Scarlet Witch/ Wanda Maximoff Discussion (Specifically about dislike)

[CosmiComic]

X-Fans should be unhappy with how X-Men were treated in the comics, but I don't think they should be too surprised the Avengers are the biggest Marvel team now. I mean, the Avengers were popular before the X-Men were, so it's kinda come full circle

[PwrdOn]

X-Fans should be unhappy with how X-Men were treated in the comics, but I don't think they should be too surprised the Avengers are the biggest Marvel team now. I mean, the Avengers were popular before the X-Men were, so it's kinda come full circle

It's all about the movies. The only reason Marvel sold off the rights to X-Men, Spider-Man, and FF in the first place was because they were popular, which meant that when they finally decided to make movies themselves they only had the "second tier" characters to work with. Of course now that the MCU has made the Avengers far more popular than any of their other franchises ever were, so even after the Fox acquisition it's unlikely that the X-Men will be making a comeback. Of course this isn't helped by the fact that the editorial neglect of the X line for the last decade plus has left them with decidedly mediocre and uninspired comics, so that there is very little in the way of adaptable source material. Even if they decide to integrate the X-Men into the MCU eventually they'll probably just be rehashing the same old stories yet again, and I'm not sure if anyone really wants to watch the Dark Phoenix saga play out for a third time.

[gurkle]

I don't think you can say it was intentional when she was possessed by the Life Force and had none of those same feelings after it was removed.

In the context of House of M, though, it's definitely supposed to be intentional. And even "Children's Crusade," which many fewer people have read, doesn't say that "The Life Force" (whatever that is) made her want to wipe out mutants, just that it gave her the power to do so. I wish there was a better retcon, but even if they gave us one the story would still affect the way people see the character.

X-Fans should be unhappy with how X-Men were treated in the comics, but I don't think they should be too surprised the Avengers are the biggest Marvel team now.

That was true for a while, but now Marvel publishing is giving far more attention and promotion to the X-Men and related books. It's a lot like the early '90s when most of the promotion also went into the X-Men and Spider-Man, and the Avengers and related books were sort of B-list.

Which is fine, because things were very different just a few years ago when there were a zillion Avengers books and the X-Men were being downplayed in favor of the Inhumans. What goes around comes around.

[kcekada]

Personally, I feel any dislike of Wanda over Avengers Assembled and House of M should be directed at the person who wrote those stories -- Brian Bendis.

[CosmiComic]

It's all about the movies. The only reason Marvel sold off the rights to X-Men, Spider-Man, and FF in the first place was because they were popular, which meant that when they finally decided to make movies themselves they only had the "second tier" characters to work with. Of course now that the MCU has made the Avengers far more popular than any of their other franchises ever were, so even after the Fox acquisition it's unlikely that the X-Men will be making a comeback. Of course this isn't helped by the fact that the editorial neglect of the X line for the last decade plus has left them with decidedly mediocre and uninspired comics, so that there is very little in the way of adaptable source material. Even if they decide to integrate the X-Men into the MCU eventually they'll probably just be rehashing the same old stories yet again, and I'm not sure if anyone really wants to watch the Dark Phoenix saga play out for a third time.

True, but I also feel the Avengers translates more into making all the different characters popular because they each have their own sub-franchises. Whereas the X-Men are already on teams. Plus the F4 had several movies and failed

[CosmiComic]

Personally, I feel any dislike of Wanda over Avengers Assembled and House of M should be directed at the person who wrote those stories -- Brian Bendis.

This is the difficulty of assessing a character affected by real world antics

[PwrdOn]

True, but I also feel the Avengers translates more into making all the different characters popular because they each have their own sub-franchises. Whereas the X-Men are already on teams. Plus the F4 had several movies and failed

Well Marvel Studios also committed to a long term roadmap from the get-go that paid off big for them in the end, I don't think anyone going expected that the likes Guardians of the Galaxy or Dr. Strange would have made for viable movies. There are, or at least there were, a bunch of fan favorite X-Men characters, but Fox didn't really think of building up a franchise in that way and just focused their entire series around Wolverine, with many prominent X-Men reduced to random cameos or completely unrecognizable from their comic identities.

[CosmiComic]

Well Marvel Studios also committed to a long term roadmap from the get-go that paid off big for them in the end, I don't think anyone going expected that the likes Guardians of the Galaxy or Dr. Strange would have made for viable movies. There are, or at least there were, a bunch of fan favorite X-Men characters, but Fox didn't really think of building up a franchise in that way and just focused their entire series around Wolverine, with many prominent X-Men reduced to random cameos or completely unrecognizable from their comic identities.

Yeah, reducing many major mutants to cameos in the XCU did not help at all!

[CJStriker]

I've known people who hate her in the comics for what they did to the mutants, but like her in the MCU even though she set the Hulk loose on a city and then held a town hostage.

Remember, a lot of "hatred" of a character is based on their role in a story. Everyone knows that the only reason Wanda wiped out mutants is that the writers made her do it. But if someone is a big X-comics fan and not an Avengers comics fan, then her role, to them, is a villainous one. They know that if they loved Avengers comics they'd see her differently, but they don't. Hating her is part of the game of having emotional responses to stories that aren't real.

Then there's the flipside: why do most people like MCU Wanda even after what she did to the people of Westview? Because the people of Westview are just treated as props in the story. They had like 5 minutes of screen time as themselves; we, the viewer, pretty much only know them as Wanda's sitcom supporting cast. (And also, Wanda is played by a beautiful movie star, and the reason stars are stars is because they are so likeable, no matter what they're doing.) So even though we all know they're right to hate her at the end, it's hard for us to care about them.

One reason the writers made Monica so defensive of Wanda, right to the end, is that Monica is the new character and Wanda is the star of the show, and the audience would never like Monica if she were mean to Wanda. Just like in Avengers: Age of Ultron some viewers hated Wanda, but not for turning the Hulk loose, but for being mean to Tony Stark and the other established star characters.

So it's perfectly possible for someone to love MCU Wanda and hate comics Wanda for making the X-Men's lives so miserable. They know it's not real, but getting invested in a story is a game, and the game involves pretending like these characters are real people we can love or hate.

As Always VERY Good and always a Pleasure to Read Post Gurkle, Thank You for the Breakdown as you do well as always!

I like how you broke down some of the Main reasons why MCU Wanda has stuck with fans so well despite some of the Arguing point of Westview. But Adding to that I think thier is another layer to that that explains why Fans stuck by Wanda and it is how I think Monica ending up as well, see We All where Monica in a Way.

What is differnt is that as Viewers, as as Stan Lee might most elengantly put it, We where ALL the Watchers of this Show and we saw Everything that happen and all that was mean to be seen to be given to us, this is different from the views of just in-story characters.

Watches Got to see Wanda's Breakdown, Wanda's Mental Troubles, Wanda's Struggles with herself, her Reality and Even her how perceptions on Reality. Wanda Could Not in My Good Viewing Consensus of what I Viewed and it seemed like the Views of Many could be seen as a Villain in this at all, It is a offense to the whole ideal of what a Villian is. They Plan and Plot and have ideals clear of mind and sound of ideals they want to achieve, heck some of my favorite Characters of Franchises are Villians, so To View Wanda's Actions as some Mustache Twirling She had this all plained out Villain could not stick even if I tried to find it. Only a few I have talked to believe this and it is few in numbers.

Why this is and what the Vast Majority of Fans Witness is a Woman Broke to her Rock Bottom Core, who she was in WestView was just as at time a used character as many of the other citizens of WestView, Wanda was in a sense a Victum herself of her own Grief and Pain and she did not even fully know it or her mind could not piece herself together enought to put it together. People who have witness mental illness or breaks in theirs have seen forms of this as well depending on the type of Illness, how a person can sound fine and seem to talk fine but you know they are not fine and they seem to change emotional state rapidly and/or don't then remember what they did or said the before, this was in part what I was thinking the Writers of WandaVision where trying to get at with what was going on with Wanda.

This was struggle threw this our Wanda was going threw and it was a Struggle the Audiance was on with her as well. Like I said it did not stick with all, but it seem to greatly stick with Many, MANY more that GOT what Wanda was going threw, got this was an accident and got that while things seem fuzz with how in and out of it she was, allot of issues where going on with Wanda that fans could see clearly where governing her very negatively and destroying her. If this was not the case then Episode 8 Ment Nothing in the Long Run, IMO the made certain for many this was not Wanda at total fault but a Wanda Broken by her own self and lost in her own Mind broken by Trauma.

The events of Episode 9 made that clear, if she was clear all along then her setting the People of WestView Free would NEVER have happen. A Wanda in Control the whole time would never do this, heck when the binds to the mind of Dotty where broke Wanda as truly suprised thinking Agatha did something to her, but Wanda was horrified by this revelation, again, a lady that did this on purpose or kept it fully on purpose would not react the way that she did. Finally in the end Wanda has to make the choice to ending what she loved the most and gave up her Family, the one thing she loved more than anything else to set free for good those people and then town and put back right which once went Wrong.

The Audiance got to see ALL of this, they where the bears of all that was witness and got to feel and be apart of the journey Wanda as on and the pain of it all!

This is Why I think Wanda Despite the events of WestView has Garden so much support after the show, people got to see and journey threw her dealings and sypothize with her. They connected on a fundemental level with Wanda, they can connect as people who go threw or have a loved one who has Mental Illness and what tole it takes on people. It connected with people who thought they where only doing good for those around them but it only lead to pain and lost. It connected with People who threw this Pandemic and The Social Unreset in our Politicals can say how chaotic and hard believe in any good the world can be, how an upeviled world can happen so easy and how negative it can effect one and those around them in ways never thought of.

This is why I think Wanda Won the Day in Many Ways cause she was a character fleshed out and given why things happen and a change to set it right. Yes it was not clean and it was not all viewed as good by all, but that is the way of the viewing story. Wanda connected with the hearts of Many cause Many got to Understand WHY and they Connected to the WHY and the Internet Itself by a Mircale when this debate came up at most times, Wanda had more defenders then detractors then ever before.

This is why I think Wanda was viewed more postively by the end of WandaVision and in the MCU.

I hope that helped and added to your own Gurkle!

[GenericUsername]

In the context of House of M, though, it's definitely supposed to be intentional. And even "Children's Crusade," which many fewer people have read, doesn't say that "The Life Force" (whatever that is) made her want to wipe out mutants, just that it gave her the power to do so. I wish there was a better retcon, but even if they gave us one the story would still affect the way people see the character.



That was true for a while, but now Marvel publishing is giving far more attention and promotion to the X-Men and related books. It's a lot like the early '90s when most of the promotion also went into the X-Men and Spider-Man, and the Avengers and related books were sort of B-list.

Which is fine, because things were very different just a few years ago when there were a zillion Avengers books and the X-Men were being downplayed in favor of the Inhumans. What goes around comes around.

When canon is expanded upon it counts until something else in canon negates it. It doesn't matter what it was depicted as in 2005. Especially since that messed up a lot of the canon before that so it needed cleaned up.

[GenericUsername]

I think a lot of X-Men fans like to fixate on House of M less for the in-story consequences, which let's be honest were minimal for most of the named characters and mostly just implied, and more for how it represented the X-Men losing their status as Marvel's premier franchise and being sidelined into an irrelevant corner of the MU. Of course, this was entirely due to an editorial mandate to stop promoting franchises that Marvel didn't own the film rights to, and so they hastily cobbled together a story and made Wanda the scapegoat because, for whatever reason, that group of writers just didn't really like her and didn't want the fallout to hamper a character they actually wanted to use. And there is still is an apparent disconnect between the people in charge of the MCU, who clearly have an affection for Wanda and put a lot of thought and care into crafting a emotionally resonant storyline for her, and the publishing division, who pretty much go out of their way to keep trying to get fans to hate her, if they bother to use her at all.

I've seen a lot of X-Men fans try to argue that Wanda should be hated because she's a genocidal villain, but the thing about that is, Wanda doesn't really work as a villain because nobody really sees her as threatening. Yes she technically has a very potent set of powers and has had some impressive moments here and there, but I feel like comic fans fixate way too much on that and don't think enough about the kind of impression that the character makes on the audience. And though Wanda's characterization has made some progress since her early days as the token damsel in distress, she's still generally portrayed as emotionally unstable and vulnerable, and I'm fairly certain that it's this perception of weakness is the real reason that both editorial and the X-Men fans don't like her. If Wanda were truly this mass murdering supervillain, then nobody would go out of their way to hate her character the same way nobody really hates Thanos or Galactus - their actions fill a role in the story and if they are written well then the more heinous their actions the more effective they will be at making the story work. Wanda was really badly miscast as the villain in Disassembled and House of M, so much so that they really aren't about her at all, and as a result those stories ended up being disappointing and unsatisfying to fans.

It was definitely the start with them reducing the number of mutants way down. Even if it came long before the mandate in 2014 just removed them completely from merch and video games. I think the only reason they hung on in comics was they still sold very well and comics struggle financially to hang on. Otherwise they'd have done to them what they did to the F4. Luckily that era is over. And now they are coming back to games and merch. Movies will be soon. I think next phase at the earliest.

[gurkle]

When canon is expanded upon it counts until something else in canon negates it. It doesn't matter what it was depicted as in 2005. Especially since that messed up a lot of the canon before that so it needed cleaned up.

I personally don't think people need to care that much about what is and isn't canon. Like I didn't start hating Wanda when it was canon that she wiped out mutants on purpose, I just ignored it as out-of-character writing. They're all just stories that we enjoy as stories, and if we don't like them we don't necessarily "count" them when it comes to how we think of a character.

[CosmiComic]

I personally don't think people need to care that much about what is and isn't canon. Like I didn't start hating Wanda when it was canon that she wiped out mutants on purpose, I just ignored it as out-of-character writing. They're all just stories that we enjoy as stories, and if we don't like them we don't necessarily "count" them when it comes to how we think of a character.

For me it can be difficult sometimes to hate the character vs. to hate what the writers are doing with them

[MaximoffTrash]

I personally don't think people need to care that much about what is and isn't canon. Like I didn't start hating Wanda when it was canon that she wiped out mutants on purpose, I just ignored it as out-of-character writing. They're all just stories that we enjoy as stories, and if we don't like them we don't necessarily "count" them when it comes to how we think of a character.

Wanda as a character doesn't really have that luxury though, a larger fandom can choose to collectively forget bad writing, if other fans may just play along.
In Wanda's case it's Wanda fans trying to forget it while a larger fandom keeps bringing it up, or worse, the office itself do the same.

[danielsan52]

One of my fave characters. I think Bendis went too far with her, but then that gave us some great X-men stories...