Character: Wanda Maximoff, also known as the Scarlet Witch
From: Marvel Comics
First Appearance: Uncanny X-Men #4 (1964)
Currently Appearing: Avengers: The Children's Crusade
Formerly Appearing: Avengers, West Coast Avengers, Force Works, Vision and the Scarlet Witch
Created by: Stan Lee (writer), Jack Kirby (artist)
Drawn by: Jim Cheung
Character History: Wanda and her twin brother Pietro were born on Wundagore Mountain in eastern Europe to Magda, the wife of Magneto. She had fled from her husband, after witnessing him attack their neighbors with his mutant powers after the death of their first daughter, Anya. Wanda and Pietro were cared for by humanoid cow Bova after Magda's death during childbirth and were nearly adopted by the WWII superheroes Miss America and the Whiz, before being adopted by a gypsy family called Maximoff.
The twins grew up in eastern Europe, unaware of their father. But being powerful mutants like him, they attracted his attention anyway, even though he too was unaware of their relationship. The twins, afraid of their own powers - Pietro with his superspeed and Wanda with her ability to cast hexes that caused probability shifts - joined Magneto's Brotherhood of Mutants and took the names Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch.
After a fight with the X-Men, they realized that Magneto was more evil than good, and escaped. The twins joined the Avengers, and were trained in fighting by Captain America. Wanda developed a friendship with teammate Hawkeye, but the romance was blocked by the arrival of the Vision, a synthezoid being with human emotions. Wanda and the Vision, whose mind was based on that of the hero Wonder Man, fell in love and eventually married.
Wanda and the Vision remained Avengers until she used magic, newly discovered and developed after being trained by the sorceress Agatha Harkness, to become pregnant. After Vision nearly lost his mind to a supercomputer, the two retired to New Jersey, where Wanda gave birth and raised their children. Magneto, however, had finally discovered his true connection to his children, and announced himself as Luna's, Pietro's daughter, grandfather. Wanda wanted the terrorist, apparently reformed, to have nothing to do with her children.
Her happiness could not last, though. The twins were revealed to be part of the demon Mephisto and were reclaimed, and the Vision was dismantled by the US government for his actions while being possessed by the supercomputer. Wanda went insane, joined up with Magneto, and attacked the West Coast Avengers. She eventually recovered, and remained the team. She separated from the Vision, who had been rebuilt but who had lost all his human emotions and memories, including his love for his wife.
Wanda briefly joined and led Force Works after the West Coast Avengers were disbanded, even after Wonder Man, who she had shared a burgeoning relationship with, died. Shortly after, she rejoined her teammates on the Avengers, including her brother. They faced down Onslaught, and Wanda was among the heroes were killed in battle. In reality, her life was saved by Franklin Richards and she returned to the Avengers, more powerful than ever.
She battled Morgan LeFay single-handedly and brought Wonder Man back to life. When the Avengers fully reformed, she remained with the team and had a relationship with Wonder Man, despite learning that the Vision had recovered his emotions. The two remained friends, despite their "divorce" caused by their mutual deaths. Wanda's relationship with Wonder Man eventually ended, during a time when Kang had kidnapped both of them, and Wanda began to act more erratically in the aftermath.
She briefly dated Captain America, but odd things kept happening around her. After being reminded of her children, Wanda's powers overloaded. She returned Jack of Hearts to life, only to use him to kill Scott Lang, the Ant-Man. The Vision exploded and was destroyed and Hawkeye was killed by what seemed like alien spaceships. Dr. Strange, sorcercer supreme, arrived to tell the Avengers that Wanda's powers had developed to point of massive reality manipulation and had never had anything to do with magic at all. Agatha Harkness, Wanda's magic instructor, was discovered to be dead and rotting and had possibly been dead for years.
When Wanda was finally found again, she was discovered to be on Genosha with Quicksilver and Magneto. Under Quicksilver's influence, Wanda changed the whole world before the Avengers could stop or even kill her, creating the House of M reality. Wanda, realizing part of what she had done when her friends tried to kill her, tried to fix it by erasing mutants from the world. Instead, her powers only removed the mutant gene from a large percentage of the world's mutants. Wanda herself disappeared again.
Wanda was found first by Hawkeye, who had been restored to life by Wanda. Wanda, possibly of her own power, had no powers or memories of her time as the Scarlet Witch, including the existence of her family. They shared a night of passion, before Hawkeye left. He did not tell her their history. The Beast also found her, but decided to leave her where she was, believing her to be no danger in her current state.
In the meantime, two Young Avengers, Wiccan and Speed, realized that they might be the long missing children of the Vision and the Scarlet Witch, having Wanda and Quicksilver's powers, respectively and looking like mirror images of each other. Wiccan led the team, with Magneto and Quicksilver's help, on a mission to find his possible mother. They found Wanda in Latveria, about to marry the villain Doctor Doom. She still has no memory of her true past or her powers.
Personality: Wanda is a sweet and caring woman who doesn't tend to fight unless forced to it. While one of the most powerful Avengers of all time, Wanda rarely uses her powers directly to harm someone - instead, she uses it to cause distractions, traps, and complications for her enemies. Wanda, however, has long battled mental illness, thanks to the abusive nature of her relationship with her father, Magneto, and the loss of her children. In her agitated state, she is capable of killing those she loves. In her new, power-removed condition, Wanda has returned to her sweet, almost shy original personality, but one that is unaware of her true past.
Archetype: Wanda's main characteristic is that of the Good Girl: the sweet, shy, almost virginal aspect of every good girl throughout history. She is a Witch, capable of using magic. She is also a Victim of Abuse, which causes her periodic breakdowns, and Insane, due to her mental illness. Her relationship with Magneto is similar to the Sins of Father archetype, where Wanda seeks to better the world despite her father's terrorist ways. Wanda is a Twin, who shares a special and sometimes dependent relationship with her brother, Quicksilver. She could also be considered one of the Women in Refrigerators, thanks to her mental dismantling in favor of a nearly all-male Avengers team.
Other Versions: While Wanda has rarely appeared in live-action spin-offs, she has appeared in numerous X-Men and Avengers cartoons and video game adaptions. She appeared, as an Avenger, in Avengers: They Stand United, and as a teenage goth chick in X-Men: Evolution, and as a Genoshan princess (and heir to the Genoshan throne after Magneto) in Wolverine and the X-Men. In the Age of Apocalypse storyline, Wanda was killed by one of Apocalypse's Horsemen and was one of the first X-Men, in this history founded by her father, Magneto. The Ultimateuniverse Scarlet Witch was murdered by the villain Ultron, was an Avenger, and was possibly dating her own brother. Another Scarlet Witch, called simply Witch, appeared the third Exiles series, and yet another Wanda, a zombie-fighting version, was seen in Marvel Zombies. The Heroes RebornScarlet Witch was raised by Agatha Harkness, was actually a witch, joined the Avengers, and might have been the daughter of the Asgardian goddess the Enchantress. In the House of Mreality, the Scarlet Witch lives with her family, including her half-sister Polaris, her brother, and her twin sons, in Genosha, where her father is the ruling monarch of the mutant island.
Analysis: The Scarlet Witch is one of Marvel Comics' most recognizable heroines. With her standard headdress-to-boot red outfit and flowing red cape, Wanda Maximoff's appearance has remained relatively unchanged since she first appeared in comic books sixty years ago. Her personality, on the other hand, has not.
In the early 2000's, Marvel Comics allowed Brian Michael Bendis to revamp the entire Avengers line, by placing non-Avengers characters into the mold, producing what many people called the Justice League Avengers. The idea was to get all the most popular Marvel characters into one place, and thus, Iron Man and Captain America remained, while Spider-Man, Wolverine, and Luke Cage joined up, replacing Avengers stalwarts like the Scarlet Witch.
To do this, Bendis needed to wipe the slate clean: he had Wanda go insane and kill three Avengers at the time, including the character's former husband and one of her best friends. Then, to add further insult to the female Avengers, he had the Wasp, Janet Van Dyne, lay the seeds for Wanda's insanity when Janet accidently mentions Wanda's twin sons. In essence, in one stroke, Bendis struck down the Avengers' two most well-known and respected women.
The problem is not Wanda's insanity - it's been clearly shown in the past that Wanda has, at times, been plagued by uncontrollable emotions. Losing both your children and your husband and having an abusive father might do that to a person. The problem is that Bendis had Wanda kill, and then amped up her power to the point of no return.
The Marvel universe has relied on superhumans who had human problems to create their stories - it's what makes them different from the DC heroes. By giving Wanda nearly unlimited power, Bendis has effectively killed her character far more than simply having her go insane would ever have done. Sadly, Bendis also wiped away Wanda's connection to magic, a fact firmly established by other writers over the course of decades.
I don't know why, in the current spate of Avengers stories, writers feel the need to destroy long term characters for greater emotion. If you want to see how characters, even minor ones, can be developed and transformed into great characters and then mercilessly killed off for great emotional payoffs, see refer to Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning's Guardians of the Galaxy. You don't have to destroy what comes before to make an impact. Instead, you can build on it.
There is hope for Wanda's characters to make a triumphant return, however. If there is a writer out there who has the needed respect for continuity and the sheer talent to pull it off, it's Allan Heinberg, who is writing Wanda's most recent appearances in Avengers: The Children's Crusade. Here's crossing my fingers for Wanda to be returned to her heroic ways and a realistic power scale.
Similar Characters: Comic Book Characters Who Tend to Go Crazy: the X-Men's Jean Grey in The Dark Phoenix Saga
, Shrinking Violent from the Legion of Super-Heroes
, and Spider-Man's enemy Norman Osborn, the Green Goblin, in the Dark Avengers
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Superhero Twins: Northstar and Aurora from Alpha Flight
, Lightning Lad and Light Lass from The Legion of Super-Heroes
, the Wonder Twins from Superfriends, and Captain Britain and the X-Men's Psylocke from Captain Britain Omnibus
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Buy Stories with Wanda Here!: Avengers Disassembled
, House of M
, and Avengers Assemble, Vol. 1
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