The Scarlet Witch’s 5 Best Marvel Moments

Wanda Maximoff could’ve tapped out. Hawkeye gave her the choice while these two incredibly unlikely allies (remember how Wanda spent the first 100+ minutes of this movie trying to kill the Avengers?) found shelter in a bombed out building on the newly skybound Sokovia. As Hawkeye explained, the situation was ridiculously dangerous and dangerously ridiculous. The Avengers were a team of heroes up against an army of robots on a flying hunk of real estate that Ultron intended to drop on Earth like an atomic bomb. The stakes were high—and Wanda had a choice. We now know, through flashbacks in WandaVision, that the girl had already been through it. Her parents were victims of war and then she was radicalized and experimented on by HYDRA. She threw in with Ultron to get revenge on Iron Man, the man who made the missiles that blew up her life, only to find out that Ultron was actually a genocidal monster. She was rightly terrified and traumatized—so Hawkeye gave her an out! She could shelter in place, and wait for Pietro to get her. Or she could step out that door and become an Avenger. Wanda woke up and chose heroism.

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Captain America: Civil War was the turning point for Wanda. In a movie absolutely stuffed with characters and arcs-aplenty, Wanda’s stands out for the way it piles even more tragedy on top of this character. No one can console Wanda after her deadly mistake in Lagos, not even Captain America. And then there’s Vision. While the two met in Age of Ultron, Civil War is really where their romance blossoms. The sympathetic synthezoid proves to be the only Avenger who can walk through Wanda’s emotional walls. Their heart to heart in the kitchen is incredibly sweet; you can see the spark of chemistry that would later power all of WandaVision right here. But because this is the MCU, it all takes a dark turn the minute Wanda realizes Vision’s also been assigned to keep her in the compound no matter what.

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Here’s the truth that no one talks about enough: Wanda Maximoff was only one of two people Avengers: Infinity War to try to do what needed to be done. Every good guy knew that Thanos would achieve godhood the instant he acquired all six Infinity Stones, but every hero gave up the stone they were tasked with guarding the instant Thanos gave them an impossible choice. Loki gave up the Space Stone to keep Thanos from killing Thor and Gamora gave up the location of the Soul Stone to save Nebula. Hell, Doctor Strange refused to destroy the Time Stone because he took an oath! Priorities, man! The only people who made the tough call to sacrifice a loved one to save the universe were Star-Lord (never forget that he actually pulled the trigger on Gamora when Thanos grabbed her!!!) and Wanda f’ing Maximoff. It’s a horrible choice and a philosophical and moral conundrum, but Wanda—a hero who’d already lost her parents and brother!—made the unbelievably wrenching call to destroy the Mind Stone and the love of her life in order to save half the universe. And if Doctor Strange had just destroyed the Time Stone, Thanos wouldn’t have been able to turn back the clock and undo Wanda and Vision’s sacrifice.

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Wanda Maximoff’s entire hero journey all led to this: in the middle of an all-out war against Thanos’ army, one against seemingly every super-powered or highly-trained individual on Earth, the biggest battle sequence in MCU history pauses to give Wanda her moment. She’s going up against Thanos, the mad Titan himself, the man who no other hero has even come close to stopping at this point. Not even his shade about not knowing who she is rattles her. She tells this purple jerk that he is about to be very familiar with her rage, and then she kicks his ass so assuredly and soundly that Thanos has to call in an airstrike and bomb his own troops just to get this witch off his back.

From mustering the courage to fight back against a bunch of robots all the way to blasting the crap out of the greatest villain in the entire universe with ease. I love this journey for her.

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I know it’s an easy out to just call all of WandaVision just one of Wanda’s best MCU moments, but what else am I to do? You could easily do a list like this that just includes moments from this one show! Elizabeth Olsen showing off her impeccable comedic timing, all the faces she pulled as the beyond depressed sitcom mom, the way she took flight and confronted her husband those excellent ’80s jeans, the tons of agony she squeezed into just that one scene of her asking the S.W.O.R.D. receptionist to let her speak to the manager, the way she finally assumed the mantle of Scarlet Witch after embracing her grief, her saying goodbye to her children—the entire series is a highlight reel for this one character, originally a bit player in a much larger universe. So I don’t know—pick your favorite Wanda moment from WandaVision and stick it here, because whichever moment you pick will be the right one.

Stream WandaVision on Disney+