Marvel’s Doctor Strange 2 Writer Responds to Vitriol From WandaVision Fans: “I Get It”

Warning: this story contains spoilers for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. “You break the rules and become a hero,” the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) says to superhero sorcerer Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch). “I do it, and I become the enemy. That doesn’t seem fair.” A post-credits scene ending WandaVision sets up Wanda Maximoff’s heel turn: Scarlet Witch studies the Darkhold to reunite with Tommy (Jett Klyne) and Billy Maximoff (Julian Hilliard), her twin sons erased from existence with the release of her Hex over Westview. Wanda’s family is together in the infinite Multiverse, and in Doctor Strange 2, the Scarlet Witch will be with them again — no matter how many people she has to kill to make her WandaVision fantasy a reality. 

“I guess I would say to the WandaVision fans, like, I get it,” screenwriter Michael Waldron told The Playlist about the backlash from fans upset over the villainous Scarlet Witch. “Watching a character you love do bad things sucks. That elicits a strong feeling, which is what we’re trying to do in the movies. We never would have done it if it didn’t feel like the next step in her character journey.”

Set in the aftermath of Avengers: Endgame, five years after Wanda was forced to kill Vision (Paul Bettany) in Infinity War, WandaVision sees a grief-stricken Scarlet Witch wielding her powerful reality-altering chaos magic to create a “television show” —and her very own non-existent happily ever after. 

“To me, my interpretation of the story of WandaVision was, that Wanda is confronting her grief in that show, but I don’t think she’s necessarily conquering it,” Waldron explained. “It’s a show about her living in denial to some extent and she’s conquering her denial, but I don’t think that she’s properly reckoning with her anger over what she’s endured, and that anger is what she carries with her as she walks away with the knowledge that she is the Scarlet Witch and with the Darkhold, this evil book.”

Waldron continued, “And I think it’s that anger that the Darkhold preys upon and pushes her on what is — to me and I think to Wanda — a very justifiable, noble journey. She just wants her kids.”

Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Elizabeth Olsen, Benedict Wong, Xochitl Gomez, with Michael Stühlbarg, and Rachel McAdams, Marvel’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is now playing only in theaters.