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I get the feeling that a lot of people may not liked the fate of the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) but one has to admit she was all sorts of awesome in the movie. From her introduction in Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) – though technically she first appeared in the end-credit stinger in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) and her appearances in later movies, she’s always been known as Wanda Maximoff (though I get the feeling that more comic fans knew her as ‘Scarlet Witch’ though she was never called that in the movies before Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness).

No, because she hadn’t earned that title though she definitely did this time out.

IIn the comics as far as I’m aware she was always known as the Scarlet Witch though to me her power set was magic-adjacent (though as depicted her abilities always felt more like ‘science’ than magic to me. Doctor Strange had the weird, trippy visuals I always associated with magic. The Scarlet Witch? Not so much) and she wore red.

That’s it. And while that isn’t at all unusual as far as comics go, it’s not a tendency I like to see in movies.

Which is why Scarlet Witch is so brilliant. We witness an arc, the growth of her character, from movie to movie; a person in a state of change (and while you get bonus points for catching WandaVision, and adds greater depth it’s is hardly necessary).

And as I began, people may not have liked Wanda Maximoff’s fate (which is as final as anything else in a movie based on a comic book, which is to say not at all) but isn’t it the journey that matters more so than the destination?