Wanda Maximoff has a tragic history in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so before we pick up her story in Wandavision, we’re going to take a look at where she’s been. To get all Wanda Maximoff’s story from the MCU with 100% of the details, you would need to watch Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame. With WandaVision releasing at 3am ET, you might not have time for all of those at this point. Don’t worry, the video above and story below recap Wanda’s journey so far.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Wanda first showed up in the post-credits scene of Captain America: The Winter Soldier where Wolfgang von Strucker had been experimenting on her with Loki’s scepter, aka the Mind Stone. It unlocked her telekinetic powers and gave her brother Pietro, aka Quicksilver, his super speed. They’re called “miracle”s here, but in comics, they’re mutants. The problem at the time Marvel Studios couldn’t use the word mutant because Fox owned the movie rights to all things X-Men.
Flashforward: Avengers: Age of Ultron, Strucker’s compound is raided. Wanda and Pietro help slow down the Avengers but ultimately these HYDRA dummies lose again. Wanda and Pietro really hate Tony Stark because their parents were killed by Stark Industries weapons years ago, so they side with Ultron against the Avengers… until they don’t. Ultron wants to end the world and they don’t. Hawkeye essentially initiates Wanda into the Avengers and everyone fights side by side to stop Ultron but this gets Quicksilver killed before the Vision finally kills the last piece of Ultron in the woods. More on that in our Vision’s Journey video. Point is: Wanda loses a lot.
In doing some Avenging, Wanda accidentally throws kamikaze Crossbones into a building which saves some innocent people… but kills some different innocent people. She feels pretty guilty over it but she still sides with Captain America in letting freedom ring for the Avengers. She joins a big Avengers blowout fight on a runway in Germany, ends up going head to head with Vision, and ultimately finds herself imprisoned on the Raft but her and Vision have already developed a romantic relationship at this point.
Captain America breaks her out of jail and she flees to another country to live with Vision because they’re officially in love now. They end up fighting one of Thanos’ minions and when Vision is hurt, Wanda accompanies him to Wakanda for help.
Wanda protects Vision and Shuri from the attacking Thanos army while they try to remove the Mind Stone. She ends up joining the battlefield because she’s the most powerful Avenger of them all. Ultimately, Wanda has to use the powers given to her by the Mind Stone to destroy the Mind Stone and kill Vision…. Then Thanos is like ‘Sike, I’m gonna kill him, too.” What I’m saying now is Wanda has lost everything, some things twice, and then she gets snapped out of existence!
Flashforward: 5 years later, Avengers: Endgame, Hulk snaps everyone back into existence. Wanda joins the final fight against Thanos at Avengers HQ. She pretty much had him dead at one point but he was willing to sacrifice his own army to survive, which goes to show how powerful she is. The Avengers win the war, but Wanda is still very sad that Vision is dead.
That’s Wanda’s journey so far! The biggest notable differences from comics is that in comics, her father is X-Men legend Magneto, she has the mutant gene which gives her her powers, and her classic costume is more than just a get up we have seen in WandaVision trailers — but we’ll be tuning into that to see if any of these differences become MCU realities.
And tune into Comicbook.com’s Phase Zero podcast, new episodes are going to drop with each new episode of WandaVision on Fridays starting January 15 – with special guests ranging from cast, filmmakers, and comic creators. Want to talk more now? Hit me up in the comments or on Instagram!
