Scarlet Witch
The Scarlet Witch is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby, the character first appeared in The X-Men #4 in March 1964, in the Silver Age of Comic Books. Originally described as having the power to alter probability, the Scarlet Witch evolved into a powerful sorceress by the 1980s. Over time, she has learned to tap into immense magical forces, allowing her to alter reality itself. She is widely recognized as one of Marvel's most powerful heroes.
The Scarlet Witch, an alter ego of Wanda Django Maximoff, was first introduced as a reluctant supervillain alongside her twin brother, Quicksilver, both founding members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. A year later, she joined the Avengers and became a longtime member of various teams like the West Coast Avengers and Force Works. In 1975, she married her android teammate Vision and magically conceived twin sons. Their tragic loss in 1989, along with Vision's emotional reset, led to their marriage's end and fueled major storylines like Avengers: Disassembled and House of M. Her sons, Wiccan and Speed, would later return as teenage heroes.
Originally depicted as a mutant, later stories revealed her powers stem from experiments by the High Evolutionary, combined with inherited magical abilities. A 2015 retcon clarified she was never truly a mutant but gave a false-positive on "X-gene" tests. Wanda's origins have changed over time: initially unnamed parents, later Golden Age heroes Whizzer and Miss America, and then Magneto and Magda. Eventually, it was revealed she is the daughter of Natalya Maximoff, a Roma sorceress and previous Scarlet Witch, with Django and Marya Maximoff as her aunt and uncle.
Elizabeth Olsen portrays Wanda Maximoff in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, making the character's live-action debut in Avengers: Age of Ultron. She went on to play key roles in Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, with her most prominent appearances in WandaVision and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
Publication history
The Scarlet Witch and her twin brother Quicksilver debuted as a part of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants in X-Men #4. They were depicted as reluctant villains, only wanting safety from persecution and uninterested in team leader Magneto's plans for global domination. The Scarlet Witch is depicted as calm and submissive, like many female comic book characters of the time.As revealed on the back of a splash page of The X-Men issue 4, Kirby considered several names for the character, including "Jinx", "Witch Woman", "The Sorceress", "Evil Eye", and "Miss Witch". Her costume was composed of a bathing suit with straps, opera gloves, short boots, a leotard covering her body, a superhero cape, and a wimple, all of which were colored in shades of red. She was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
Lee and Kirby also produced the Avengers comic book, composed of Marvel's most prominent solo heroes at the time. Save for Captain America, Lee and Kirby eventually had all the Avengers leave to focus on their individual careers, replacing them with former villains from other comics who did not have a series of their own: the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver from X-Men, and Hawkeye from Iron Man's adventures in Tales of Suspense. The team was known as "Cap's Kooky Quartet". Although common in later years, such a wide-scale change in the roster of a superhero group was completely unprecedented. Lee and the following Avengers writer, Roy Thomas, hinted that other Avengers were romantically interested in the Scarlet Witch. The twins later leave the team after a crossover with the X-Men.
Some years later, Thomas brought Wanda and Pietro back into the team and started a long-running romantic relationship between the Scarlet Witch and the android hero Vision, thinking it would help with the series' character development. He elected those characters because they were only published in the Avengers comic book and did not star in solo adventures, so relationship drama in the series would not interfere with stories in other publications. Their first kiss took place during the Kree–Skrull War arc. Thomas also added Hawkeye into a love triangle with both characters, eventually having the archer realize that Vision and Wanda were truly in love. A fan of Golden Age heroes, Roy Thomas often found ways to integrate the older characters into modern-day stories. In Giant-Size Avengers #1, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch are revealed to be the children of Golden Age superheroes Whizzer and Miss America.
Steve Englehart succeeded Thomas as the writer of Avengers. He gave Wanda a more assertive personality and removed the highly-protective Quicksilver from the team. In 1974, Englehart expanded Wanda's powers by having her learn witchcraft from Agatha Harkness. The Vision and the Scarlet Witch married in Giant-Size Avengers #4, the end of the Celestial Madonna story arc. In 1979, Wanda learns Bob Frank and Madeline Joyce are not her and Pietro's parents. Wanda then stars in the 4-issue limited series The Vision and the Scarlet Witch, by writer Bill Mantlo and penciler Rick Leonardi. In this limited series, Magneto was retconned to be Wanda and Pietro's father. Englehart returned to the characters with penciler Richard Howell for a second limited series, in which the Scarlet Witch gets pregnant by magical means and delivers twin sons, William and Thomas. Englehart took over as writer for the spin-off series West Coast Avengers, later adding Vision and Wanda to the team.
John Byrne later replaced Englehart on the series. He wrote and illustrated the controversial "Vision Quest" storyline, where the Vision is dismantled and turned into an emotionless being who later even refuses the chance to regain his emotions. After this, Byrne retconned William and Thomas to be magical constructs created by Wanda experiencing a "hysterical" pregnancy and then subconsciously using her magic to create the children. At most, Wanda's magic should have only created illusions, but the twins were seemingly given life because Wanda unknowingly empowered them with pieces of the essence of the demon lord Mephisto. Mephisto later absorbs the children into himself, creating a bond to Wanda's magic and soul. To sever the connection, Agatha Harkness removes Wanda's memory of the children. Around this same time, Wanda is brainwashed twice by different villains, first to become a servant for the parasitic life form That Which Endures and then to be a "Bride of Set" during the crossover Atlantis Attacks. Although her mind is restored both times, the repeated trauma renders her catatonic. At this time, the Vision decides he cannot help Wanda or the Avengers West Coast and returns to the NYC team.
Byrne's next storyline involved Wanda becoming a villain yet again, now displaying greater and more focused power than before, and rejoining Magneto. Writers Roy and Dann Thomas took over Avengers West Coast. They revealed that Wanda's new personality, attacks on the Avengers and increase in power were all due to manipulations by the time villain Immortus, who had been seen watching the Avengers during some of Byrne's issues. The storyline disclosed Wanda is a "nexus being", a person who greatly affects timelines. By influencing Wanda to tap into her nexus energies, Immortus caused her increase in power and the creation of the children. Immortus wishes to use her to warp reality, but Wanda comes to her senses and gives up her nexus energies. Roy and Dann Thomas then revealed that a side effect of this caused Wanda to remember her children and temporarily lose her powers. The website Women in Refrigerators interviewed Englehart about these changes, who said he did not like them.
Multiple stories after the Immortus storyline featured Wanda remembering and mourning her children, and even judging teammate Spider-Woman for bringing her child along on an Avengers assignment. Roy Thomas later wrote the short story "A Study in Scarlet", with art by Al Bigley and Mike DeCarlo, published in Avengers West Coast Annual #7. The short story featured Wanda reflecting on how she was glad Agatha's memory-blocking spell only lasted a short time, as she appreciates having had the chance to mourn her children properly. She then accidentally creates a window into another timeline where she sees a version of events where she, Vision, and the children remained together. This brings her comfort and helps her feel she can cope with the loss better.
Following the Immortus storyline, Wanda is a more serious-minded character, wishing to atone for turning against the Avengers twice in a short amount of time and endangering reality. When she regains her powers, her hexes are initially more difficult to control and only on the power level she had when she first joined the Avengers. To compensate, she practices the magic Harkness taught her. In 1994, Avengers West Coast ended, and several of its team members reformed as an independent group led by Wanda in the series Force Works. The new title ran for only a couple of years. In 1994, a Scarlet Witch four-issue limited series was written by Andy Lanning and Dan Abnett, and pencilled by John Higgins.
Marvel Comics was nearing bankruptcy in 1996. The Avengers and other titles were relaunched in a new continuity and line of books called Heroes Reborn, outsourced to the studios of Image Comics artists. Rob Liefeld worked with the relaunched Avengers title and included the Scarlet Witch in the team, making her a sorceress with no mutant abilities. After Marvel renegotiated the terms of the deal, Liefeld was replaced with writer Walter Simonson and penciler Michael Ryan. The project was a success, boosting the sales of the titles and bringing Marvel Comics out of bankruptcy. The project ended after a year, and the Avengers were returned to the mainstream Marvel reality. The Avengers series relaunched again, now under Kurt Busiek and George Pérez. Pérez designed a new, complicated design for Wanda, increasing the volume of curls in her hair and giving her a costume with Romani influences. Pérez commented he preferred this more challenging design but accepted other artists would find it irksome. Later when he became the artist on Avengers, Alan Davis asked to change the design because it didn't work well with his simpler, less detailed style. During Busiek's stories, Wanda once again becomes a powerful sorceress by tapping into the energy of "chaos magic". Busiek clarifies her true mutant power is to tap into magical energy fields and manipulate them, just as Magneto taps into and manipulates electromagnetic fields.
Marvel decided to relaunch the Avengers series again, with a new roster, headquarters, atmosphere, and creative direction. To promote the change and gain reader interest, the inciting event was depicted in the 2004 story Avengers Disassembled written by Brian Michael Bendis and with art by David Finch. In the story, a remark by the Wasp causes Wanda to remember her children. She suddenly relives the trauma of their loss and feels betrayed by the Avengers, both for allowing Harkness to cloud her memories and for being unable to save her children from Mephisto. Emotionally overwhelmed and simultaneously experiencing a drastic increase in power, Wanda kills Agatha Harkness and causes the Avengers to suffer their "worst day" by altering the minds of She-Hulk and Iron Man, and causing simulations of the villain Ultron and the alien Kree to attack. This leads to the apparent deaths of different characters and the destruction of Avengers Mansion. Wanda is discovered to be the culprit and stopped, after which she falls into a coma. The Avengers disband, then reform in New Avengers. To explain her sudden increase in power, the sorcerer Doctor Strange says Wanda's actual mutant power is to reshape reality, adding that her talk of tapping into "chaos magic" is a lie because such a force does not exist. This contradicted earlier comics where Strange himself uses chaos magic and "catastrophe magic", and later Marvel stories confirm chaos magic is a real force that sorcerers can access.
File:Scarlet Witch.jpg|thumb|upright|right|The Scarlet Witch as she appears in Avengers vs. X-Men #0. Art by Frank Cho.
Wanda was seen again in the limited series House of M, creating an alternate version of Earth. When Earth's heroes defeat her, she causes "M-Day", removing the powers of most mutants on Earth. She then appeared in the Young Avengers follow-up series, Avengers: The Children's Crusade, which retconned Avengers Disassembled by revealing Wanda's extreme actions and enhanced power levels during recent stories were the result of tapping into an enormous source of energy that then corrupted her, similar to when she was possessed by Chthon, brainwashed by That Which Endures, and corrupted by Immortus. This was now the explanation as to how she was able to warp reality and why she would no longer be that powerful, and partially exonerated her from her actions against the Avengers and during M-Day. Wanda was again portrayed as someone who wanted to atone for her past, accepting partial responsibility rather than completely blaming outside influences, allying herself with Doctor Doom. Avengers: The Children's Crusade also now referred to the children of William and Thomas not as "pieces" of Mephisto's essence but as "lost souls" who had been taken away by Mephisto, indicating they actually had been alive and explaining how they could be reincarnated as the teenage heroes Speed and Wiccan.
The Scarlet Witch is a regular character in Uncanny Avengers, beginning with issue #1. The 2014 AXIS crossover retconned the character's parentage again, revealing Magneto is not biologically her father, contrary to that relationship's place in the canon for 32 years. In 2015, it was revealed in Uncanny Avengers #4 that she and Pietro are not mutants but humans who received superhuman genetics due to the experiments of the High Evolutionary. In Wanda's case, the High Evolutionary's genetic tampering made her more powerful in magic than she would have been otherwise. This plot twist was published while Marvel Studios and 20th Century Fox had a legal dispute over the film rights to the character. Fox had a film license for the X-Men, related characters, and most Marvel characters designated as mutants, while Marvel Studios was about to introduce Wanda and Pietro in the 2015 film Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Under the All-New, All-Different Marvel branding, the character received her own ongoing solo series from late 2015 to 2017, written by James Robinson and illustrated by a rotating team of artists. Robinson explained he was influenced by the work of Matt Fraction and David Aja on the Hawkeye title: "... they managed to stay true to the character in the Avengers while also taking it in a fresh direction, so it wasn't just that same Avengers character doing solo things, which I don't think ever really works for any sustained period of time for any of those second-tier characters." The 2015 Scarlet Witch series has Wanda investigating supernatural threats with Agatha Harkness at her side. During the series, she encounters the evil Declan Dane, the Emerald Warlock, who declares himself Wanda's arch-enemy. In issues #3 and #4, a journey through the mystical dimension known as the Witch's Road allows Wanda to meet the spirit of her true mother, a Romani sorceress named Natalya Maximoff who also uses the title "Scarlet Witch". Wanda discovers her adopted parents are actually her biological aunt and uncle, and that her bloodline includes many magic-users who chose to identify with the color scarlet. Wanda realizes powerful sorcerers often identify with complex rather than basic or primary colors. Now feeling more secure in her identity, Wanda confidently returns to the role of superhero and resumes her association with the Avengers.
The aftermath of her murder during the Hellfire Gala was dealt with in the limited series X-Men: Trial of Magneto ; Scarlet Witch was resurrected in the second issue of the series. Writer Leah Williams commented that the intended focus of the series is on Scarlet Witch and rehabilitating "Wanda's image with the rest of the mutants on Krakoa"; Williams stated that "her goal is not to write the next defining Magneto story but to write an 'empathy engine', as a Wanda sympathiser, to authentically tell a story that's going to be about healing and catharsis". As part of her redemption arc, the Scarlet Witch updated the Krakoan Resurrection Protocols so that mutants who were not backed up by Mr. Sinister and Cerebro could now be resurrected. This added twenty million mutants to the queue, including everyone who died on Genosha, and led to the Scarlet Witch being called the Redeemer on Krakoa. In September 2022, Marvel announced a Scarlet Witch solo series which follows the events of Trial of Magneto; it premiered in January 2023.