Elizabeth Olsen has admitted that Marvel Studios wasn’t sure what to do with her MCU character, Scarlet Witch, following her standalone Disney+ series, WandaVision. Wanda Maximoff, a.k.a. the Scarlet Witch, made her MCU debut in 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron alongside Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) as the film’s two secondary antagonists. Following the death of her brother, Wanda switched sides, and became a powerful member of the Avengers. However, WandaVision took her character in a darker direction, and Marvel didn’t seem to know how to handle Scarlet Witch once the show concluded.
Speaking with FM104 to promote her new movie, His Three Daughters, Elizabeth Olsen reflected on her time in the MCU. The actress said that she loves playing the character… when she’s used right. While she didn’t name a specific project, Olsen implied that Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, in which Wanda becomes the main villain, was a misstep for the character. She said:
“I have been lucky that when I started I was used well. I think [Marvel] didn’t know what to do with me for a second there…”
Scarlet Witch’s future in the MCU is currently uncertain. Neither Olsen nor her character have been confirmed to appear in any future projects. However, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige has confirmed that Wanda will return to the MCU in the future. As for Olsen, the actress confirmed she’s happy to return:
“It’s a character that I love going back to when there’s a way to use her well… if there’s a good way to use her, I’m always happy to come back.”
WandaVision Will Not Get a Second Season
WandaVision, the MCU’s first full foray into television (providing you don’t count Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) had such a unique structure that it would be hard to replicate in a second season. Each episode was framed as a mock-sitcom from a different decade. The series broke its structure in its later episodes, after the characters realized they were in a fake reality constructed by Wanda. After releasing herself and the town of Westview from her conjured universe, in which she and Vision had children together, Wanda went on a destructive rampage in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, desperate to return to her imagined children.
While it would be hard for a second season of WandaVision to replicate the same narrative structure, it would be even harder for Wanda to conceivably abduct yet another town in her own fantasy TV world. But what makes that completely impossible is the fact that there will be no WandaVision Season 2. Speaking with The Direct in late 2023, WandaVision director Matt Shakman confirmed that there would be no second season:
“I don’t think so, you know, we were telling a very specific story, a complete story; a story about grief, about Wanda’s journey, having lost Vision, and we completed that story.”
While WandaVision is officially over, its legacy continues in the newest Marvel Disney+ series Agatha All Along. Starring Kathryn Hahn, who reprises her role as the titular witch introduced in WandaVision, Agatha All Along sees Agatha Harkness set out on a journey to get her powers back, after Wanda absorbed some of her magic, leaving her temporarily powerless.
Agatha All Along
streams on Disney+ on September 18, 2024.