The enormous success of ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ has not prevented Sam Raimi’s film from receiving various criticisms, but there is a particularly recurring. While I was watching it, I already thought that this was going to happen, but also that I was totally in favor of Marvel betting on going in that direction.
From here on there are spoilers for both “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” and “Game of Thrones” and other Marvel titles.
I mean the way of approaching the character played by elizabeth olsen, since the resistance towards the decision to make her the great villain of the show has been notorious in some viewers. Exactly the same thing that happened with Daenerys in the last season of ‘Game of Thrones’, and in both cases it is something that makes all the sense in the world.
I already spoke at length about Daenerys’s case at the time, but the key was that she had been a cruel character since the beginning of the HBO series. That was going to more, and the loss of several loved ones ended up precipitating everything when he decided to destroy King’s Landing. The signs were there, another thing is that you don’t like that it goes from a moral reference to that.
It was a logical path
In the Scarlet Witch case, it is clear that the accumulation of losses has ended up being decisive. It all started with the death of his brother Pietro in ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’, but that emotional scar remained in the background until he ends up sacrificing his beloved Vision only to see moments later how he was useless and on top of that character played by Paul Bettany He died at the hands of Thanos.
The blow was so heavy that many came to believe that ‘Scarlet Witch and Vision’ was her way of dueling, but we conveniently overlooked the fact that she had enslaved an entire town to do so. Agatha’s dazzling appearance made it easier to deflect responsibilities and focus on the possibility of a redemption for Wanda.
It was even logical to want her seeing everything that had happened, but let’s not forget that in the first instance she is reluctant to annul the spell when she discovers that it means losing Vision again and also those children she never really had. And that after the final sacrifice what he does is run away to soak up the dark holda book full of dangerous spells, also hearing the voice of the twins asking for help.
It’s clear that post-credits scene was Marvel’s way of making it clear that Wanda was still going through a delicate emotional state. There, different explanations can be adduced for what came next, most of them associated with a mental health problem, but the same thing happens with countless villains in the history of cinema and television that did not cause such a stir.
Another detail that strikes me is that a few years ago there were not a few who complained about the television abuse of the figure of the antihero to show how male characters were corrupted, which did not prevent certain viewers from following their side. To some extent it can be said that this is exactly what has happened in the case of Wanda Maximoff.
Agatha already commented in the last episode of ‘Scarlet Witch and Vision’ that “The Scarlet Witch is not born, she is forged” and that “your destiny is to destroy the world“. We’ll see if the latter is fulfilled, because Wanda’s apparent sacrifice at the end of ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ could be nothing more than a postponementbut that she finally became the Scarlet Witch is indisputable, even she herself proclaims it.
Then the issue arises that it is very juicy to talk about a female character of this caliber being played poorly, to the point that I think no one doubts that she is the strongest Avenger in the MCU after that display of power against the Illuminati. Yes indeed, let’s remember that she was not so powerful before and that the Darkhold plays a key role in achieving it, hence before he was no match for Thanos. But it’s also essential for Wanda to get corrupted, let’s not forget.
Reasonable complaints?
So what’s wrong with Scarlet Witch being the villain of ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’? There I see two convincing but not decisive arguments to reject it. The first is that they don’t like that a character who has been through so much pain goes over to the dark side. There it is the viewer who feels betrayed because his beloved Wanda acts in a way that he cannot defend. Understand, of course, yes, but defending indiscriminate extermination is complicated. There will be someone who will.
The second reason is that you can feel something rushed, a very recurring complaint in the case of Daenerys and ‘Game of Thrones’. There is a certain clash there, but there is a very important element in that talk between Wanda and Stephen Strange that has not left my head since I saw the last Marvel adventure.
As you will remember, the character played by Benedict Cumberbatch even tells Wanda that He doesn’t come to talk to her about what happened at Westview.downplaying what happened and arguing that he will do his best to make her popular with humanity again if it helps him with the problem at hand.
Come on, the fact of enslaving an entire town and causing a destructive wave is not something reprehensible because Wanda needed it. Something even more monstrous was necessary, perhaps that is why just moments later we discovered everything that she had in her hands and How far is she willing to go to seize power from America Chavez?
And above He does it using that emotional need that Marvel had used to make us connect more with the character.. But it is that the villains do not have to be only a mere incarnation of evil, some can use very valid arguments but applying reprehensible methods.
From there you can go into other details such as perhaps more female characters are needed to serve as a reference instead of resorting to them being the ones who are corrupted, but if you want great heroines, too it is necessary to accept and even celebrate that they can make decisions as bad and criticizable as they are.
In this case, there has been talk that Wanda is a kind of equivalent of a Greek tragedy in Marvel, and I totally agree. Nor is she a villain to use, although there are scenes in ‘Doctor Strange in the multiverse of madness’ that define her as some kind of destructive and unstoppable force, and that cathartic denouement makes it clear that she still simply needed space to deal with the pain. The problem is that to achieve it he had to leave so many corpses in his path…