An MCU Star’s Must-Watch Underrated Psychological Thriller Is About to Leave Streaming

Elizabeth Olsen has proven to be a master at playing complex characters. While she may be best known for her layered, nuanced, and powerful performance as Wanda Maximoff in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Scarlet Witch is just one of her incredible performances. She’s also excelled in roles such as a housewife accused of murdering her neighbor following an affair in Love & Death, a struggling young widow in Sorry for Your Loss, and most recently Joan in Eternity, a woman who must choose between how she wishes to spend eternity in the afterlife, But while these layered characters have become a hallmark of Olsen’s career, there’s one that really showed just how skilled she is — and even helped her land her Marvel role in the first place — and it’s about to leave streaming.

Released in 2011. Martha Marcy May Marlene is Olsen’s film debut. In the film she plays a young woman, Martha, who has escaped from an abusive cult she was with for years. However, despite getting away and reuniting with her sister, Martha finds it’s much harder to be free than one might think. The film also stars Sarah Paulson, John Hawes, and Hugh Dancy. The film was a critical success, with Olsen’s performance in particular receiving a great deal of praise, particularly for her wide range of emotions. It’s an incredible film and fans have until January 31st to catch it on HBO Max before it departs.

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Martha Marcy May Marlene Helped Olsen Become the Scarlet Witch

Martha Marcy May Marlene is an intense film. It does a brilliant job of exploring how damaging cults are and just how they can break a person down and Olsen’s performance is a key part of that. Viewers are given Martha’s story through different timelines, showing things as she has just escaped as well as through memories of what she endured as “Marcy May” within the clutches of the cult and its lead. It’s through Olsen’s performance that audiences get to see the difficulty of cult deprogramming for survivors in an authentic and humanizing way.

Olsen’s powerful performance in the film alone is an achievement, but it also was a key moment that ultimately would lead her to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In The Story of Marvel Studios: The Making of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s explained that studio executives met with Olsen after seeing and being impressed by her Martha Marcy May Marlene performance. While that meeting at that time wasn’t specifically about any particular project, it showed early interest in Olsen as an actor and, as Marvel fans know, she would go on to be cast as Wanda Maximoff in 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron with Wanda ending up as a major character in the franchise. Fans still have a few days left to stream it, as Martha Marcy May Marlene leaves HBO Max on January 31.

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