Does Doctor Strange 2 Ruin Scarlet Witch's WandaVision Arc?

For Marvel fans, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was one of the most highly anticipated films of the year for a variety of reasons. Not only did it come just a few months after the multiverse seemingly broke open in Spider-Man: No Way Home, but the film was also presented as a follow up to last year's Disney+ series, WandaVision with Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) set to play such a major role that even the teasers ahead of the film made it appear that what we'd be getting was a Doctor Strange/Scarlet Witch team up as the next chapter in the powerful Avenger's story. Instead, the story audiences get for Wanda in Multiverse of Madness is dramatically different and the journey it takes Scarlet Witch on begs the question: does the film ruin the character's WandaVision arc?

Before we get into answering that question, this is your warning: there will be major spoilers for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness beyond this point. If you haven't yet seen the movie and don't want these details, this is your last chance to stop reading. Again, spoilers from this point forward!

Does Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness ruin Scarlet Witch's WandaVision arc? The broad answer is yes. To get into how Multiverse of Madness ruins Wanda's arc, we need to first look back at WandaVision, what that story was about, and how it advanced Wanda as a character. At its core, WandaVision was a story about grief and love. It can even be argued that WandaVision was a series without a true villain (though it certainly had antagonists) because the real "villain" of the series was grief as it was ultimately the thing that Wanda had to face. Series showrunner Jac Shaeffer even told The New York Times that her initial pitch for the show "mapped to the stages of grief" and you can see that as Wanda moves through each episode. The series starts with her being very much in the denial stage as she created the hex that created her idyllic world, and she experiences the other stages at various points as the series progresses. She gets angry at anything that threatens her fake reality, she attempts to bargain with S.W.O.R.D. to leave her alone, she ends up deeply depressed (which also leads to her struggling to control the hex) and ends with her in a place of acceptance. She realizes what she's done, accepts the pain and losses she's been dealt, and quite literally accepts the powers of the Scarlet Witch in a very visible demonstration of her taking her life back from the trauma that has defined her.  When we leave Wanda at the end of the series, she is still processing her losses as well as her actions, but she's doing it with a new sense of strength and is clearly moving forward. And even though there is that tease of her hearing her children calling for her, there is nothing in that little breadcrumb that would suggest what we would get in the character's next appearance. We are simply left with a Wanda who is no longer a victim and is perhaps in a position save others rather than cause harm.

And then we get to Multiverse of Madness which chucks all that development out the window within the first half hour and more than that does it almost gleefully. Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) seeks her out for help — mind you, he never once reached out to help her in her time of need but can absolutely come calling when he needs her — and then just dismisses what she's going through. When it's clear that she's the force trying to take America Chavez's (Xochitl Gomez) powers because she wants to go to a reality in the multiverse where her sons are alive and take that life over, there's no real attempt to even address the situation. The film has already bought into the idea of Wanda as the aggressor and even sees Strange make a joke about how her choosing this path will keep her from "getting on the lunchbox" as a hero.

It's perhaps this scene that deeply encapsulates how the film just breaks with WandaVision in a way that feels like it disregarded the series entirely. Instead of building on a character who has broken away from a lifetime of trauma and victimization, the movie jumps right back into victimizing Wanda again — this time, it's the corrupting powers of the Darkhold that twists her, though while that aspect of thing is acknowledged, the film still goes out of its way to imply that Wanda was always going to break bad, something that is brought to a fine point when it's revealed that Mount Wundagore is a "throne" for the devastating Scarlet Witch. That point, by the way, largely suggests that Wanda never had any agency at all even though viewers of WandaVision clearly saw the opposite.

By having Wanda just hard shift into the "villain" role for the film, it also reduces her to old trope of emotional women are crazy and though they try to frame it as the lengths a mother will go for her children, it's not accurate. We've already seen Wanda grieve. In fact, we've already seen "Evil Wanda" in WandaVision and watched her go through the entire process of realizing the horrible things she's inflicted upon others, snap out of it, and make a massive personal sacrifice to try to set things right. In a sense, that's where Multiverse of Madness is almost worse than just ruining Wanda's arc. It acts like it never happened by repeating it when they have her seemingly end her own life to destroy the Darkhold. There's a line that Wanda utters in the movie about how her sacrifices have meant nothing and boy, does Multiverse of Madness double down on that. It's just insulting.

To an extent, that Multiverse of Madness failed Wanda's WandaVision arc shouldn't be a surprise. Director Sam Raimi admitted that he never saw all the Disney+ series, just "key moments of some episodes" that he was told directly impacted the film's storyline. While those "key moments" were certainly helpful, WandaVision isn't a show that can be cherry-picked. The entire series is an emotional journey for Wanda Maximoff, one that is complex and nuanced. It's the nuance of things that Multiverse of Madness completely missed which, in turn, failed the character from a structural and storytelling perspective. Ultimately, it's only Olsen's incredible performance that prevents it from being a complete mess and that's reflected in how the fan base is largely still Team Scarlet Witch despite her crimes in the film.

Realistically, Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch was never going to be a pristine hero. Even in comics Wanda is a complicated character whose choices are not always perfect, though she does lean towards doing what's right as she grows and better understands herself. Having the character be a threat or even an antagonist in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness not only makes sense but is also a good fit for such an extension of her story, finally seeing her engage directly with the MCU's other vastly powerful users of magic and sorcery. But the film could have done this with more reverence for the character's biggest development arc to date. Instead, we're left with a conclusion that feels like there is no coming back from, one that forever stains one of the MCU's best and most dynamic characters.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is in theaters now.