Wanda and Vision Shouldn’t Get Back Together in the MCU, And Marvel Has Been Telling Us That for Years

Spoilers for VisionQuest follow.

By the time Matt Shakman, directed The Fantastic Four: First Steps, he’d already introduced the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first full family of superheroes in WandaVision. While in control of the town of Westview, New Jersey, Wanda Maximoff/The Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) unconsciously used her immense magic powers to create both a copy of her deceased synthezoid lover, The Vision (Paul Bettany,) and a pair of twin sons, Billy and Tommy (Baylen Bielitz and Julian Hilliard, and Gavin Borders and Jett Klyne) for them to raise. But while the family members have all reappeared in subsequent projects, with Joe Locke and Ruaridh Mollica debuting as older versions of Billy and Tommy in Agatha All Along and the ongoing VisionQuest, respectively, the entire foursome have not all shared the screen at once since WandaVision concluded back in 2021.

A sizable portion of the Marvel fanbase remains convinced that the family will be fully reunited at some point, even though Olsen’s return to Marvel has never been officially announced after Wanda was seemingly killed off in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. But even assuming this is true, and Wanda both returns and encounters the current versions of her family, that doesn’t mean she and Vision should resume their romance. Neither character is the same person they were when WandaVision started, quite literally in Vision’s case, and trying to continue their love story with the current iterations could do major disservices to both characters.

The New Vision Might Not Love Wanda

At the end of WandaVision, the version of Vision Wanda lived with in Westview, who she had created purely through her own power, battled the white Vision that S.W.O.R.D. had rebuilt using the mechanical body of the original Vision that was killed in Avengers: Infinity War. The Westview Vision eventually gets the white one to abandon his programmed mission to kill Wanda by sharing memories of both Vision’s life through Infinity War and his time with Wanda during their smalltown, sitcom-inspired fantasy marriage. Having realized how much she’s hurting the people of Westview by mentally forcing them to participate in her modified world, Wanda takes down the Hex altering Westview’s reality, despite knowing that this will soon lead to Vision and the twins being erased from existence. Before vanishing along with the Hex, Vision says farewell to Wanda. He references how many different forms he’s already existed in and says, “We have said goodbye before, so it stands to reason,” before she tearfully finishes, “we’ll say hello again.”

In Multiverse of Madness, the dark magic book called the Darkhold corrupts Wanda by showing her the twins’ variants from other universes, but Agatha All Along and VisionQuest reveal that the same versions of the boys from the Hex have been reincarnated in the separate bodies of Billy Kaplan and Thomas Shepherd. The version of Vision that leads the latter show is the white model created by S.W.O.R.D. Though he has the memories of both prior versions, this Vision insists that he does not have their capacity for emotion. But much of the series so far has emphasized that he’s seemingly incorrect about this. For the most part, Bettany’s performance throughout the series imbues this Vision with just as much personality and feeling as the previous ones, with Vision’s scenes alongside characters like Thomas and the family of other artificial intelligences stored in his computer mind depicting unique, complicated relationships with all of them.

This Vision only comes across as comparatively cold or unfeeling in certain scenes when he speaks about Wanda specifically. His descriptions of the events in Westview tend to emphasize the immorality of how she treated the other townspeople. Although he acknowledges that she was motivated by immense grief, Bettany’s deliveries in these scenes don’t convey as much sympathy as one would expect the Avenger or Westview Visions to show for the woman they loved. This could be partially due to lingering influence of the S.W.O.R.D. Vision’s original programming, which would complicate the series’ reflection on the idea of AIs developing truly independent personalities or souls. If this is the case, this Vision making peace with Wanda would demonstrate growth for his character, but him going on to fall in love with her would still likely come across as forced and repetitive. The only time references to Wanda have seemed to provoke fond emotions in S.W.O.R.D. Vision are when he repeats advice she once gave the Westview version about apologizing to Thomas, supporting the idea that the current Vision envies the parental role and family relationships enjoyed by the Westview version much more than the romantic side of his relationship with Wanda. While S.W.O.R.D. Vision begins the series assuming that becoming more like the previous iterations is ideal, that’s probably not how the story will end. It’s much more likely that his current emotional arc will conclude with him realizing that he is his own person, and recognizing why that’s a good thing.

Wanda Has Accepted Her Vision’s Death

The main point of WandaVision is developing Wanda to the point that she accepts that the Vision she loved is gone. While it acknowledges the literal transformations and reincarnations Vision had already gone through, the shared line about saying hello again comes across as a mostly spiritual statement, implying that the pair share a confidence that Wanda will be reunited with her exact, beloved Vision at some point, presumably in whatever kind of afterlife awaits her when she actually dies (whether that did in fact, happen in Multiverse of Madness or not.) They’re both aware that the white Vision will continue to exist in the mortal world alongside Wanda, after all, but the line clearly doesn’t refer to any possible future meetings between those two.

Wanda’s role in Multiverse of Madness is widely divisive, with many viewers arguing that it repeated the same kind of development she underwent in WandaVision, and that the film executed the arc in a less compelling, nuanced way. But it’s still telling that the mission she’s so single-mindedly, ruthlessly focused on in the movie is reuniting solely with versions of the twins. Wanda mentions Vision several times throughout the film and is still mourning him, but even when she’s most fully corrupted by the Darkhold there’s no indication that she plans to try to resurrect him again. Despite the warped state of mind she’s in she still recognizes that her time with her Vision in this life is over.

If the main universe Wanda does return to the franchise and S.W.O.R.D. Vision’s role extends beyond the end of VisionQuest, it’s safe to assume that they’ll cross paths at some point, which will certainly be dramatic. But ultimately, it would be best for both characters if whatever kind of dynamic they develop remains platonic.

Do you think Wanda and Vision will meet again in the MCU? Discuss in the comments.

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