Why the Multiverse Could Be the Key to Wanda’s MCU Return

This article contains spoilers for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

After Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) appeared to sacrifice herself to destroy Mount Wundagore in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, fans have been wondering when or if the Scarlet Witch will make a return to the MCU. While the fate of the Wanda Maximoff we know and love may still be up in the air, neither Elizabeth Olsen nor MCU mastermind Kevin Feige seem ready to say goodbye to the character just yet. 

Feige has been vocal about his love of Elizabeth Olsen as an actor, telling Variety that the only reason they even attempted WandaVision was because she is “such an outstanding actor” and goes on to say that he’d work with her “for another 100 years if we could.” When asked about Wanda’s fate in Multiverse of Madness, Feige insists that we never actually see her body in the rubble saying “I saw a tower coming down, and a little red flash. I don’t know what that means,” implying that we probably haven’t seen the last of Wanda in the MCU. 

Elizabeth Olsen has been just as vague about her return to the MCU, but is equally open to coming back into the fold. In her recent profile for Variety’s Power of Women issue, she mentioned that she would love to see “some sort of redemption” for her character after her dark turn in Multiverse of Madness – as would many of the fans who saw her villainous streak in the film as a stark turn from Wanda’s journey in WandaVision. When told about Hugh Jackman’s return as Wolverine, Olsen expressed interest in teaming up with the X-Men as the Scarlet Witch saying “It would be cool to work with a lot of those people from the X-Men franchise.”

Given Wanda’s X-Men origins in the comics, she and her brother Pietro are actually Magneto’s children not metahumans created by the Mind stone, bringing Wanda back with the X-Men could be a logical next step for the MCU. Since we’ve already seen this version of Wanda turn villainous, her redemption could lie in using her knowledge of the multiverse to bridge the gap between the X-Men and the Avengers as the Multiverse Saga comes to a close in phase 6, especially if Earth-838 Wanda is looking to make amends for what the Scarlet Witch did to her world. Or we could see an entirely different Wanda appear as either friend or foe. In regards to Wanda’s story in the MCU, Feige told Variety that “there really is so much more to explore. We still haven’t touched on many of her core storylines from the comics.”

Between Multiverse of Madness and the animated Disney+ series What If…?, we’ve already seen that more than one version of Wanda exists in the multiverse. Even if the version of Wanda that we’ve gotten to know over the years did die in the fall of Wundagore, that shouldn’t stop Feige from bringing the character back to give her the arc she truly deserves. Patrick Stewart’s Professor X and Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine both died in Logan, and their characters have made or will make appearances in the MCU, so clearly the death of a character is not an obstacle if Feige really wants them there. As Feige himself said “Anything’s possible in the multiverse!” Let’s just hope that whichever version of Wanda we see next gets the redemption arc she deserves.