Wanda has had a rough couple of years. The character got his due in Disney+'s first original series, WandaVision, and in this month's Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. She is getting her due after years as the fifth, sixth, or seventh superhero on the call sheet. As she has ascended into center-of-the-movie-poster status, she has also lost her mind, from a character realizing the responsibility inherent in her powers to someone out of control, spinning ideas from her comic-book incarnations into something far worse.
Wanda's journey from the movie "Avengers: Age of Ultron to Multiverse of Madness" is a fitting one for some. She was initially introduced as an agent for the terrorist organization. The argument goes that it makes sense for her to take a turn. People overcoming grave circumstances to become heroes is built into the Marvel mythology. If Wanda can survive the manipulation of Hydra, why can't she be a hero? She is one of the most powerful witches in the universe and yet she is susceptible to manipulation by everyone and everything. She grieves over the death of her partner, Vision, but such justifications are troubling because they rob one of the mightiest characters in the universe of her strength.
Many have pointed out that Wanda's journey is similar to that of Jean Grey of the X-Men franchise, as well as another story that has made it to the big screen. It's not Wanda's story, but the message is the same: Powerful women can't be trusted, you never know what they're going to do.
The character's own comic book history and the work of writers John and Brian Michael Bendis are what inspired the onscreen journey of Wanda Maximoff. Much of what Wanda has gone through in the past couple of years is due to the late-1980s and early-90s run on West Coast Avengers. In the course of two years, Byrne dismantled Vision, undoing Wanda's marriage in the process, revealing that her children were merely magical constructs that ceased to exist due to the machinations of a demonic villain, and had her possessed or influenced by two separate entities in order to turn her.
This was part of a larger story that he was planning but never told because he quit the series over conflicts with editors and executives. Wanda's world was undone and the character was damaged as a result.
What is the damage? The 2004 Avengers writing debut is called "Chaos" and is also known as "Avengers Disassembled". Wanda's suppressed memories of her children are brought to the surface, causing her to lose her mind and try to kill all of the Avengers. She was defeated by the team and put into a coma by Doctor Strange, who took her away from her father. Don't ask, Wanda's parentage is a long-running, overly complex, repeatedly rewritten story line in comics.
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