As the villain of Doctor Strange 2, Scarlet Witch commits many horrific deeds, but there’s one line she doesn’t cross that she did in WandaVision.
Scarlet Witch’s rogue pivot in Doctor Strange in the multiverse of madness showed horrific acts, but there was one line she didn’t cross thanks to a lesson she had learned WandaVision. In the Disney+ show, Scarlet Witch is so immersed in her grief over the loss of Vision that she uses her powers to control the minds of an entire city. None of the residents of Westview have restraint or agency, save for small flashes of horror that are like glitches in the matrix before Wanda can reaffirm her self-constructed illusion. While it’s an accidental act by Scarlet Witch, it’s no less horrifying.
However, in WandaVisionIn the Scarlet Witch epilogue, she discovers the Darkhold and begins another, more purposeful reign of terror in Doctor Strange 2 as she pursues the forces of America Chavez across the Multiverse. Strangely, however, she exerts no influence on the ghosts of Strange, America or any other character in the film, opting for more eerie but orthodox forms of magic. This shows that despite how desperate she is to get her children back and be with them, there was a line she wouldn’t cross after that. WandaVision.
Doctor Strange 2 Shows Scarlet Witch Learned the Wrong WandaVision Lesson
While Scarlet Witch is a likeable character because of how compelling she is and because audiences recognize her grief and pain, the destruction she wreaks in the film is unjustifiable. However, that she has no control over the minds of the people who oppose her is a curious character decision. Perhaps that’s because she’s so traumatized on some level by guilt after the events of… WandaVision that she cannot bring herself to enslave others in the same way again. However, she brutally kills many people, including the Illuminati, so if she learned a lesson, it wasn’t quite respect for human life.
Perhaps a more constructive lesson from WandaVision would have been realizing how self-destructive her fantasizing was, and the damage it was doing to herself, and her ability to cope with Vision’s death first and then the loss of her children, no matter how imaginary they were. However, it could be interpreted that Scarlet Witch’s noble sacrifice of her idealized life in… WandaVision proved the final straw to make her fall over the edge in malice and that she could no longer rationalize the grief when the Darkhold’s temptation took hold.
How Scarlet Witch’s Lesson Mistake Determines Her MCU Future
Scarlet Witch recognizes at the end of Doctor Strange 2like she does at the end of WandaVision, that using her power to conjure up an illusion of contentment with Vision or her children is just that; an illusion, and she had once again destroyed people in her pursuit. Her decision to bring down Mount Wundagore around her at its peak apparently destroyed all copies of the Darkhold and was a noble sacrifice of self to atone for her destruction. However, because the film does not show a body, there is a good chance that Scarlet Witch can still return. How the events of both WandaVision and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness changing her MCU future if she’s still alive will be fascinating to watch. Future stories could continue to explore her grief and guilt over her descent into rogue, which would be a poignant shift in her character arc.
