WandaVision lead Elizabeth Olsen was “completely freaked out” by the thought of carrying a Scarlet Witch spin-off set up at Marvel Studios, recalling it was “very intimidating” when producer Kevin Feige pitched the television show ahead of Avengers: Endgame. Originally scheduled as the studio’s second original series after The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, the Captain America spin-off delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, WandaVision ultimately launched Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to critical acclaim. Since her introduction as Wanda Maximoff in 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Olsen has played a supporting role — until now.
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“I’ve only signed on for a couple [Marvel projects] at a time. Every time they ask me to come back it’s a surprise to me. I started getting really comfortable not having the responsibility for the success of the Avengers franchise,” Olsen told Variety‘s Still Watching Podcast. “I was really happy to take up my little corner. I really enjoyed how they had used me. I always felt like I had something substantial to do in those films.”
When then-Disney CEO Bob Iger approached Feige in 2018 with the prospect to expand the MCU on television, allowing Marvel Studios to produce big-budget shows to air on Disney+, Feige quickly zeroed in on characters who hadn’t enjoyed the spotlight in the studio’s feature films.
“When Kevin proposed this show I was completely freaked out by it because I know how many eyes are on these shows or films and it’s very intimidating. It just became something I absolutely adored and loved,” Olsen said. “Because of the show, it made me love this character more than I ever had. It makes me feel like I have new ownership of her because of the time I got to spend creating this show.”
Feige previously explained why WandaVision couldn’t be the next movie out of the MCU, telling Variety: “Wanda and Vision are great characters from the comics that we’d only scratched the surface of in movies, played by actors who are so spectacular, and we’d only scratched the surface of what they could do. Putting the spotlight on those actors playing those characters was the primary reason to want to make WandaVision.”
Starring Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Kathryn Hahn, Teyonah Parris, Kat Dennings, and Randall Park, new episodes of Marvel’s WandaVision premiere Fridays on Disney+.
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