Scarlet Witch

Scarlet Witch
File:ScarletwitchHanson.jpg Scarlet Witch, by Eric Wolfe Hanson
Publication information
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First appearance	Uncanny X-Men #4 (March, 1964)
Created by	Stan Lee Jack Kirby
In-story information
Alter ego	Wanda Maximoff
Species	Human Mutant
Team affiliations	Brotherhood of Evil Mutants Avengers West Coast Avengers Defenders Secret Defenders Force Works
Notable aliases	Wanda Frank, Ana Maximoff
Abilities	-Reality warping -Probability manipulation -Magic

The Scarlet Witch (Wanda Maximoff) is a fictional character in the Marvel Comics universe, a mutant who began as a super-villainess before reforming and becoming a superheroine early in her history. Over the years of her long-running Avengers membership, various aspects of her backstory were embellished. As a character she has had three separate sets of supposed parents, until a lasting connection with super-villain Magneto was established. Her power levels have shifted and grown as well, with diverse (pseudo)scientific, demonic, magickal and physical explanations offered by different writers. She recently suffered a mental breakdown, explained as the end result of her fluctuating powers and personality over her entire history.

Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, she first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #4 (1964). In the historic Avengers #16, she was recruited by Captain America along with her brother Quicksilver and the former villain Hawkeye. For much of her Avengers career her powers involved the ability to alter probability with various degrees of success, causing random effects with force beams that were called "hexes" she projected from her hands. Eventually she became a trained witch, and channeled a highly dangerous form of magic known as "Chaos Magic" to augment her powers. She is the daughter of Magneto, twin sister of Quicksilver and half-sister of Polaris.

Fictional character biography

Birth

File:Wandapietrro.png

Magda gives birth to Wanda and Pietro.

The Scarlet Witch is the fraternal twin sister of Quicksilver (Pietro Maximoff); the twins are the children of Magneto and his late wife Magda. Magda fled from Magneto before either learned that she was pregnant. The twins were born on Mt. Wundagore of Transia, the prison of the Elder God Chthon. Chthon's residual energies altered Wanda, giving her the ability to use magic, in addition to her mutant power. Magda survived giving birth to the twins but days after left the refuge of the High Evolutionary. She feared that Magneto would locate her and force her to surrender the children to him. She instead fled, and is believed to have chosen to commit suicide by exposing herself to the frozen wasteland surrounding the refuge.

Bova, a genetically-engineered humanoid cow who served as their nursemaid, decided to find foster parents for the apparent orphans. Nearby, World War II superheroine Miss America was giving birth to her own twins. Her husband the Whizzer asked for Bova to assist the birth. Mother and children died due to radiation poisoning deliberately caused by her former enemy Isbisa. Bova only reported the death of the mother, but presented the living set of twins to Whizzer as his own. He was however shocked by the death of his wife and chose to flee as far away from Wundagore Mountain as possible.

Bova returned the children to Wundagore. She later found a suitable pair of foster parents in the Roma couple Django and Marya Maximoff. Their own children Ana and Mateo had recently died and the couple saw little Wanda and Pietro as suitable replacements. They would raise them as their own. Both siblings manifested powers due to mutation in early adolescence. The Roma were however victims of prejudice by the mainstream population of Transia who considered them immoral.

Orphaned

Django was a doll-maker but had increasing difficulty in finding customers as Transians did not allow their children to approach the Roma. He eventually resorted to stealing food in order to save his family from starvation. Pietro took the initiative to also start stealing food. Wanda was also introduced to prejudice when a Transian boy her age attempted to sexually molest her. She used her powers to return to safety but was accused of attempting to seduce the boy. Eventually, angry Transian villagers attacked the Roma and burned their wagons. Marya Maximoff was trapped in their wagon and burned alive. Django was clubbed to unconsciousness, but Pietro and Wanda managed to flee. The twins were now on their own.

Wanda and Pietro considered at this point that they were the only family left to each other. Pietro was in fact especially protective of his sister. However, they were mistaken in their belief. They had lost three different mothers: Magda, Miss America and Marya Maximoff. But their natural father, Magneto, and their adoptive fathers, Whizzer and Django Maximoff, were alive. Eventually, all three would try to contact their children again.

File:Wandabrotherhood.PNG

Wanda being rescued by Magneto, and joining the Brotherhood as the Scarlet Witch. Art by Aaron Lopresti.

The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants

One day Wanda accidentally caused a fire with her hex powers and was almost killed by an angry mob who thought she was a witch. Her father Magneto saved her and Pietro from the mob, though none of them knew he was their father at this time. For saving their lives, Magneto had the twins join his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, as the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. Though the twins were mistrustful of humans because of their past experiences, they were not as opposed to humanity as the other members.

Wanda aided the Brotherhood on many missions, until an encounter with the X-Men and the enigmatic Stranger would result in Wanda and Pietro decisively breaking with the Brotherhood at last.

The Avengers

After Magneto's abduction by the alien Stranger effectively broke up the Brotherhood, the twins relocated back to Europe but quickly returned to America with the intention of becoming Avengers and redeeming themselves for their actions while part of the Brotherhood. They were accepted by Captain America and became part of the team alongside Hawkeye, who would become Wanda's closest friend inside the team.

File:Vsw3.png

The Vision and the Scarlet Witch, as a couple. Cover to The Vision and the Scarlet Witch (vol. 2) #3. Art by Richard Howell.

The Scarlet Witch has become one of the team's mainstays since then and one of the most popular Avengers in the title's run. When Roy Thomas took over the book in the late 1960s, Wanda's courtship with the synthoid Vision would become one of the book's main plotlines and become one of the most beloved romance stories of the book's franchise. The relationship was filled with turmoil though, from Vision's feelings that Wanda deserved a lover who was human and not an android to both Quicksilver and Hawkeye's objections to the relationship (Quicksilver's due to his disdain for his sister loving a robot while Hawkeye's objections came due to his own feelings of love for Wanda). While Hawkeye quickly got over his jealousy and gave Wanda and Vision his blessing, Quicksilver disowned his sister for her love and only relented when the telepath Moondragon telepathically erased Quicksilver's disdain for Vision from his mind, after Moondragon walked into a room and caught Quicksilver's bigotry in full display during an argument between Quicksilver and Hawkeye.

At one point during her career as an Avenger, the Scarlet Witch underwent training in sorcery under the tutelage of a true witch, Agatha Harkness. The mental discipline of sorcery aided Wanda's powers of concentration, enabling her to exercise much greater control over her mutant "hexes" than ever before. She also learned that she had been blessed with an affinity for chaos magic.

Wanda would ultimately marry Vision. For a time, Wanda believed herself the daughter of the golden age super-hero, the Whizzer, before learning the truth about her paternity. The revelation that Magneto was her biological father has been a source of much anger for Wanda, as she still harbors anger and fear towards him from their time together in the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Ultimately while attempting to avenge the apparent death of Agatha Harkness, Wanda received an infusion of magic power that allowed her to became pregnant with twins, Thomas and William. She and the Vision retired from their careers as super-heroes to raise their children, but came out of retirement to join the Avengers West Coast team after several members quit the group.

The West Coast Avengers

At this time, Wanda's happiness would be tragically destroyed: Vision was kidnapped, vivisected, and his mind erased by a multi-national coalition of countries who were angry at the way Vision attempted to take over the world several years earlier, while under outside influences. Vision was rebuilt, but his memory was blank, his body a ghostly white, and his human personality and emotions utterly erased.

Wanda sought the one man who could restore her husband's mind, even partially, his "brother" Wonder Man. While "dead", a copy of Wonder Man's memories were used to create Vision's mind. And while the two considered themselves "brothers" at times, Wonder Man was forever jealous of Vision's relationship with Wanda and felt that Wanda should be his wife, since Vision's mind was a copy of his own. Wonder Man was supported by Wasp in this notion, as the childless Wasp had grave doubts about Wanda's desire for children. She counseled Wonder Man not to allow his brainwave patterns to be used to use to restore Vision, advice he took. Meanwhile, Wanda's children began to blink in and out of existence, frightening the various nannies Wanda hired to help her watch her twins, leading quickly to the reappearance of Agatha Harkness. Agatha had survived being burned alive but was in hiding, coming out to reveal the true nature of Wanda's children.

Agatha revealed that the energies used by Wanda to conjure her children into existence were fragmented portions of soul of the demon Mephisto. Mephisto, through his minion Master Pandemonium, kidnapped Wanda's children and reabsorbed them into his being. With Thomas and William having effectively ceased to exist (inasmuch as they had ever truly existed in the first place) Agatha made a controversial move that would bear bitter fruit years later when she erased all of Wanda's memories of the twins in order to give her peace and allow the Avengers to escape from Mephisto's realm.

At this time, a guilt-ridden Wonder Man attempted to give his brainwave patterns to Vision but was rejected by the synthezoid. Enough time had passed since his reconstruction to allow a cold, emotionless, logic-driven personality to emerge and this personality had no emotional connection whatsoever with Wanda, even after Wanda was kidnapped as part of the Atlantis Attacks crossover.

After rescuing her, Vision showed little concern for his mentally fragile wife upon revealing that he was leaving the Avengers West Coast team to join the group's East Coast branch. Vision coldly rejected Wanda's pleas to stay with her by stating that the East Coast team, which had lost several major members at the time, needed Vision more than his wife. This led to Wanda having a complete nervous breakdown, leading her to join up with Magneto in reforming the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants alongside Quicksilver.

The family reunion would be short-lived though, as Quicksilver quickly revealed that he joined his father to rescue his emotionally damaged sister from Magneto's clutches. As the Avengers West Coast branch launched a rescue mission, Wanda fell into a trance and was kidnapped by Immortus. He revealed that he manipulated Wanda's entire relationship with Vision, so he could destroy Vision and make Wanda emotionally vulnerable enough to become estranged from her friends, so that he might easily use her as a vessel for a large amount of "Nexus" energy. Her probability powers make her a conduit for multiple parallel timelines. She was ultimately rescued and returned to the Avengers West Coast with help from Agatha Harkness, free once again from the clutches of either Magneto or Immortus.

Wanda remained on the Avengers West Coast, her friendship with Hawkeye helping her deal with the destruction of her marriage and the loss of her children (Wanda's memories of the twins were shown to be restored in Avengers West Coast Annual #7 and also referenced several times in Kurt Busiek's run in Avengers Volume 3). Adventures as a hero and a team player augmented her leadership skills. She also worked with her powers, which began to fluctuate due to a spike in the chaos magic energies of the Marvel Universe.

Wanda would eventually recover and become the leader of the West Coast Avengers, just as her estranged husband Vision arranged for the group's dissolution. Wanda went on to become a founding member and field leader of the short-lived superhero team Force Works. Her relationship with Wonder Man remained on very tense terms but came to an abrupt end when Wonder Man died during Force Works' first adventure.

When Force Works disbanded, Wanda and Hawkeye rejoined the main Avengers. Both Wanda and Vision (now having regained his emotions and memories of their marriage) attempted to reconcile, but the two were forced to "sacrifice" their lives to stop the evil that was Onslaught. They were exiled instead alongside their fellow Avengers and Fantastic Four members into an alternate reality for a year before returning to Earth.

When she did return, Wanda was promptly kidnapped again by the sorceress Morgan LeFey and to escape her clutches, Wanda accidentally resurrected Wonder Man, now in an energy-based ghost form. However, during the final battle, Wanda was helpless to watch as Vision was mortally wounded yet again as LeFey destroyed the lower half of his body. Vision was still functional but put into a surgical repair device designed to fix his body. Communicating with his wife via hologram, the two had a tense confrontation where a distraught Vision begged Wanda to not visit him while he was in his damaged state. Vision would later state that he didn't want to put Wanda through any additional trauma caused by his injuries, but his actions would spell the end of their marriage.

Around this time, Wanda visited Agatha Harkness and learned that her mutant powers were evolving to the point that she was able to channel Chaos Magic, a feat that was generally considered dangerous by most magicians. According to Agatha, Wanda could do just about anything with this magic, including raising the dead. After much deliberation and still hurt from Vision rejecting her, she gave Wonder Man her love and restored him to life.

The two became lovers, flaunting their passionate affair in front of a restored to health Vision, who fled the Avengers briefly after a confrontation in which Wonder Man selfishly declared himself "the victim" in the three-way love triangle. Wanda began to impatiently wait for Simon to take their relationship to the next level. Unfortunately, while held prisoner by Kang, Wanda was dumped by Wonder Man, whose dreams of the future did not include marriage and children.

When writer Geoff Johns took over the Avengers book in 2002, he had Vision and Scarlet Witch reconcile off-panel and attempt once again to rebuild their relationship. Meanwhile, Wanda's use of Chaos Magic began to heavily affect her when she became consumed with chaos energy as a side effect of the mysterious Scorpio splitting the cosmic being the Inbetweener into the two aspects of his order- and chaos-related powers. Wanda being consumed by Chaos Magic was further explored in the much-anticipated Avengers/JLA crossover, which had Wanda tap into the highly dangerous (and powerful) chaos magic of the DC Universe and barely being able to control the magic.

Scarlet Witch was also reluctantly drawn into a battle between Captain America and an evil, government-sponsored doppelganger. During their team-up, Captain America found himself attracted to Wanda, but didn't act upon his feelings.

Avengers Disassembled

After the Avengers returned from events in England, Janet Van Dyne, the Wasp, entered into a romantic tryst with the wounded-but-recovering Hawkeye. While discussing the affair with Wanda, a slightly tipsy Wasp also confessed to a pregnancy scare on her part, which led to Wasp mentioning Wanda's children. The mention of her lost children, plus her growing powers, caused Wanda to suffer a mental breakdown. Wanda started rewriting reality in order to recreate her children, causing a series of threats and incidents to inexplicably occur one after the other, including the deaths of the Vision, Scott Lang, and Hawkeye.

Dr. Strange was able to determine that Wanda was the one responsible for all the incidents, and with the Avengers tracked her down to find she had created an illusion where she was having dinner with the Vision and their children. When they confronted her, she believed that they were trying to take her children away from her and started attacking them, until Dr. Strange was able to shut her mind down. Meanwhile in Genosha, Magneto hears his daughter's psychic cry for help and, using a wormhole, whisks her away before the Avengers can do anything.

House of M

File:Houseofm1.jpg

Variant cover to House of M #1. Art by Joe Quesada and Danny Miki.

Main article: House of M

In Genosha, Magneto asked his longtime friend and nemesis Charles Xavier to help Wanda. Unfortunately, Xavier refused to do so as Wanda attempted to restore her husband to life and undo the damage she had caused. Keeping Wanda in a comatose state, Xavier ultimately called a meeting between the Avengers and X-Men to decide whether or not Wanda should be killed. Quicksilver was horrified at the fact that Xavier seriously considered killing Wanda and convinced Wanda to take desperate action to keep this from happening: By using her powers, Wanda warped reality into the House of M, a world where mutants were the majority, humans the minority and Magneto the ruler (simultaneously giving various other heroes what they wanted most, hoping this would prevent them rebelling). In this reality, Wanda was believed to be a human, due to an alternate body she created to represent her in public while she cared for her children in private.

A young mutant named Layla Miller (whom Dr. Strange believed was actually an aspect of Wanda's psyche, but later revealed to be a deformed mutant who was given a normal body thanks to Wanda's reality warp) was able to use her mutant abilities to restore several of the heroes' memories. Meanwhile Wolverine and a resurrected Hawkeye and Cloak gathered these heroes into an assault force to try to restore reality. This rag-tag army headed to Genosha to attack Magneto, believing him to be the one responsible for the change. During the battle between Magneto's forces and the others, Layla was able to restore Magneto's memories; as well, Wanda confessed to Dr. Strange that it was Quicksilver, not Magneto, who had initiated the reality warp.

Enraged, Magneto confronted Quicksilver, angry that Quicksilver had done all of this in his name. Quicksilver told Magneto that he would have let Wanda die, but Magneto replied that Quicksilver had only used him and Wanda; Magneto then killed Quicksilver.

"No more mutants."

Wanda revived her brother, telling Magneto that Quicksilver had only wanted him to be happy and that Magneto had ruined them, choosing the mutants over his own children. She further denounced Xavier and in three words ("No more mutants") Wanda changed the world back to its original form minus the mass depowering of 90% of the entire mutant population, thus being responsible for many deaths as shown in the Generation M mini-series. Surviving mutants and ex-mutants now refer to this as "M-Day: The worst day in mutant history."

After the fallout, Wanda was missing and was last seen in a small, unknown European village, happy and in a state of peace.

Post-House of M

The resurrected Hawkeye/Clint Barton tracks Wanda to a small city near Wundagore Mountain, where he unknowingly saves her from a thief. Wanda has been living in a small apartment with her only relative, her "Aunt Agatha" (who is never seen, but could possibly a manisfestation of Wanda's now-dead mentor Agatha Harkness). She appears to be powerless and believes that she has lived her entire life in the city, and does not recognize Hawkeye, nor does she remember being a part of the Avengers or other events. Wanda tells Hawkeye that he was her "hero" for dealing with the thief and kisses him, and they spend the night together. The following morning, while Wanda is sleeping, Hawkeye becomes curious about the next room where "Aunt Agatha" is supposedly sleeping, but the doorknob appears to shift away from his hands, a subtle reality manipulation usually associated with the Scarlet Witch. However, Clint looks back to see that Wanda is still asleep.

Powers and abilities

Initially, the Scarlet Witch had the ability to manipulate probability via her "hexes" (often manifesting physically as "hex spheres" or "hex bolts"). These hexes are relatively short range, and are limited to her line of sight. Casting a hex requires a gesture and concentration on her part, though the gestures are largely a focus for the concentration. Early in her career, her hexes were unconscious on her part, and would be automatically triggered whenever she made a particular gesture, regardless of her intent. These hexes would only manifest random "bad luck" effects: objects falling or breaking, people tripping, and so on. She later gained enough control over her powers that her powers only work when she wants them to, and they are not limited to negative effects. Despite this enhanced precision, her hexes are not necessarily guaranteed to work, particularly if she has been straining herself or using her powers excessively. If overextended, her hexes can backfire, causing probability to work against her wishes or to undo previous hexes.

File:ScarletAvengers149.jpg

Scarlet Witch in action, employing magic to augment her mutant hex, art by George Perez and Sam Grainger.

Her hexes seem to have a wide, almost limitless variety of recorded and possible effects, though they often boil down to a kind of Deus Ex Machina superpower. They have been known to alter the molecular composition and physical state of physical objects, negate or distort physical laws, and to cause various forms of energy to spontaneously appear or disappear. She has an affinity with natural elements and phenomena, stemming largely from her magical training under Agatha Harkness, and has trained often at using her hexes to deflect projectiles or to cause enemies to stumble or otherwise suffer the effects of "bad luck". Writers often confuse her hex powers with psychokinesis, and have occasionally depicted them as able to generate energy blasts and to grant Wanda the power of flight. Although her hexes can cause objects to suddenly move or change course, they do not have the ability to "hold on" to objects as a telekinetic might. Ultimately, the hexes are not under the Witch's direct control, although she can influence the nature of their effects with great concentration and effort. This makes her one of the few Avengers that Ultron fears; his adamantium shell cannot repel her magic. She has displayed the ability to cancel Longshot and Domino's powers of probability and has also once turned Longshot into a cat.

The first major reclassification of Wanda's fairly-indistinct hex powers came during Kurt Busiek's run on Avengers, where her power was claimed by Agatha Harkness to be an ability to manipulate chaos magic, given to her by the demon Chthon (imprisoned within Wundagore Mountain) when she was born. Her hexes were, by extension, simple, indirect manifestations of this magic, destabilising probabilities by inducing chaos. Across Busiek's run, Wanda's powers grew continuously, as she gained the ability to manipulate organic matter and summon Wonder Man back to life. While in the DC Universe (during the Jla/Avengers crossover, she displayed the ability to access that universe's chaos magic, but had great difficulty in doing so at first, since it was more powerful there and she had no previous experience in wielding it.

The second and most controversial redefinition of Wanda's powers came under the writing of Brian Michael Bendis, whose final Avengers story Avengers Disassembled declared all previous explanations about Wanda's powers to be lies or mistakes and recast her as an insane reality warping mutant whose powers work on an unconscious level. While it was implied by Immortus that Wanda possessed the potential for such, when he turned Wanda into a "Nexus Battery", Immortus specifically claimed that Wanda could only manipulate past alternate timelines. Her powers were used by Morgan Le Fey to alter reality in Avengers (vol. 3) #1-3, although this was only accomplished through a much more complicated spell that involved a slew of magical artifacts that actually brought about the warping of reality with Wanda simply used as a power source.

Under Bendis's definition, the Scarlet Witch's powers are not fully under her conscious control, and their effects persist even after Dr. Strange shut down her mind. There seem to be no limits to her powers during House of M, as she was easily able to alter the entire Earth-616 reality at will, and is also altering reality on a multiversal scale without even realizing what she had done, though certain of her victims have claimed to be able to discern the difference between reality and her spells.

Wanda's ability to channel and wield magical energy was brought about by the demonic sorcerer Chthon. On the day that Wanda was born, the ghostly spectre of Chthon visited the newborn Wanda and "blessed" Wanda so that Wanda could channel the dangerous Chaos Magic that was the basis for Chthon's unholy might. Chthon's intentions were to create a vessel that he could possess one day, when Wanda was a full-grown adult, though his schemes to do so were foiled by the Avengers.

As such, due to Chthon's "blessing", Wanda is also vulnerable to having all of her powers disabled if Chthon is ever disrupted. During the period in which pages from Chthon's sacred tome, the Darkhold, were scattered across the globe, Wanda's powers were periodically disabled -- with her being left powerless in several dangerous battles against various super-villains -- until several of the missing pages were restored to the book. Although this particular plot thread was stated by Agatha Harkness who was reanimated by Wanda. How much of it is true and how much of it is more unconscious manifestations of the Scarlet Witch's reality manipulation is up to the reader's preference

Wanda has also been trained in hand-to-hand combat by both Captain America and Hawkeye, and has, when sane, the experience and leadership skills that come from years of active duty as an Avenger.

Magical progeny

In the Young Avengers series, the characters Tommy Shepherd (Speed) and Billy Kaplan (Wiccan) look almost exactly alike. Wiccan has abilities similar to the Scarlet Witch, while Tommy has Quicksilver's superspeed. Their names, Thomas and William, are the same names of the Scarlet Witch's twins. The Super Skrull, upon meeting the two, assumed they were her children. Although it is not public knowledge that the Scarlet Witch had any children, the Super Skrull claimed, through Skrull Intelligence, that he knew they existed.

The new Vision used the previous Vision's memory files to explain that the Scarlet Witch created her children from two lost souls. When Mephisto was destroyed by Franklin Richards, two of his fragments became Wanda's twin sons. When Mephisto claimed those souls as his own to restore himself, they caused Mephisto to be destroyed when he absorbed them, setting the souls free. Wiccan theorized that when the souls were set free they formed into the people that became Speed and himself. Therefore they get their powers from Mephisto himself since they are portions of him. This remains Billy's theory, however Allan Heinberg's plans for the new 'season' involved the two searching for Wanda and the true source of their powers [1].

Other versions

Age of Apocalypse

During the Age of Apocalypse, The Scarlet Witch was a member of Magneto's X-Men. She died while defending the X-Men's base on Wundagore Mountain from an attack by Nemesis.

Ultimate Scarlet Witch

Scarlet Witch
File:Scarlet Witch Ultimate.jpg Scarlet Witch on the cover of Ultimate Power #6, art by Greg Land.
Publication information
Publisher	Marvel Comics (Ultimate Marvel imprint)
First appearance	Ultimate X-Men #1
Created by	Mark Millar Adam Kubert Based on Scarlet Witch, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
In-story information
Alter ego	Wanda Lensherr
Team affiliations	Ultimates, The Brotherhood of Mutant Supremacy
Abilities	Probability manipulation creating a wide range of effects. Flight, teleportion of targets and transformation of people and objects.

Template:Spoilers In the Ultimate Marvel Universe, Wanda Lensherr Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, is the daughter of Magneto and the sister of Quicksilver. She has the ability to alter probability fields with her hexes. Wanda was a member of Magneto's team, the Brotherhood of Mutants. Following her father's apparent death, she and Quicksilver helped lead the Brotherhood for a while, attempting to steer it away from her father's mutant supremacist ideals and keeping in touch with Charles Xavier to promote a more peaceful mutant-human integration. During this time, they participated in the rescue of the Ultimate X-Men from Weapon X.

The twins even agreed to work for the Ultimates in exchange for the release of imprisoned Brotherhood members, although Nick Fury kept them in the black ops division of the team because of their terrorist past. Wanda and Pietro tried to get Betty Ross to convince Fury to make them public members, but she continuously refused. Wanda caused several unfortunate 'accidents' to happen to Betty everytime she said no.

When Magneto returned and took back leadership of the Brotherhood, she and her brother fled to the Triskelion (homebase of the Ultimates) although their father caught up to them. Magneto injured Quicksilver for "neutering" his Brotherhood, but left Wanda unhurt. Following that, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver were finally elevated to public status on the Ultimates since there was now proof that the two were loyal to the government and not to their terrorist father.

She and her brother are often depicted touching each other very intimately and performing activities that couples usually do (e.g., a gondola ride where Pietro reads romantic poetry to Wanda); that scene and the fact that they often call each other "darling" has led to fan speculation that the two share an incestuous relationship. In Issue #6 of Ultimates Volume 2, writer Mark Millar alludes to her relationship with Vision; Hank Pym attempts to redeem himself by bringing two androids, named Ultron and Vision II, to the Ultimates. Wanda takes notice of Vision to which Quicksilver asks "Were you just flirting with that machine?"

In Issue #7 of Ultimates 2, Wanda exerts her power as by stealing nuclear missiles from Iran, as she did in Pakistan during a previous storyline in Ultimate X-Men. Later, in Issue #9, she is defeated after being overwhelemed by the massive numbers of the Liberators' super-soldier army. At the end of that story arc in Issue #12, she is able to use her powers to summon a completely restored Thor to "kick Loki's ass".

Powers and abilities

It has been indicated in The Ultimates 2 series that the Ultimate Scarlet Witch actually has to "do the math" in order to use her powers--i.e., that she has to calculate the mathematical probability that the effect she intends to create will actually happen; the more unlikely the effect, the more complex the mathematic formula, and the more difficult and time-consuming it will be to make the effect happen.

Ultimate Scarlet Witch seems to be more powerful at a conscious level than her 616 counter-part. This may be due to training since she was raised in a terrorist environment and joined the super-human military afterwards. Unlike her 616 counterpart she can fly, change objects at will, create force fields, and transport any object assumingly anywhere she can think of. The downside seems to be that she needs to be consciously aware of what she needs/wants to affect. In the 616 universe her 'luck' powers seemed to emanate from her, while in this universe she needs to not only concentrate but also use her hands, since she was easily disabled by Colossus when he held her hands behind her back.

Heroes Reborn Scarlet Witch

Scarlet Witch was one of the Avengers in the Heroes Reborn universe, in which she was raised by Agatha Harkness. The Asgardian sorceress Enchantress falsely claimed to be her mother.

Ultimate Spider-Man Cameo

During the time House of M was released, Brian Michael Bendis referenced it in his Ultimate title, Ultimate Spider-Man, by having a scene in its eighty-first issue where a woman dressed in the 616 Scarlet Witch's uniform is dragged away by police, screaming "I'm Not crazy! I'm not craaaaaazzzzzy!", just as Wanda herself protested frequently to Charles Xavier near the beginning of House of M.

1602 Scarlet Witch

In Marvel 1602, the Scarlet Witch character was Sister Wanda, a nun working for Inquisitor Enrique (Magneto). The full extent of her powers was unrevealed but she was able to sense and banish the astral form of Stephen Strange.

After they were revealed as Witchbreed, the Inquisitor left her and her brother Petros in the care of Carlos Javier (Professor X), on condition he never revealed that Enrique was their father.

MC2 Scarlet Witch

An older version of the Scarlet Witch first appeared in the MC2 universe, during the short-lived A-Next series. The original team of Avengers disbanded following a disastrous battle with their evil counterparts in an alternate universe. For several years afterward, Scarlet Witch remained in suspended animation beneath Avengers Mansion powering a gate to this world. Eventually, she was freed by the next generation of Avengers, although she remained in a coma for some time afterward.

When the mad god Loki, the evil half-brother of Thor, chose to avenge his earlier defeats, he took Wanda out of her coma to act as one of his "puppets". Wanda was eventually released from said spell, and later chose to return into action as part of A-Next. No mentioning of Quicksilver has been made so far in the MC2 universe, and Wanda currently appears sporadically in the Spider-Girl series. The Crimson Curse modelled her appearance on the older heroine.

The Silver Sorceress

In 1971, DC Comics introduced a group of superheros called the Champions of Angor who resembled the Avengers at the same time Marvel introduced Squadron Supreme, which resembled the characters in the Justice League. The characters were reintroduced with a slightly different background in the Justice League International in 1987. The Silver Sorceress is the DC Comics pastiche of the Scarlet Witch. She possessed magical powers and served in the JLI and then the JLE until she died defeating Dreamslayer in 1991.

Appearances in other media

File:Scarlet Witch (X-Men Legends).jpg

Scarlet Witch in X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse

The Scarlet Witch appeared in the 1996 animated television series Iron Man. She was voiced by Jennifer Darling. In this series she was part of a romantic triangle, competing with Spider-Woman for Iron Man.

The Scarlet Witch appeared in the 1999 animated television series Avengers. She was voiced by Stavroula Logothettis.

(In both of the above appearances, she was voiced with a thick Eastern European accent.)

The Scarlet Witch made both a guest and a cameo appearance in the 1990s X-Men animated series. She was played by Tara Strong.

X-Men: Evolution

File:XMWanda.jpg

Scarlet Witch - X-Men Evolution

Committed to an institution by her father Magneto when she was just a child due to his inability to take care of her, Wanda harbored a homicidal hatred for him; he claims it necessary because of her uncontrollable, dangerous powers (when asked about what specific event led to Magneto institutionalizing Wanda, X-Men: Evolution's head writer Greg Johnson stated that "There was no specific event. It was just years of him trying to handle a hostile, out of control child whose powers were promising to be very destructive if he didn't get her put away." [2]). Freed from the institution by Mystique, she joined the Brotherhood in return. Wanda was more interested in revenge against her father than in fighting for the Brotherhood's cause. During the days after, she trained with Agatha Harkness and gained control of her powers, which she demonstrated to great effect against the X-Men, handing them their first real loss to the Brotherhood. It was in this episode that she was referred to as the Scarlet Witch for the only time in the series.

Wanda then teamed up with the X-Men for the Day of Reckoning, nearly killing Magneto in revenge with a falling Sentinel. She failed, and nearly fell to her death, but was saved by Nightcrawler. Following this, she and Toad (who'd developed a crush on her) confirmed Magneto's survival.

After the Brotherhood (sans the traitorous Quicksilver) returned home, Wanda left them to search for Magneto, even going to Caliban of the Morlocks for help. She failed to locate him until returning to her teammates, when she found her brother in charge. Wanda managed to find her father, but Magneto used his latest recruit Mastermind to rewrite her memories, removing her hatred of him and causing her to forget having been committed. Toad and Nightcrawler rescued her from Magneto's base, and she returned to the Brotherhood.

When Magneto was "killed" by Apocalypse, Wanda took the news quite hard and blamed the X-Men for not helping her father. After learning that he was in fact alive, having become one of Apocalypse's Four Horsemen, she joined Shadowcat's team in Mexico to confront her father and destroy one of Apocalypse's Pyramids, and was soon joined by the rest of the Brotherhood. After the battle's end, she returned to the Brotherhood once more.

In the future as seen by Charles Xavier while he was under Apocalypse's control, Wanda, along with Avalanche, Toad, Blob, Quicksilver, and Pyro, has joined S.H.I.E.L.D. as a member of Freedom Force.

In X-Men Evolution, Wanda's powers allow her to "Hex" anyone in her path. The "Hex" causes everything to turn against the victim and in Wanda's favor, including objects becoming spontaneously animated and attacking the victim of the hex. She has also shown an ability to paralyze another mutant's powers or cause them to go haywire.

She was voiced by Kelly Sheridan.

X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse

She was also a playable character in the game X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse where she was voiced by Jennifer Hale. She is able to fire hexes with many effects, including turning her enemy into a box and combusting things around her into fire. It is implied throughout that she has a crush on Colossus, a mission briefing providing one example.

Toys

The Scarlet Witch was part of a short-lived wave of Avengers action figures released by Toy Biz in 1996.

Another figure was scheduled to be released in 2005 by Toy Biz as part of Wave 11 of Marvel Legends, this wave known as the Legendary Riders. When it came time for productions, Toy Biz executives felt the figure was not up to quality and pulled it from the line. However, some factories had already produced figures and packed them for shipment. When the line originally showed up, only the odd box contained a Scarlet Witch figure and smaller retail stores and Ebay sellers would sell the figure at much higher prices, making it for a short time the most valuable figure in the toy line. Later though, the figure began showing up much more frequently in larger retails stores (such as Wal-Mart) and the value of the figure decreased.

See also

• Wiccan (comics)
• Speed (comics)
• Nocturne (comics)

External links

• MarvelDatabase:Character Gallery Scarlet Witch
• MarvelDatabase:Character Gallery Scarlet Witch (HoM)
• MarvelDatabase:Character Gallery Scarlet Witch (Ultimate)
• UncannyXmen.net Spotlight on Scarlet Witch
• Scarlet Witch Message Board at the Second String Sanctuary
• Scarlet Witch, My Valentine! at Photon Torpedoes
• The Women of Marvel Comics Scarlet Witch Page
• Scarlet Witch on the Marvel Universe Character Bio Wiki