When Wanda Maximoff was introduced in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Avengers: Age of Ultron, her power set revolved around some kind of vaguely defined psychokinesis and telepathic manipulation.
Wanda would point at something, furrow her brow and some weird red energy would escape from her fingertips and...
Well, stuff would happen.
While the source of her powers appeared to be SCIENCE!, in WandaVision we learned that Wanda's gifts may be based more in the supernatural than the pseudo scientific.
This Wanda Maximoff, our erstwhile Scarlet Witch, what pray tell is it that she exactly do?
Wanda having an ill defined power set is nothing new and is in keeping with her comic book roots.
Take for example this sequence in Avengers #85, "The World is Not For Burning!" by Roy Thomas, John Buscema and Frank Giacoia.
The deal is Wanda and some of her fellow Avengers are in some kind of phantom state in some kind of ersatz Earth that exists in the future or in another dimension or something.
Even Wanda herself is unsure what her power can do. "Perhaps it can help us somehow!"
Wanda has no concept of what her power is, how it works or what it can do. Perhaps she can do... "Something... Anything!"
Also befuddled by her powers is writer Roy Thomas. All Roy can tell the loyal Marvel reader is that whenever Wanda wiggles her fingers, she zaps up a hex sphere and then...
And then...
A hex sphere do what a hex sphere gotta do.
Which is to make something happen.
Is the something a good something?
Is the something a bad something?
Wanda has no idea.
Roy Thomas who is writing this damned thing has no idea.
Over time, the hex sphere morphed into the hex bolt or more precisely, the probability hex bolt.
Wanda's probability hex bolt would zap something, say a boulder and change the probability of that boulder exploding from nil to very likely and BOOM! Boulder 'splodes!
Eventually, her powers of affecting probability reached the obvious conclusion of altering reality.
Which led to a whole mess of trouble for Wanda Maximoff where she did and did not have kids and she was and was not evil.
When I was a much young Dave-El, I was there for an epic storyline that kicked off with Avengers#185.
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| Cover by George Perez & Terry Austin |
Wanda and her brother Pietro (Quicksilver) journey to Wundagore Mountain to learn of their true origin. It seems their parents were a couple of Golden Age heroes, Miss America and the Whizzer.
(I'll pause here while you giggle. Yes, there really was a super speed character from the 1940s called the Whizzer.)
There's some muckety muck involving the High Evolutionary and Agatha Harkness (yes, that Agatha Harkness) as to who Wanda and Pietro were and how they came to be.
In addition to science, it seems magic was involved as well, the sinister sorcery contained within the Darkhold (yes, that Darkhold that Agatha name dropped on WandaVision).
So the Scarlet Witch goes evil for a minute.
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| Cover by John Byrne & Terry Austin |
Which would not be the last time that would happen. Sadly it's an easy well to tap into for writers to have Scarlet Witch go bug nuts.
Also writers were never satisfied to leave Wanda's origins alone for a minute.
Even as writer David Michelinie (with plotting assists from Mark Gruenwald and Steven Grant) was laying down the Maximoffs' origin story on Wundagore Mountain, artist John Byrne laid down the foundations for that story to be challenged.
Even as Byrne was drawing Avengers, he was also pencilling X-Men and drew a sequence where Magneto is pining over an image of his long lost wife Magda who bore an uncanny resemblance to one Wanda Maximoff.
Was Magneto really the father of the Maximoff twins?
It eventually became canon that he was, a relationship that would drive Wanda to (sigh!) madness again in the crossover event House of M.
Later when the Marvel Cinematic Universe was launched without the X-Men because those film rights were held by Fox, the comics began to call into question Magneto's paternity. \
I'm not really sure right now if Wanda needs to get Magneto a Father's Day card in the current continuity.
Although long a mainstay in the Avengers, the Scarlet Witch has long had to endure inconsistent characterization and an inconsistent understanding of her power set.
Beware the power of Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch! She can do.... something! Anything!
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