The fall of Scarlet Witch within the MCU–from an Avengers hero to a murderous villain–was heartbreaking to watch, and her secret power within Marvel Comics makes her corruption way more tragic.
Wanda Maximoff aka Scarlet Witch earned her comic-accurate moniker in the MCU following the Disney+ Original Series Wandavision. Before then, she was simply referred to as Wanda despite the fact that she was a bona fide superhero and member of the Avengers–a position she took within the film Avengers: Age of Ultron. Unfortunately, after suffering one crushing loss after the other, Scarlet Witch succumbed to grief and allowed herself to fall into darkness in pursuit of her ultimate happiness. This led to Scarlet Witch becoming a full-on villain in the film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness where she proved to be unafraid of killing anyone who stood in her way–a complete corruption that was devastating to witness.
In X-Men Chronicles #2 by Howard Mackie and Ian Churchill, the X-Men of the Age of Apocalypse timeline are coming up with a game-plan to defeat Apocalypse and save the world, all in the midst of two of their strongest members (Weapon X and Jean Grey) leaving the team for good. In light of this development, Quicksilver–who is one of the leaders of the X-Men under Magneto–is reliving the loss of his sister, Scarlet Witch, who was killed in the previous issue by Apocalypse’s son, Nemesis. He recounts her presence on the X-Men to Rogue, saying how much he and the team miss her–noting that she had a hidden ‘ability’ to “instantly make anyone feel loved”.
Scarlet Witch Made People Feel Loved, Making Her Corruption Tragic
Even though Quicksilver assuredly didn’t mean that Scarlet Witch had the literal power to make people feel euphoric (though she was a powerful magic user, so that is a potential possibility), her inherent ‘ability’ to do so was ingrained in her personality so much that it was worth noting by her brother years after her death. This makes her descent into villainy so tragic as Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness showed Scarlet Witch doing nothing but inspiring fear and death in nearly every scene she was in. Scarlet Witch was killing classic Marvel characters like Reed Richards and Professor X while hunting a literal child with the intention of murdering her for her own benefit–that is a far cry from making people feel loved.
While there are plenty of examples within Marvel Comics where Scarlet Witch was portrayed as a villain as well as in the MCU (including House of M and even her first appearance), this comic makes it clear that underneath it all, she had a secret ‘ability’ to make anyone feel loved–an ability that was most recently corrupted in the MCU.
