asked if the character depicted in TVA is Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch. When another commentator asked Perez to clarify if she’s “the MCU Scarlet Witch,” Perez confirmed she is.

“[The TVA series] connects to the MCU because the TVA has its origins in the comics, obviously. It’s in [issues of] Thor, it’s in Fantastic Four, but it really became a thing in the MCU,” Blair said on the Official Marvel Podcast, “Kasra [Farahani], our set designer, [Loki series creator] Michael Waldron, and Kevin Wright, our executive producer, really kind of filled in those gaps and made it just a really beautiful place that I was excited to tune into every week. So it feels like that is a place where it fleshed itself out.”

“We’re taking that TVA and putting it back in its comic space where it was born, which is really cool,” she continued. “So that’s where it connects. But it’s definitely a comic-centric TVA right now in this iteration.”

Blair went on to explain, “This is my comic interpretation of what is happening after Loki has made his sacrifice, so I do have a lot of knowledge about this place. I’m taking all of my Loki season 2 experience and pouring it into this new comic iteration of the TVA, so it’s a bit of a funny in-between space.”

TVA #3 is on sale now from Marvel Comics. The five-issue series concludes on April 30.