Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Makes Major Change to Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch

After her metamorphosis from Wanda Maximoff to the Scarlet Witch in the series finale of WandaVision, Elizabeth Olsen teases “growth” and yet another “new element” of her anguished Avenger in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Screenwriter Michael Waldron, the head writer of the Doctor Strange 2-connected Loki on Disney+, previously revealed the sequel from director Sam Raimi would further develop and evolve Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) after the world-altering events of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. Grieving the loss of her lover Vision (Paul Bettany) — again — and magic-made twins Tommy (Jett Kylne) and Billy Maximoff (Julian Hilliard), but wielding powerful chaos magic after WandaVision, Olsen says there are new dimensions yet to come from the Scarlet Witch:

“I wrapped WandaVision on a Wednesday and flew to London on a Friday to continue playing this part [in Doctor Strange 2]. I could have used getting out of the mindset, though, because they were totally different utilizations of the character and people would have had more time to understand WandaVision had we not just wrapped,” Olsen told Variety about the back-to-back Marvel productions. “And so there’s just a lot of, ‘We covered this in WandaVision…’ It’s bigger than me, there’s lots of threads that are continuing on after me that I’m not aware of, and so it’s always about, ‘What can I get from this journey with this character that maybe I haven’t tapped into yet with her?’”

“That’s where I keep approaching things from so that I feel like I have some sort of strap-hang — that I can know that there’s going to be growth of some kind, even though it all maybe looks the same to other people,” added Olsen of her approach to the character she’s portrayed since Avengers: Age of Ultron in 2015. “There is that conscious decision to learn a new element of this woman, or even of myself as an actor — something that I want to explore that I can bring to it.”

Plot details remain closely guarded, but Waldron has hinted at taking a closer look at the titular sorcerer in the Doctor Strange sequel, the character’s first standalone movie since 2016. Multiverse of Madness takes place after Loki, where it was the variant Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) who unleashed a Multiverse of madness when she killed the time-keeping He Who Remains (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania‘s Jonathan Majors).

“I think that Stephen Strange has been through so much between that first movie and now,” Waldron recently said on the Geek Vibes Podcast. “That first movie was an incredible origin story of how he became a sorcerer, but now he’s been through that. He’s fought Thanos [in Infinity War and Endgame] and he’s on the other end of it, and he’s kind of at the height of his powers. So it’s an interesting place to catch up with him.”

Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Elizabeth Olsen, Benedict Wong, Rachel McAdams, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Xochitl Gomez, Marvel Studios’ Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness opens in theaters on March 25, 2022.