Was ‘WandaVision’ Pointless? Why ‘Doctor Strange 2’ Makes Us Wonder
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and WandaVision. DO NOT READ THIS UNLESS YOU’VE SEEN THE MOVIE.]
Was there a point to WandaVision? It’s a question you may ask yourself when walking out of the theater from a viewing of Marvel’s latest film, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
Before we get too deep into the idea, we must warn that we’re heading into spoiler territory, so if you want to remain unsullied for either WandaVision or Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, now would be the time to turn back and exit this article.
In WandaVision, Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) finds herself living in the New Jersey suburb known as Westview, but something was amiss. Because as she lived a fantasy life set under the lens of several TV classics ranging from I Love Lucy and Bewitched to Malcolm in the Middle, her dead love Vision (Paul Bettany) was there to experience it with her.
She also manifests the birth of their twins Tommy (Jett Klyne) and Billy (Julian Hilliard) who along with Vision, she has to leave behind when she realizes this fantasy life has been created within a hex of her making. Her powers force the people of the town to bend to her will and live scripted in the Westview she envisions.
And so, after managing to let go of the Westview she made, along with Vision, Billy, and Tommy, Wanda flies off into the unknown before settling down in a mountainside cabin. The catch? She’s begun studying from the Darkhold, a book of dark spells that forces Wanda to hear her children’s voices in her ear.
This tips her off to search for Billy and Tommy in different universes when Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness kicks off. In the time since viewers last saw her, Wanda has made a full transformation into the Scarlet Witch, and she has allowed the Darkhold to corrupt her mind.
In the process, she’s used various beings to try and find America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez), a girl with the power to jump through universes in order to gain access to Billy and Tommy in other worlds. The big problem? Wanda’s gone full villain, harming anyone and everyone that gets in her way so she can find her boys. She kills, maims, outsmarts, and enchants whatever she has to in order to reach her goal, but that goal doesn’t entirely make sense and results in forcing Wanda to learn a lesson she already did in WandaVision.
Westview was her manifestation of grief, but when she saw that it was hurting other people and when her family came under the threat of not just S.W.O.R.D. but also Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), Wanda defeated the evil surrounding her and then let her family go because she knew it was hurting others for her to be there. Even with the influence of the Darkhold over her, it doesn’t make so much sense that she’d kill so callously.
WandaVision‘s Wanda walked away from her life, and if she heard her children’s voices through the Darkhold, then searching through universes to make sure they’re okay would be understandable, but wanting to hijack a universe where she could live with them doesn’t seem in character for what she’s gone through already. She’s repeatedly told by several characters that even if she finds her twins, they have a mother in their universe and would render her presence pointless in their lives.
It’s not until America opens a portal to one of those universes that Wanda’s forced to see the pain and destruction that she’s causing as Tommy and Billy cower away from her and are more concerned with their mother from their universe. Seeing the error of her ways, she removes herself from the universe where she’s now traumatized Billy and Tommy and realizes that she needs to destroy the Darkhold. The feat appears to leave her buried in rubble, but we doubt that’s the last time we’ve seen Olsen don the Scarlet Witch’s crown.
Wanda has been through so much, between losing her parents at a young age, being experimented on as a child, losing her twin brother Pietro (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) in Avengers: Age of Ultron, losing Vision in Avengers: Infinity War, and going through the emotional turmoil that WandaVision had in store for her. Whether or not this part of the comic book source material, Wanda’s arc in Multiverse of Madness felt slightly unfair. And maybe that’s the point, she does tell Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) that when he breaks the rules, he’s a hero, but when she does it, she’s a villain.
Even with this self-awareness and acknowledgment of a double standard, it doesn’t defend Wanda’s actions and brings her twenty steps backward from the progress she made in WandaVision. At this point, it only feels like the show was introduced to give Wanda a story in Multiverse of Madness by introducing Billy and Tommy, and perhaps that means the series had a purpose, but not the one viewers may have initially believed it did. The unfortunate thing is, it feels like a disservice to WandaVision which cast a spell on audiences when it debuted on Disney+.
What do you think of Wanda’s story in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness? Did it render WandaVision pointless? Let us know how you feel in the comment section, below.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, In Theaters, Now
WandaVision, Streaming Now, Disney+