We all saw the ending of WandaVision right? The one where Wanda was looking through the evil book for her kids? The book that messes with the head of whoever uses it?
The reason I ask is because in every discussion thread of Multiverse of Madness, people act like her being a villain came from nowhere. And to me, the ending of WandaVision clearly established Wanda was not ok. When I saw MoM I was like, "Yeah, the darkhold is messing with her head. This isn't really her.". Hence why when her kids freak out at her at the end, she snaps out of it, because thats what all of this has been about.
But maybe I'm the weird one. I don't know. I just feel like I am legitimately the only one who doesn't think her being a villain came from nowhere.
I could be wrong, it's been a while since I watched Wandavision, but if I remember correctly, Wanda reading the Darkhold was a post credit scene. Weirdly, not as many people wait for the post credits scenes anymore.
I mean maybe thats it? But like... surely at this point people have seen it right? I dont know. As I said, that post credits scene made perfect sense to lead into MoM for me
Made sense for me too. But not everyone rewatched things or looks up post credit scenes on youtube. Feels weird to me, but they just don't
Half the time these days, people half-watch a show or movie while scrolling on a phone, or just watch clip compilations and synopsis videos and call it sufficient. That's a big part of why so many people miss details in films and television nowadays.
And honestly? Hard to entirely blame them. I'm addicted to the depression brick too.
A person complaining about a movie that they haven’t been able to focus on because of their phone addiction is entirely to blame, if only for the complaining part
Yes, but, a quick post credits scene doesn’t constitute a satisfying or well earned character arch. As far as actually telling the story goes it is only a few steps above “Poochie died on the way back to his home planet” and “Somehow Palpatine Returned”
Especially as, as far as I can tell, people were bothered by the speed at which she went from “Oh my god look at the harm my powers have caused by just day dreaming about the happy life I wanted” to “Imma kill a tonne of people including this orphan teenager so I can kidnap an alternate version of my nonexistent kids”
The problem isn’t that there was no explanation. The Darkhold does explain her actions (albeit poorly to casual fans of the films) It’s that people didn’t like or want that for her character. People felt that she had earned a little breathing room before being, yet again, inadvertently or maladaptivly responsible for more pain and suffering
The entire show is about her mental instability. It wasn't even the Darkhold that actually had her turn, she turned at the end of the show, as signified ny her gaining an outfit that's more along the lines of one of the ones she wore in the comics.
It’s tell don’t show. Which is poor. And even the telling makes no sense.
The Darkhold makes it seem like her kids are alive and in danger. Ok. But in Strange 2 not once does she think her kids are in danger. It doesn’t even fit. Lol.
And of course it is super jarring having Wanda go from accidental prison warden / forcing people to act in sitcoms to…. mass murderer of heroes.
I never got any indication of her boys being in any sort of peril. Wanda understands that she created her children and husband using her powers, but she's also causing trouble for the entire town. At the time, she's unable to release the town and keep those three "alive". So she makes the sacrifice of letting them go.
She reads the books in hope of finding a way to keep them alive, and comes across the fact that they can be alive in a different Earth and starts looking for ways to find one with them and take them.
Any sort of urgency of her part is that she wants to be reunited very, very, very badly.
Doesn’t she literally hear her kids yelling for help in that end credits scene? Edit - I checked to be 100% sure instead of 99% sure. Come on dawg. You are confidently completely wrong here.
What precisely made sense for you?
WandaVision - accidentally made people prisoners to act in sitcoms, realized what happened, took a few days of hemming and hawing to sacrifice her entire family to release the prisoners from acting in sitcoms.
Strange 2 - violently murdering dozens of heroes and acting like a horror movie villain.
Does that make sense? No. Oh there was an end credits scene? Where a book made it seem like her kids were alive and in danger? In strange 2 she never once thinks her kids are in danger.
We go from accidental jailer to Mike Myers bloodthirsty killer without being shown anything in between.
We’re missing a few chapters in this story dawg.
Nah, the entire show was about her mental instability and showing her villainous turn in the end episode. The Darkhold post credits scene was there just to show how she got some more knowledge.
Part of the problem is that it all took place off screen.
In WandaVision, she’s struggling but she’s sympathetic because she’s in so much pain. And even though she hurts a lot of people, she does it unintentionally. She ends the show by trying to put things right and apologizing.
The next we see him in MoM, she’s straight up killing lots of people and chasing a teenage girl.
It seems like the audience missed a few chapters. And that’s assuming everyone saw WandaVision.
I feel like I am taking crazy pills.
Why don’t more people acknowledge the difference you are pointing out.
Accidentally making people prisoners and forcing them to act in sitcoms and then making a big sacrifice to fix it is INCREDIBLY different than casually murdering heroic people by the dozens.
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. Are people just intentionally ignoring all the people who were hurt or killed in Africa because she hexed the Hulk? She was not under the influence of the darkhold. Just villian type shit.
Wow congrats on having memory that reaches to her first appearance but then forgets everything after lol.
Yes she started as somewhat of a villain but then reformed. Also, I don’t think the movie showed Hulk killing anyone? They actually make a point to not have the Hulk do that so he doesn’t seem as bad when he is raging.
Wanda was an avenger. For many years by that point. She had a nervous breakdown and accidentally became a prison warden who made her prisoners act in sitcoms. Then she realized what she did and eventually fixed her mistake while sacrificing a lot personally.
That is how the show ended. Her immediately acting like Freddy Kruger / Mike Myers and mass murdering heroes in her next appearance is jarring.
“Book bad” isn’t narratively satisfying, is tell don’t show, and even the telling is messed up (as the end credits scene made it look like her kids were in danger - but in Strange 2 she not once thought her kids were in danger).
It’s poor writing, and her story is missing a few chapters. That’s just how it is dawg.
It's part of the reason why a lot of fans (myself included) are hoping that she will make a return at some point. I personally didn't have as much of an issue with what they did to her after WandaVision, but she's a popular and interesting enough character that I think her coming back and getting redeemed further would be a satisfying direction to go moving forward.
She's not just some generic evil character, there's more nuance to her character that can be explored
Yes cos it was added later by MoM writers who had not seen wandavision (wasnt finished when they made it)
The after credit made no sense with the show actual ending, where wanda finally made peace with her situation.
A jarring gap that requires explanation.
I dont mind the jarring gap between ending and after credit, but the next movie MUST explain the gap.
Not just rely on the 5 second additional scene that had no background and just run with it.
After credit is not part of the main story, heck it wasnt even made by the same writers. It just a teaser for next movie.
You said she was using the book for the kids. Without MoM, how do you know this?
you don't, especially because she's visibly taken aback by hearing them, which means she wasn't expecting it, which implies she wasn't actively looking for them (even though obviously she would be afterwards), just learning about her power, which is exactly what she told monica she'd do, since westview was the result of her losing control of her powers
Nah this isn’t the issue. The issue is they skipped all her development.
Sure - We can fanwalk the Darkhold slowly corrupting her and leading her to cartoonishly evil mass murdering psycho.
The problem is they showed none of that.
She had a breakdown. She held people as prisoners against their will to… act in sitcoms. She figured out what she was doing. She gave up her family to free those people.
That was the villainy we saw in WandaVision with her reforming herself by the end.
Next appearance mass murderer / horror movie villain à la Jason or Freddy Krueger.
It skipped the actual progression from one to the other. (Even worse, Agatha didn’t seem much different with and without the Darkhold and the other Strange who had the book far longer wasn’t as cartoonishly evil).
It’s been a while but I’m not sure the Darkhold is well explained at all (at least in the MCU)
I think it’s mentioned once or twice what it does to the reader? Maybe? Her turn to evil happened in between projects and I’m not sure if most people knew this would happen
The darkhold is a key macguffin for a whole season of Agents Of Shield
[deleted]
I mean that pivotal information is literally given to us in MoM. The camera stares right at it while people are saying "This book is the devil, yo. This book votes Republican." They aren't like hiding details from you.
They do, but at the same time it feels lazy.
I think more people would have been interested in seeing a story of our hero turn evil / crazy, than one that takes our hero and has her randomly be evil already
A non-canon spin-off show that liked to reference the movies from time to time, but it was never ever referenced by them, making it pretty much irrelevant to the MCU's plans as a whole. Yeah I can see the problem there, when a multi-million blockbuster movie has to depends on such plot points for its story lol
"Some friends pulled her out of mothball", Fury's line about the helicarrier in AoU, was a direct reference to a scene in the show.
It was a season-long plotline for Patton Oswalt.
That was a reference??? Always thought it was lazy handwaving, I'm crying
While not directly mentioning anyone from the show or showing them, only relying on people already from the movies like all of the background technicians working at the computers
shrug haven’t seen that one
s4 is so amazing that it’s literally the best reason to watch the entire series (because unfortunately the best things about it wouldn’t have the same impact without the seasons before).
Notably, AoS generally and s4 specifically include the kind of infiltration suspense that everyone wanted from Secret Invasion but was sorely lacking.
Just FYI
Oh, you should totally check it out.
It’s not a MacGuffin if it actually affects the plot (as the Darkhold certainly did in AoS).
The uranium in Notorious is the classic MacGuffin because it wouldn’t have changed a thing if it’d been an album of cherished family photographs.
Just because numerous characters are after the same thing doesn’t make it a MacGuffin.
Just FYI.
"made sense" dude it completely erased all growth from the show with a tiny scene at the end
Which, for the record, was shoehorned in last second to create a pathetic gap from the show to the movie
The tiny scene doesn’t erase anything. It sets up a potential problem. That was never explored.
That scene makes it seem like her kids are alive and in danger. In strange 2 she never even thinks her kids are in danger.
She just misses her kids. And will murder dozens of heroes to get to them.
It doesn’t even make sense.
people are pointing it out because its an extremely tell-dont-show approach.
she goes from the end scenes of having figured her shit out, being sad, etc., to a thirty second scene where shes using wizard-meth, and then next time we see her shes a wizard-meth kingpin.
even if theres an answer for the specific question, its a very inorganic and sudden jump for the audience.
Even if it wasn’t a post credits scene, Wanda shouldn’t have turned bad in a show, the audiences are different.
Regardless of whether or not you consider AoS to be canon, they did a Darkhold plot too, so seeing that also helped in understanding Wanda's arc.
And a post credits scene that didn't feel emotionally cohesive with the main narrative thrust of the series. The series was about Wanda coming to terms with her grief, to the extent of letting her 'children' go, and then the post-credit scene just reverses that dynamic?
Remember the post-credit scene doesn't overtly reverse anything as well. Just flicks her head around and we're supposed to infer.
yeah, and they didn't even follow up on the post credit scene very well.
in the post credit scene, she heard the kids crying for help. the setup is there for her to be doing bad shit to save her kids, who she believes are in imminent danger.
in the movie, that entire motivation is gone, she's just doing all this evil shit simply because she misses her kids. she doesn't at any point believe they're in danger, and in fact they're completely fine every time we (and wanda) see them.
even if we go by the most popular defense of this discontinuity - "the darkhold was tricking her" - she wouldn't know that and should still behave like she believes the kids are in danger... but she doesn't
She's like what's a little murder for breakfast.
Yeah this is the big thing the defenders miss.
WandaVision Wanda mostly inadvertently trapped people and forced them to be in sitcoms.
Strange 2 Wanda almost immediately is a mass murdering psycho, of heroes, because they won’t give her a kid to abuse.
It’s a big jump. They didn’t actually show any corruption happening. And as the other guy mentioned the motivation in the WandaVision cut scene doesn’t even exist in Strange 2!
“Uh oh the Darkhold may cause her some problems later” due to that scene is a FAR CRY from showing her switch from “I’m forcing people to act in sitcoms due to nervous breakdown, oh that’s bad I should stop doing that even if it means giving up my family” to “[Cackles like wicked witch of the west] I’m going to murder dozens of wizards in horrible ways because they won’t give me a kid I want to abuse”
Trauma is sadly never clean like that. At the end of WandaVision she has some remorse, but she still ultimately has no one, no support, the evilist of all evil magic books. Nothing good was coming out of that situation.
You may be right when it comes to reality. But this is fiction. In fiction, we had a story - WandaVision - which was about Wanda starting overwhelmed by her grief and then finally at the end coming to terms with it enough to release the townsfolk from her spell despite the personal cost.
I don't think it was a good idea to follow that story up with "Wanda turns evil again", no matter how realistic; not even if they'd taken the time to show Wanda failing again due to lack of support etc. But to have Wanda fall based entirely on one post-credits scene and hand-waved as due to an evil magic book, that was a terrible story writing decision. and I tj
She let free all the people of westview... She didnt come to terms with her grief....and second, in Wanda vision she didnt know about the darkhold she start to read it on the post credit scene
Maybe if it is an important plot point, they should put it in the actual show instead of post-credits scenes. Those scenes, IMO, are supposed to be a fun bonus. Not integral to the franchise
Even if you watched that scene Strange 2 is narratively jarring.
Wanda isn’t a mass murdering psycho of heroes in WandaVision. But she is in Strange 2. It’s a big leap and they don’t show how she changed.
Also the end credits scene shows her being shocked in hearing her kids… cry for help. They were crying for help! Yet in Strange 2 she doesn’t think they are in danger at all.
The narrative has a massive gap and it doesn’t even line up well.
a 20 second post credit scene that doesn't even say "SHE'S GOING EVIL" just her head twitching
Also a post credit scene that felt disconnected from the main show.
I was there on opening night for Iron Man. Didn’t miss that one, how could I miss anything later?
Now days yeah I’d accept that as an excuse, but not for Wandavision. This was back in 2021, the post endgame hype was still strong and Wandavision was a huge hit back then, with a multitude of post episodes discussion threads/videos on YouTube, tiktok, reddit you name it. EVERYONE who was a fan of a marvel was keeping up with it. So them not knowing about a post credit scene just doesn’t make sense to me
i have not gone to a single marvel movie where more than 10% of the audience stayed once the credits started. the great majority of audiences simply do not care about stingers.
People don't wait for post credit scenes, for Marvel content? That's like their wheelhouse.
I mean…not everyone watched WV before seeing MoM. In fact, one of the big complaints about post-Endgame content is that people felt like they HAD to watch the shows and stuff in order to understand the movies (which wasn’t really true, but whatever). So if you didn’t see WV, the last thing you saw was Wanda kicking ass during Endgame and then suddenly she’s evil
I would argue that it's definitely the case for The Marvels. Yeah, Monica was in Captain Marvel, but she was a kid then. We meet her again in WandaVision as adult astronaut who gains powers, but not everyone watches the shows, so, who is that to left of CM in the poster? Worse with Ms. Marvel since she was introduced in her show along with her supporting cast who followed her into the movie, so, who are all these new faces?
I still contend that had they kept the original Captain Marvel 2 title, then it would've worked better since you're now marketing a sequel to a billion dollar film rather than a team-up adventure with 2 of the 3 leads doing next to nothing to hype up the casuals since they don't know them.
I felt that way with Captain America 4. Like, there was this new Falcon guy (Joaquin Torres). But the movie didn't introduce him well and it didn't seem to care if I liked the guy or not. It kind of just assumed everyone watched that Disney+ show instead of treating him like a character new to most of the audience.
I honestly didn't mind Falcon as much as I did Isaiah. You could say that in time between Endgame and Brave New World, he picked a fellow soldier to start training. Not liking him is a different story (though I do agree) which boils down to the movie's biggest problem; a shit script.
Isaiah on the other hand is meant to be what pushes Sam into action. He's the emotional core of the film. And to their credit, Marvel did alright with him, but that's also not saying much. His history in the world is pretty game changing, and the series takes a couple of scenes to let us sit with him and learn. But how much can the general audience care when they have no prior knowledge and the film itself isn't doing a good enough job of catching them up?
Side note, I’d watch the hell out of an Isaiah movie or show (or presentation). Talk about a compelling character. It’d be almost hard for them to fuck that up. Bonus if it properly introduces Elijah.
I had a feeling I was misspelling his name! Should've double checked. But agreed!
verb
You Falcon, I Falcon, he Falcons, they Falcon. Pretty self explanatory.
You're right, I should have just set it to Falcon
I honestly forgot Joaquin Torres even existed when I first watched Brave New World 💀
Like 4 years had passed since I watched the Falcon&WS show and I didn't recall him being in it when I watched the film, only right after did I remember he was in it for maybe a couple scenes, like in the helicopter at the start (which I had to rewatch on YT to fully remember).
So when I watched the movie I was like hold up who's this new guy and why is he Sam's sidekick? Just not a really memorable character, which is why I'm kinda shocked they're bringing him back for DOOM's Day as part of Sam's team.
I did remember who Isaiah was plus I did know his story from the comics so no issue there, Torres is like a D-List character though, wasn't he introduced in the 2010s comics era too? So he's not a long standing character either
I mean to be fair Doomsday was written (or at least they had an general idea of what it was gonna be and who was gonna be on it) before Brave New World came out, so its not surprising that the reception of the film didn't influenced if he was gonna be on it or not. (its a bit like how Avengers 1 was written and planned not knowing if the general audience would respond well to Thor or Cap, ditto with Captain Marvel in Endgame, same with Ant-Man when it was his turn to appear in Civil War before we got to see his film)
But yes Joaquin is a 2010s character in fact last year was his 10th anniversary
But Capt Marvel only made the money it made as it was the 22nd movie in a 23 movie epic. It came out between IW and EG and was basically required reading so to speak. It wasn't a good movie and the character wasn't great either.
Any movie releasing between IW and EG not making a billion dollars would have had to have been pure bottom of the barrel fish shit
I think it's pretty true for Multiverse of Madness and Captain America: Brave New World.
Edit: Also the Marvels.
Not really for the other movies.
Not just watch a whole show, but watch a whole show and the last tiny end credit scene
I never understood this criticism. The MCU was built since 2008 on the assumption that the previous content would be related and tie into the next content. That was part we all liked and made it a cinematic "universe". So why so much beef with the shows tying into the movies?
Because now it's not a cinematic universe, it's a cinematic and television universe.
Should also note how many hours of content you get with TV shows included and all of a sudden you've got to watch 10x the amount of content
It’s a lot easier to sit through a bad 2hr movie than a bad 5-6hr tv series
Because then they wouldn’t be able to reminisce about “the good ole days” while crying about how everything is worse now
Right but I'm saying a lot of people say her being a villain came from nowhere. I get not watching the show but then don't act like it doesn't exist.
do you?
Imagine if when the mcu started people complained about having to watch the movies to know what goes on
The problem for me was that it basically reused the same theme as WV and cranked it up. Wanda loses Vision, makes the hex, defeats Agatha, learns to grieve and let go. Then you go watch MoM and surprise, now she can't let go of her kids because of evil book. Like sure there was the idea that the book perhaps made her believe they were in danger but that isn't quite explored. I guess some of us hoped that she would not get corrupted by the book because her magic is incredibly powerful. Still, you spent 8 episodes of Wanda dealing with her grief and at the last scene it goes "wanna see me do it again!?".
...then she proceeds to forget all about him the next time she shows up. Really, go rewatch Dr Strange 2, you'll notice how she pretty much never mentions Vis at all (besides the "Vis had his theories about the multiverse" line), the conflict is all about her kids instead. So odd how she kinda forgot all about him, like why not look for a reality where not only do your kids exist but your husband does too? So you can all be a happy family together... just a weird writing choice there.
My god, exactly. Not only does it erase her grief and growth from WV (which OP is so desperately saying 'didn't people see it???'), but it jumps the shark in the opposite direction. She doesn't care about Vision, just her fake kids who she's already had to accept aren't real!!!
Sigh. The Vision stuff is on point.
But her kids are not fake. They are real. That’s a rather significant plot point Marvel has carried forward.
Fake is an exaggeration for sure, but at the very least hunting down a version of her kids that simply aren't hers to the point of kidnapping.
THIS IS IT. It's not like we didn't see WandaVision, but we thought it was weird how MoM just erased everything that happened in WandaVision. Yeah. That scene is there but the whole plot for MoM felt pointless??
OP's take is just really weird in all sorts of ways.
The entire season is about getting to grips with the issues raised and then MoM completely ignores the resolution of WV and does it all again completely ignoring the ending of WV.
Anyone who doesn't understand this is weird doesn't really understand story telling and is looking through rose colored glasses.
OP doesn't actually have a take, just picking a controversial topic and doing the classic marvel fan "why do people hate <most disliked media in the franchise>????"
Even with the post-credits scene, it’s still abrupt.
Imagine if Engdame had a post-credits scene where Iron Man pops up and says “nah, just kidding. I’m alive” or if Infinity War had one where the snapped return immediately after the snap.
Sure, the next movies would explain what happened and build upon it, but there would still be massive whiplash. That’s what happened with Wanda. She regrets her actions at the end of WV, just for the Darkhold to completely corrupt her offscreen for MoM, with only a couple of seconds’ worth of post-credits scene to explain it.
So, for me it wasn’t at all that it came out of nowhere. It’s that she went SO BAD from the moment we saw her.
WandaVision ended on such a hopeful note with those last moments with her and Vision. Then the next time we see her she’s not just kinda a little bad. She murders so. many. people.
Yes, they set up corruption. But they also set up a potential for a happy ending. There’s no happy ending for Wanda now. Even if she’s alive or resurrected at some point (surely inevitable), there’s no believable happy reunion with her and Vision. She’s a literal monster.
It’s not that I hate it or anything. It’s just…well, sad.
I think the movie needed a scene or a flashback near the beginning showing how the Darkhold corrupted her over time. Especially with many people having not watched WandaVision
I just have to push back on that. They really didn't set up potential for a happy ending. That post-credits scene in WV was absolutely screaming that she was corrupt and about to be on some magickal bullshit. The DarkHold is like the One Ring. Whoever uses it gets corrupted. It happened to Isildur, to Gollum, and to Frodo. Same thing here. The post-credit scene was showing that the DarkHold corrupted Wanda. Game over, gg, fun while it lasted.
I know it obviously set up her corruption. But there’s a difference between “This is going to corrupt her” and “She will be a literal monster”.
You chose to mention the ring, that’s not a bad comparison. Well Frodo is forever damaged by it, will always carry the effects of welding it, and for a moment completely gave in to it, but he never went to a place he couldn’t come back from once it was gone.
Wanda can never have that. She can’t just live a happy life with Vision and her kids. And I don’t think that was some obvious inevitability based on the post credit scene.
Now, maybe you disagree with that. But watch this. Can you honestly tell me it’s not meant to be hopeful?
I have to push back on your push back. It has been a little while since I last watched WandaVision, but wasn't the post-credit scene of her boys in another reality calling out to be rescued? I think it would be a fair assumption to make that, yes, while she was in the early stages of Darkhold corruption, the next part of the story would be her taking the errors she claimed to learn from her behavior in Westview, reining in the Darkhold corruption, and somehow work to some form of a redemption that culminated in her rescuing the boys (and either learning to let them go, or inheriting an orphaned pair from another universe).
There was a "potential" happy ending there... but they went full on, irredeemable villain with her in MoM.
Great point.
Some throwaway lines about being corrupted in the last two episodes shouldn't automatically mean she is a blood thirsty murderer the next second we see her.
The end credits was somewhat open ended. She used the book, heard her kids crying for help,... And now she's killing heros, and willing to kill other children? It's a leap too far for me without an intermediary show or movie grappling with her impending corruption.
Going from "a teaser" to "mass killing" is a stretch
it's even worse because there aren't even such lines
the darkhold is never mentioned to corrupt the reader in wandavision, that entire concept is only established in the movie, after she's already fully corrupted
edit: for the people downvoting me, feel free to provide any wandavision lines about the darkhold corrupting people beyond a vague "it's the book of the damned"
People are just applying their knowledge of Agents of Shield to Wandavision when the former hasn't been canon since Civil War.
I have to pushback on your pushback on their pushback. An important thing to remember is that the ending of WV isn't happy, she grappling with the guilt of the harm she caused people and the sacrifice of the family she made for herself. You also have the credits scene which starts off seemingly normal but transitions into eerie sinister music as she's flicking through the darkhold and hears the voices of her kids. To sum up, you have an emotionally vulnerable person, alone in a cabin in the woods reading an evil book referred to as the book of the damned (by Agatha) from which she is hearing her children. Could there have been potential for a happy ending? Sure, but the route they went with was just as if not more likely.
Wanda isnt irredeemable, even under the darkhold, sure she killed people but it was only people who were in her way and even then she gave chances for them to surrender. If Loki can be redeemed who is responsible for far more deaths and did so of his free will the same can be easily said for Wanda.
Melancholy ending then, sure. Not filled with rage, going to murder everyone to get her fake kids who she already accepted weren't real.
I think the biggest problem is that before MoM they don’t really explain what the Darkhold is and what it can do. I can understand people thinking it came out of nowhere if they don’t have the context of what the book does.
welp, speaking of Darkhold, time to watch Agents of SHIELD season 4 again
Yup, I can't have Strange 2, 70% of the way into the movie, go "the darkhold will make you super evil!" and just take it at face value
The problem even with that is, alt Strange who seemed to have the book far longer, wasn’t cartoonishly evil like Wanda was. And Agatha didn’t seem much different with or without the book.
The other problem is, it is narratively crap to not show her change at all and just lamely say “book did it”. But the book isn’t even consistent in how it effects people so it’s even worse.
70%!? He says it before she even attacks Kamar-Taj.
It’s that the character development happened entirely offscreen. We had a full show of Wanda working through her grief… then a scene after the credits that was full of implications. Then the next time we see her, she’s evil. It makes sense that those character developments could happen, but it probably needed to be onscreen to feel satisfying after the show
I don't know that I'd call Wandavision a show about Wanda working through her grief so much as a show about Wanda torturing a whole city full of people and then just fucking off with a copy of The Book That Turns You Evil on her way to do some more atrocities. Wanda has substantially more screentime as a villain than as a hero in the MCU.
I don’t see her as the villain in WV. I see her as a grieving widow who is having a mental health crisis as she walks through the stages of grief. I don’t believe she intentionally tortured that town, and after a little bit of denial, she does do the right thing in the end.
But, I do recognize part of what made WV great was that you could interpret it through different lenses. So I do see your perspective as well, it just was not the same as I perceived it.
If you strip away the superpowers, Wandavision is about a woman who suffers an emotional breakdown and shuts herself away to retreat into a nostalgic delusional state where she feels safe but also becomes controlling, possessive, and even abusive to anyone who attempts to coax her out of said state from the inside, while others outside struggle to understand what’s even happening to begin with.
There’s a lot to unpack on all ends of that, right up until she’s confronted to her face Wanda is still telling herself that what she’s doing to Westview and the people there is okay or even good for them because hey, who wouldn’t feel safe and secure going through the motions of a pleasant sanitized comedy like the ones that had seemed like such a great alternative to her awful childhood in a post-Soviet hellscape?
Thematically it's an empathetic but firm indictment of retreating into a safe space mindset without taking into account what that does to the people we inevitably end up trapping in there with us or the world we leave behind outside.
well, it was, the showrunners have mentioned it in several interviews that the show was designed from the ground up to be centered around wanda dealing with her grief by progressing through the five stages and ending with acceptance, that was the main crux of the story:
So did you just ignore the entire show outside of the last episode or what?
They have created a version of the show in their head and have no intention of altering it.
Pray they do not alter it further.
that's such bulshit. It didn't come out of nowhere, we had a whole ten episodes of her literally enslaving a entire town...
And then she was “forgiven” and reconciled herself to the fact that her kids didn’t exist and that she needed to give it all up. If they wanted Monica to be the confidently incorrect character they needed to develop that a bit more
She was never forgiven at all her last interaction with the town is them staring at her with fear and scorn.
By who!?
SWORD are terrified of her, Vision is disgusted in who she is and what she did, the town are terrified of her and see her as nothing but their tormentor.
Who forgives her!? Monica?
Yup, Monica. If that was supposed to be about Monica being stupid then it didn’t come across
Pretty sure it was supposed to be about Monica keeping her calm.
And then at end of the show, she heard her children due to the darkhold so obviously she would be looking for them.
But not necessarily with ill intent. There was no real indication she wouldn’t just find a universe where their Wanda was dead and she could take her place. To lose all the character development from WandaVision didn’t make sense without some additional scenes
Why in that scene would you jump to the conclusion that she'd find them in another universe where they exist at that point in time? She never lost that character development from WV.
Last time you see wanda: i just fought off Agatha and released the town from my spell. i want my kids back, let me read this evil book
Next time you see wanda: i am willing to kill this teenager and anyone else i come across in multiple universes to get my kids back
You don’t feel like there’s a step missing here?
No
It was hamfisted, and done in such a way that there is no redemption arc possible. They ruined a character. It simply would have been a better story/movie with a different villain.
It’s because evil books mind controlling complex characters to do bad things is boring. They could’ve made her turn to villainy interesting. Not a cliche
Especially that the one thing that defeats the ultra evil book is seeing her kids (only in person) a bit scared (even though they were scared [in person] when they lost their real mom)
It's not that they don't understand the plot point, it's that it's narratively jarring because Wandvision is about coming to terms with grief and has an ending that's at least hopefully melancholic, while in MOM she's an evil crazy witch. Its discordant storytelling AND it references unsavory narrative tropes about crazy ass foreign women like Medea, who like kills her kids, melts her hubbies new side piece, and like rides off on a dragon.
Going from processing trauma to bitches be crazy am I right?! with the same character a terrible narrative choice and also was stupid since she was the most popular female character.
As a woman, let me tell you, it pisses me off. Marvel doesn't need to resort to cheap shots when a thoughtful approach was already right there but I guess watching Wandavision was too much to ask for then.
Thanks a lot for expressing this. I can't believe that people are really okay with a story that not only depends on such a big plot point being developed off screen but on top of that undermines one of the most powerful stories that the MCU has told. This is single part of the MCU that pisses me the most.
Because these types of Marvel fans act in bad faith. "How do people not get why she's evil???" vs "Why are people upset at her sudden turn?"
I was watching MoM with my friend who doesn't watch WV so i had to explain to him why Wanda became the main villain
I thought where she ended up before the post-credit scene was a drastically different spot than the after the scene. And that bothered me way before MoM came out.
At the end she was coming to terms with her grief and loss and coming back to reality. Then all the sudden in what usually is a relatively unimportant post credit scene she has the darkhold?? Such a huge leap from we had seen just a few minutes before. It felt very undeserved.
Then in MoM we get a very brief exposition that the Darkhold makes people evil. For some of us that have seen Agents of Shield and other projects with it we know that makes sense. But again, that knowledge feels lazy and unearned in MoM.
The leap to evil could have been handled better and more tragically to make her a more sympathetic villain imo.
I think it isn't people not expecting her to be a villain.
Its us missing the descent. We were expecting a slow turn into being evil, not straight up seeing her just hunting down a teen for her powers 5 minutes into her introduction in the movie. The show literally ended with her realising she fucked up and undoing her mistake, so people aren't gonna expect her to go the same route again.
Especially the post credit scene was just showing her just hearing the kids. Not exactly going evil.
Its the radical shift for a character that most still see as an Avenger, a hero.
The popular fan theory post WV was Strange and Wanda working together and her eventually switching sides with the villain for the kids by being manipulated by the villain. Yk, gradual descent.
Also, Darkhold corrupts is something we are told only after we see Wanda go crazy. It's corruption angle wasn't explored in Wandavision and only people who watched AOS would truly get it.
Then Wanda's villain execution felt one dimensional
We already say the exact same arc in Wandavision but multitude times more nuanced and understandable.
Finding kids from alternate universe and just replacing their mom with urself feels less convincing
She had far less sympathetic motive but her actions were more evil. Hunting down a teen using monsters, murdering people left and right. Talking like Disney Villain. Like I said, too much for a former Avenger who is established to be someone who wants to do good despite her flawed actions.. Darkhold corrupts isn't enough to not make us feel bad about the writing choice
Post Wandavision it felt like she was set to be a character similar to Loki, yk, grey character but they just made her straight up a comical villain
I don’t understand why this is so hard for people to understand. It’s like people don’t want to get it.
bingo
Yes, but not everyone connected the dots from reading the book to conjuring demons to attack America Chavez. And frankly they should've added scenes to show thr descent into madness. Im an avid reader since 1990. But not everyone is aware of thr "Darkhold"
A gradual corruption should have been shown. Wanda let go at the end of WV. The turnaround feels too immediate. The emotional journey of the series gets kicked to the curb too casually... I like WV and Dr. Strange but not in direct succession...
I like them and respect them as separate projects. I still would've preferred to see the version of Doctor Strange 2 where Wanda teams up with Strange instead, but I'm otherwise fine with what we ultimately got
For me the problem was that she was already a villain in WV and had a seemingly completed arc, MOM was retreading something that was already resolved. Didn't need a supernatural element to make her a villain again when her grief was already enough to do it the first time
No, that was 110% what they were foreshadowing. It is pretty much forgotten. But yeah, the lady whose entire life has been constant uproot and trauma, after losing it a little and creating a bubble reality for herself, got hold of the most corrupting text in the multiverse. It didn’t help her stability or behavior.
Just because it's "explained", doesn't make it good. Also, it was an after credit scene that was like 20 seconds.
None of this happens in WandaVision.
The book that messes with the head of whoever uses it? Not once mentioned in WandaVision, it was a MoM revision. In WandaVision the Darkhold is just a book that contains a prophecy on the Scarlet Witch that Wanda takes to learn more about her magic. There’s NOTHiNG that indicates the book has corruptive traits, especially when Agatha had for it centuries and acts NOTHING like Wanda in MoM.
Wanda looking for her kids? Again contradicts WandaVision, we saw Wanda say goodbye to her kids, she closed off that idea and the writers confirmed that. Even the post credit scene has the kids calling out to Wanda for help, something that has zero bearing on Wanda’s motivation in MoM, she doesn’t think her kids are in imminent danger like the post credit scene implied. Wanda just misses being a mom and is a complete nutter.
Wanda literally avoided killing anyone in WandaVision, she sacrificed her family and Vision again to save the townspeople from herself when she could have kept them enslaved, AND she vowed to learn to control her powers so that she’d never hurt anyone again because she was appalled at what she did.
MoM comes around and Wanda has become a full blown pyscho that murders nearly a hundred people without a single care in the world so she can enact her stupid plan to kidnap her kids from an alt dimension, and the only justification given is a poorly explained book that doesn’t even make sense when you think about it because nothing about the book is ever explained.
Like if Wanda wanted her kids that bad why the fuck didn’t she just create the hex again in the middle of nowhere? It’s stupid, it makes no sense and worst of all MoM is just a shitty repeat of WandaVision, it’s the exact same plot only it makes Wanda a 1000 more irredeemable unless you place the blame completely on the Darkhold as a cop out and in which case why even make Wanda the bad guy?
Honestly MoM should have had Mordo be the bad guy, and had him steal the Darkhold to become uber powerful and hunt strange down across the multiverse.
How dare you bring objective story points into OP's thread of "how are you all dumb"
How do people like OP just ignore the fact that even Elizabeth Olsen herself was shocked by the sudden extreme villain turn? Its not that Wanda was corrupted, the problem is that she jumped to multiversal genocide completely offscreen
The thing is, that wasnt the ending. That's after credit scene (Right? Or I forgot about this?)
The ending was wanda find peace. After credits must be further elaborate. They are disconnected with main story.
The after credit scene was literally added on by the writers of MoM (who didn't see the whole show) to create a pathetic bridge between the two
Yea. It’s less that she turned and more about how damn jarring it was when Wandavison was completely about her coming to terms with all her grief.
They did it backwards really. Her come down from her magic psychosis should have come after her big villain arc, not before.
Ok scrolled down and didnt see this. The writers of doctor strange 2 did not watch all of wanda vision. And the very least they didnt not watch the last episode. This was reported in interviews around when doctor strange 2 came out. It came out of left field cause it came out of left field. They did your girl dirty.
Yeah thing is that the show was on pause due to COVID when Waldron was writting Multiverse of Madness, in fact filming of WandaVision would wrap just days before cameras started rolling on MoM
Also the other issue is that Micheal Waldron reallllly wanted to do a story with Wanda as a villain instead of losing that chance to another writer in some other MCU film.
Omg how many times to people need to bring this up? Every time someone does, they blatantly show this sub that they either didn’t actually pay attention WandaVision or understand it.
The show is about the stages of grief.
Denial - Wanda inadvertently uses her powers to escape reality and create her own where she’s happy. She is unaware that she is controlling Westview.
Anger - Wanda kicks Monica out/fights with fake Vision. At this point she’s aware that she’s controlling Westview.
Bargaining - Agatha releases the town momentarily. Wanda tries to convince them that they are safe here under her spell. She ultimately lets them go.
Depression - Wanda walks through Westview, with the people glaring her down. This is literally a metaphor for a depressive episode. She knows what she did was wrong. She can’t change it. She has to own it.
Acceptance - “I don’t understand these powers. But I will.” Wanda removes herself from society altogether to try and find herself. Somewhere she can’t be a danger to others.
PER the Darkhold:
Agatha tells her it’s the Book of the Damned, and that there is a whole chapter in it dedicated to the Scarlet Witch. Nowhere, NOT ANYWHERE, is the phrase “this book corrupts the reader” uttered in any way, shape, or form. And sorry not sorry to the AoS fans out there, your show was not MCU canon at the time so your prior knowledge of the book is pointless. Complain about it elsewhere.
PER Monica’s “forgiveness:”
Monica doesn’t forgive Wanda. The townspeople don’t forgive her. Monica explains, more than once in the show, that she understands Wanda. Empathy and forgiveness are NOT the same thing. Her divisive line “They’ll never know what you gave up for them” is NOT forgiveness. It’s Monica seeing “I see you, and I understand.” Again, understanding is NOT forgiveness. Talk to a therapist or read a book if you don’t understand the distinction.
And now, the post credit scene:
Wanda is making herself tea in a peaceful valley far away from anyone. Then we see the Doctor Strange-esque reading of the book, and hear the disembodied voices of her sons cry for help.
Unless the Darkhold has the words, “This book corrupts you if you read it” written across the front, there was NO implication that she was being corrupted in this scene. For all the viewers knew, the soils of Billy and Tommy could have been trapped in some hell dimension or whatever.
The point is that it was vague. And then all of a sudden we had Murder Mommy Wanda in MoM with some half assed “Oh she read the Darkhold…oopsie” dialogue thrown in. Garbage writing.
And I know for a fact the MoM simps and Wanda haters will continue to be obtuse while suckling at the teet of their lord and savior Loki. I just can’t with y’all anymore. Read a book.
1.) She wasn't reading it to find her kids, she was reading it to see what's the deal with it
2.) She heard the kids calling for "HELP"
3.) How does she go from last hearing her kids calling for help to whatever she was in MOM.
4.) Wanda Vision as a series was opposite of what you can call building to to heel turn, on other hand it took Wanda from unable to process her grief and creating insanity to actually accepting whatever has happened and back to normalcy.
5.) So last time one set of audience watched her it was in Endgame having a friendly conversation with Hawkeye, another set of audience saw her being normal listening to voices of her kids asking for "HELP"
6.) And at the end it can be summarised by a line of Nick Fury in Avengers
We (audience) recognise that the Council (Feige & Waldron) have made a decision (Wanda Heel turn). But given that it's a stupid-ass decision (what were they thinking), We've elected to ignore it (cue the chain of events post MoM to present).
So, coming from someone who has re-watched WandaVision many times, it's because it was lazy writing.
At the end of WandaVision, she has promised to better control her powers so she doesn't hurt people again. You see a SINGLE scene of her messing with the book and hearing her kids voices. Then, the second interaction with Wanda in MoM, she is killing innocent people through mirrors and shit. This is a very jarring shift. The biggest problem people have is that it wouldn't have been difficult to show this shift; MoM is not a short movie and they could have cut any number of scenes to take 5-10 minutes showing her going crazy while messing with the Darkhold.
The reason why there is such a difference in views is some people saw WandaVision, saw the trauma and grief and understood that while she was doing something wrong, grief does crazy things to people and in the end she deleted her lover and children from existence to save everyone (a recurring thing that happens to her). Others just saw her mind control innocents. It's between a tragic character doing villainous things and just a straight up villain. So the single book scene is enough for some, because going from mind control to murder isn't that big of a leap. But to others it was jarring because she was supposed to work on controlling her powers and to make sure that happened in WandaVision and arguably MoM didn't happen. And we were given 5 seconds to explain that.
The problem was the movie had the same arc as the show: Wanda goes off the deep end because of grief, messes with a lot of people, and then at the end is like "Ooopsie y'all, I went a bit overboard here, sorry."
It didn't feel like a progression of the story, it felt like someone didn't even know Wanadavision existed.
Because doing a big heel turn of a major character based 5 second long after credit scene is just terrible writing.
Not sure why people are defending this, the MoM team openly said they weren’t aware of Wandavision and kind of had to make things work retroactively.
We understood it. But it was still stupid.
A five second post-credit scene doesn't counterbalance the entire TV show where her character arc was learning how she CAN'T use magic to escape all her problems. Having character development instantly undermined/re-set by a magical doohickey just makes it feel like they were wasting everyone's time.
I think most people realize the Darkhold corrupted her, and it would corrupt her when we saw it in the end credit scene.
But what most people are talking about, is that the whole PREVIOUS series up until that last 10 seconds seemed to be investing people into a love/family story that would have a resolution.
So yeah, in those last few seconds they set up her being a villain. But the set up for the other 99.9% of Wanda's arc seemed to be setting up something else that was then dropped. And it wasn't her becoming a murderous villain and then croaking at the end.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I remember the writers of MoM specifically say they hadn’t seen or cooperated with the show and the two were created independently. they both got some slight guidance on where the story should go but that was it. So that scene doesn’t mean much. it was probably shot as a last minute effort to connect the two
It's not that it literally came from "nowhere"
It's that it was a whole show of Wanda coming to terms with her own pain and the pain she was inflicting on others. A 20-second post-credit scene of her head twitching is NOT a good justification for 90% of viewers who don't know that the super spooky book can make a person go from "I'm so sorry I hurt you all!" to "I"M GOING TO BREAK YOUR BONES AND BURN YOU ALIVE!!!!"
Wanda wasn't okay, sure. But she wasn't okay after letting her fake kids go, and Vision, etc. That doesn't make me go "oh yeah now she's literally the most sadistic villain we've seen yet"
Imo the post-credit scene is not enough to sell the Wanda villain arc at all. The movie just does a very poor job of making it plausible. If they added just a few minute flashback from Wandas perspective, or just something to connect it better. I do not mind Wanda being a villain in this movie, but it just feels so lazy to brush it off just by saying, “Oh yeah, the evil book corrupted her”, while not even properly showing at least a bit of the process of her corruption.
She didn't come from Knowhere; I don't think Wanda's ever been off Earth.
Serious talk: was there anything in WandaVision that suggested the Darkhold makes people go crazy? Either way, you could also see the ending of WandaVision as Wanda coming to embrace and understand the true nature of her powers, leading her to have a better control over both them, her emotions, and her grief.
I'm mixed on MoM because on one hand, it felt like a regression of a very cool character, but on the other hand, it was awesome to see her fully powered and able to go all out. Wanda makes for a terrifying villain; I just feel we missed out on a better version of her.
The biggest reason why I dislike what they did with Wanda is because of how many people insisted that she was already a villain in her series. Like... come on. She clearly was going through stuff and probably wasn't fully aware of what she did at first (her not having full control over her powers has been a thing in the comics). And once she realized, she felt so alone that she tried to ignore the truth. And at the end, she willingly gave up her perfect dreamworld just to release all those people. That's the action of a hero.
And then we get to MoM, where she's suddenly a fully blown murderer.
Post credits scene and I had no idea what that book was at the time. I'm not a comic book reader
People were more focused on how the main bulk of the series ended, than on the implications given by the post-credit scene, given that Wanda had came terms with letting Vision and her kids go in the main storyline, people didn't liked that regression on her storyy, despite the post credit scene hinting at her villany.
Also the other issue for many is that her turn to villany also felt as if it came out of nowhere, given that post-credit scene aside, the Wanda that we last saw when she left Westview was not the crazed murderous psycho that she would became in Doctor Strange, so there are some that feel like there is a missing page on her book that would shown us that transition to villany. instead of "Oh evil book corrupted her mind, lets move on"
For people who haven't seen AoS, it just seemed like she was reading a book. Hard for them to really grasp the consequences. Even in MoM it seems like Strange will be fine even though others were freaking out about it.
Yeah, if anything, I blame Wandavision for half-assing her turn as a villain. Everything she did to that town was fucked up, but then they just hand waved it away, said "they'll never know what you did for them" as if she was the hero, and let her walk away with no consequences. Then at the very end, showed her using the dark hold clearly again pointing towards her being evil.
Wandavision wanted to show Wanda as morally grey but didn't have the stones to go all the way with it when they should have.
Its clear it was the intent, as evidenced by MoM, but Wandavision was too afraid to commit.
I'm sorry but the onus is on the story that came out 2 whole years after to actually follow up on the writing of the initial story rather than doing the same story again but this time its not human emotions like grief fuelling the plot, its evil magic book which is childish writing. Its clear this was not the intent because the explanation of the Darkhold was not "this will turn you evil 100%" and the prophecy about the Scarlet Witch was told by Agatha who would have every reason to lie in order to make Wanda give up her powers.
The only thing clear is the sheer lack of planning for Wanda's story post-WV.
What the hell does this even mean? Morally grey characters can be a great thing, and Wanda perfectly fit the bill leading into WandaVision given her circumstances. The writers going "all the way with it" for her in DS2 is lazy because it relies on a magical book to do it all for them off-screen. That's kiddie storytelling.
It would have made more sense to show that Monica was wrong in WandaVision instead of making her the moral center of the movie, then having MoM show her to be a deluded fool
Too many people these days need their hands held throughout the entirety of the media they consume. It's sad that so many people have zero imagination.
'I want to see the corruption', why? Why do you need to see it? Is not her being villianous enough? What could her turning corrupt possibly add, plus, is it worth it for the studio to spend resources filming it?
MoM is one of my fav MCU movies.
Edit: classic r/marvelstudios, downvoted by people with 0 imagination.
i don't think it's about the logical jump. it's about seeing the corruption happen.
It did come out of nowhere. You don't go from grief to murder people across multiple universes for your "kids".
It was terrible writing coupled with the "girl power" propaganda
Was it 'girl power' propaganda or 'motherhood makes women hysterical' propaganda?
Expecting regular cinema-goers to pay for disney+ and watch a series on there to be able to follow the plot of a loosely related film is a bit much
The problem is that the Darkhold was establish as being a horrible corrupting force in.... Agents of Shield.
They should have gone with the Scott Derrickson's version i.e. keeping Nightmare as the main villain, keeping Wanda but as a morally grey character getting gradually corrupted by Darkhold.
Derrickson's creative difference with Marvel Studios, Sony-Marvel rocky Spiderman deal (America Chavez would have been the one to accidentally bring Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Men into the MCU at the end of the film) and to some extend COVID has messed up a potentially great movie.
The problem is if you didn't watch WandaVision her turn to heel made zero sense.
If you did watch WandaVision, you were left feeling sorry for her by the end, so the turn to heel made even less sense.
Made sense when you include the post credits scene. The post credit scene was just as stupid as MoM though, and therein lies the problem.
If ppl can find a thinly veiled reason to exercise righteous indignation they will do so lol that’s all it is
You have the benefit of hindsight. Everyone in the moment went "huh??"
Where they could’ve taken MoM is her being manipulated by the dark hold to the point she’s ripping through the multiverse causing the beginning of incursions because she’s not supposed to be there which starts to distort reality in the 616, then that alerts the illuminati and to add a little X-men absence Wanda in the X-men universe had a house of M moment with the battle against thanos she takes the gauntlet and she nearly wipes of every mutant and mutant gene across the multiverse and that makes her a top priority threat.
Dang a lot of people just hate Wanda screaming about her enslaving a town with zero context.
I'm just in the school of thought that if the Darkhold was supposed to be influencing her, and if they had any hope of rehabilitating her character after murdering so many people, that the Darkhold should have been destroyed at the end of the movie instead of so early on.
I mean I can just explain to myself that the corruption sticks with you no matter what, but I think her snapping out of it either once the book is destroyed or even overcoming it's corruption and destroying the book herself would go a long way towards leaving her character open to being seen as sympathetic in the future. It would be more cathartic and could be seen as symbolic of someone either choosing to move on from their grief/guilt or from something like an addiction.
...that's exactly what happens
the darkhold that is destroyed by the one sorcerer while she's dreamwalking is a just a copy, it being destroyed does not stop her corruption, just stops her from dreamwalking. she then goes to the 'original darkhold' which is carved into the stones of the mountain temple, so she can cast the dreamwalking spell again.
at the end of the movie, she then finally snaps out of its influence when she sees 'her own kids' afraid of her, and destroys the darkhold throughout the entire universe. she even says she's doing it so nobody can be corrupted by it again.
we know for a fact the darkhold corruption isn't something that's only active when you're using it, but a lasting consequence, because 616 doctor strange is shown experiencing its side effects in the post credit scene, even though the darkhold has been destroyed by wanda at that point
Plenty of other people have argued that they don't do enough to really show that the Darkhold is a corrupting force or the effects if will have on Wanda. But I think even more importantly, the MCU was a little too realistic in showing the complexities of overcoming mental health challenges. It's reasonable to expect that these things will be long journeys with ups and downs. But from a viewer's perspective and a narrative perspective, we already experienced Wanda's story of overcoming grief in Wandavision...just to experience it again in MoM. Thor has the same problem--he has a multi-film arc where it seems like he realizes that he's still worthy, but in Thor 4 he is still feeling lost and purposeless to some degree. This is incredibly reasonable and nuanced storytelling, reflecting real world mental health journeys. But the arc of rediscovering your self-worth and the arc of rediscovering a purpose are so similar narratively that it feels like we're rehashing the same story points to some degree.
It’s a writing issue. There is no cohesion in the story, which usually happens if you don’t plot your story first. They want to send the message that power corrupts a person wielding it. Since it’s Dr. Strange’s story, it’s supposed to be about Strange seeing a reality where he is the Sorcerer Supreme, and all of these versions of him end up being corrupted by such power. It’s supposed to be a warning for him and something to prepare him for when the time comes that he becomes the Sorcerer Supreme. So the villain should have been the evil Dr. Strange.
But then, what to do with Wanda? To give her importance, they wrote her story in a way where Wanda, who is now the Scarlet Witch (just like Dr. Strange as Sorcerer Supreme in other realities), will show how power corrupts a good person. So now he has to deal with it. But the problem is that they don’t have time to develop Wanda as the Scarlet Witch in the movie, so they emphasized that it is the Darkhold. The audience forgot that the entire movie tried to explain the Darkhold and the Vishanti as good vs evil, and somehow, within the course of the writing, the theme shifted to each person having an equal opposite of the other (like an evil mirror twin) which adds horror to it. So basically, there are at least two major stories in the movie, and none of them were developed or connected properly bec of time.
(Note: I freaking one-finger typed this whole thing, so don’t freaking accuse me of AI.)
Wanda suffered a heartbreaking loss in perhaps the worse way. That's a major trauma, and due to her innate powers, we saw her mind trying to heal the damage (insert the whole of Wandavision here).
By the end of the show, we may have even seen the beginnings of acceptance and the opportunity for true healing, but she found the Dark Holt at the worst possible time (not everyone is Domino).
She is now essentially a fallen hero. Someone will need to believe in her to bring her back. That's why I'm super interested to see what happens in Vision Quest, but I expect we may only get something there at the end or post credit.
I 100% agree with you. I have always held this opinion ever since MoM came out, and I have never understood people complaining about it. It makes total sense, especially as someone who has seen every episode of Agents of Shield 3-4 times. MoM is honestly one of my top 5 favorite Marvel films.
I need her back to say “No more mutants”
That would transition the old cast out.
Is this trolling or a shitpost or something?
I didn't watch WandaVision, and wasn't subscribed to anything Marvel related at the time, so I didn't realize I was supposed to watch a whole fuckin T.V. show first.
Having the plot of a T.V. show lead into the plot of a movie of a different name is why people feel like it came out of nowhere.
Lots of people didn't watch WandaVision.
My issue is that Wanda had some fantastic character development during that movie. And she made the very hard realization that she had to give up “her kids” and Vision, because they weren’t real. The story was tragic and quite moving.
For those who knew the comics might have known what the Darkhold was, that scene of her flipping through it said a lot. For those who didn’t, that scene was pretty vague.
The immediate embracing of the Darkhold and subsequent obsession with getting to “her kids” cheapens the lessons she seemed to have learned in Wandavision. That’s my critique.
I don’t understand why all other Wanda’s managed to keep/recreate their children and this Wanda didn’t
Sure but was it ever established that the darkhold really messes with your mind in MoM? Wanda seems a bit obsessed and driven but not insane.
Agents of Shield did a good job of showing how even glancing at it can fuck you up so I was prepared for Wanda because of that.
Query: did you have background knowledge of what the Darkhold was when you watched that end-credit scene?
Because I am one of those MCU fans who has not read any of the comics. So the only thing I knew about the Darkhold at the end of WandaVision - including the end-credit scene - was, well, basically the title, because that's all Agatha told Wanda about it.
So I watched that end-credit scene thinking Wanda was legit hearing her kids in danger.
And then we get to MoM, where her kids are very clearly NOT in danger but Wanda is going on a rampage trying to kidnap them anyway. And the blink-and-you'll-miss-it vague lines about the Darkhold's actual power did not explain the change very well, for me at least.
It wasn't until I looked up a wiki page explaining more about the Darkhold that I finally understood what MoM was going for.
She's basically dealing with a similar thing to Winter Solider, her mind is being controlled by the Darkhold. Everything prior to Multiverse of Madness was her own doing. Despite that, I don't see her as a villain, at most, maybe an antihero. She does things sometimes by accident or sometimes she's not fully aware of how her own powers work. She's still learning how to use them, so it makes sense that she'd try to turn to using the Darkhold after the events of the show to try to gain more insight. She has good or decent intentions most of the time when she's not dealing with grief
I got that plot point, for me her evil was just amazingly inefficient. She couldve looked for a universe where their wanda was dead. She definitely couldve kept her facade up or heck just asked Chavez for help, maybe offering to train her powers and let Chavez send her to the required universe. Her insistence on murdering people instead of being cunning and achieving her goal actively hindered her wishes.
But yes I understood the dark hold cooked her mind in that sense. I just felt frustrated at it all
I think it lands a lot better with agents of shield or comic book fans, cause theyre more likely to expect from Wanda what she ended up doing. Still, it did kinda weaken the arc for Wanda to go from the role of positive protagonist, to villain, to repentant tragic hero, then back to villain again, especially since those last 3 steps happened in the same episode and the final one was in a credit scene
I think where Wanda ended up in MoM made sense for the arc that she went on in WandaVision. The issue that I had was it felt like there was a step missing between the 2. She ends WandaVision desperate to find her sons and willing to explore the Darkhold for a way to find them. cool. She starts MoM by murdering (other-dimensional versions of) someone she'd fought alongisde before... wait what happened?
Like I can see how those 2 things can both happen, but there's a step missing in the middle. Like it went A B C E F G for me
I remember thinking if there’s a chance that anyone is strong enough to withstand the Darkhold it would be Wanda. She seems pretty chill as she was reading it in that WandaVision scene. I think MOM could have spent a bit more time on it getting to her.
I just thought she was gonna be super powerful. I didn’t realize the darkhold made you evil but I can be a lil ignorant. I really wanna see Wanda scarlet witching for good.
It’s just a general lack of mcu lore knowledge. Not everyone watches every show
The problem is that the five second stinger at the end of WV is the cinematic equivalent to a bullet point. Sometimes that’s enough for people, sometimes people want substance.
Also, general audiences aren’t as likely to watch the paywalled, often mediocre D+ shows. (Although, for the record, I didn’t think WandaVision was mediocre.)
Stopped at “We Interrupt This Program”