We stan Wanda Maximoff in this house. She is the reason we watched Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. And we’re not ashamed to say that while acknowledging Steven Strange is not that bad, either. But after watching the movie, there’s this feeling inside of us that we can’t contain or want to control when it comes to our Scarlet Witch.
First and foremost, Doctor Strange 2 feels out of touch and out of place in the grander storyline we’ve come to know. We learned so much about Wanda through Wandavision. We learned who she was, where she came from, and the grief that she had been experiencing. And we saw bits of that in Doctor Strange 2. But ultimately, this feels like a mere shadow of the great hero she is with a side of not understanding her in the first place.
And we get it. The DarkHold transforms and if you’ve read the comics or just watched WandaVision, you know that. But we didn’t think that the changes would be so terrifying and sad. And while we want to continue stanning Wanda, it’s quite difficult when we are presented with…this; especially when we know her to be so powerful and that others like Agatha Harkness didn’t fall into its arms so hard as she did.
The horror aspect of it all further accentuates how much of a separation this is from previous iterations in the MCU. A lot of people are going to like it. A lot of people will also feel disturbed by it and how it rips open what Wanda is going through and what she feels. Sometimes that feeling is too much and the brutality that we have seen in teaser trailers is only a fraction of what you’re really going to experience mentally, physically, and emotionally.
We experience Wanda’s pain, her strength, and the choices that she makes through a lens of horror. And if we’re being honest, we don’t know if we ever want to see that again, even if we know that grief has multiple stages that can be revisited. Because for a fraction of a second, this movie and Sam Raimi’s vision made us rethink everything that we’ve known about this character and why we love her. And that’s not something that we want at the end of the day.
That’s why in many respects we feel that Wanda in the Multiverse of Madness is not the final form of this character. It can’t be, not if WandaVision taught us anything. And we hope that it isn’t, because if it is, we need to have a more in-depth conversation about how female characters are treated in the MCU. Because right now, it feels like they are letting them down, not letting them live to their full potential.
Hours later, that’s the only thing we can think about: the potential. Because Elizabeth Olsen is a magnificent actress who deserves every award coming her way for every second of Wanda. But Doctor Strange 2, no matter how electrifying her performance was, made us wonder how we can better utilize the most powerful Avenger? And why have we set her on this path of chaos?
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness hits theaters on May 6, 2022.
