Wanda was Butchered by the MCU

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你好〻𝐖𝐞𝐥𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞, you cutie 𖧧

:airplane: ꜜꜜ bᥣ᥆g by : [⋆✶ 𝖂𝖆𝖓𝖉𝖆 ✶⋆] ꒱

➷ ⁝ [Wanda was butchered by the MCU] ᝐᝐ ⌗stanidol

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‐ Welcome

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EDIT: Thank you so much for the feature 🥰🥰

Hello and welcome back to one of my blogs! When I saw this week's question, I had my answer right away. The question you might ask? What character do you think translated horribly from the comics to the MCU. And while there are a lot of options, today my pick will be Wanda Maximoff, not just because of terrible character choices that the writers decided to lean into in the MCU, but certain things about her character they decided to erase

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˗ˏ ꕤ ‣ 𝑻 𝑶 𝑷 𝑰 𝑪 O1 ⨾ ୨୧ ˊ-

Wanda Maximoff

Now, I know what you guys are thinking: "we already know about Wanda" and I get that, but I want to talk about her character for a moment. Wanda first appeared in X-Men #4 in 1964 as a Jewish Romani woman. As she continued to become fairly prominent character in the comics, her powers evolved. She developed powers such as reality warping, telekinesis, mental manipulation, and a laundry list of other powers. Wanda has been a powerful character from the beginning.

She's displayed time and time again that she has powers undreampt of by others. She has almost rewritten reality in comic runs like in House of M and shown in WandaVision. She has erased mutants from the face of the earth and has even absorbed the Darkhold to prevent anyone else from reading the book. Impressive right?

Now you're probably saying "get on with the discussion, I want to read what you have to say" and to that, I say, hold onto your butts, because I'm about to get into the meat of her character and what they messed up so badly.

In the past in the comics, like I've said, Wanda has displayed insane abilities, but they all had one thing in common. They were all triggered by her emotions. Now do I think it's a bad thing that emotions can possibly make powers stronger? Absolutely not, when written in a good way, it can be a massive plus to the story, but when written horribly, it can come off as a misogynist trope, and sadly, the MCU has leaned into this. But first, we have other topics to discuss

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✿៹ 𝑻 𝑶 𝑷 𝑰 𝑪 O2 :wavy_dash: •ଓ.°᭡

She's Jewish and Romani, not white

Quite possibly one of the biggest mistakes that the MCU made when introducing Wanda is that they erased the fact that she's Jewish and Romani. You ask "why is that such a big deal?", And I answer with: because, she's a person of color, not white. She should have never been played by a white person. By any means necessary.

Let's take a look at the past with Wanda's character. In the comics, her father is Magneto, who is Jewish. He was a victim to the Holocaust. Her mother was Romani. She was raised by her aunt and uncle who were also Romani and raised her in the culture. Being Romani is such a huge part of her character, from the color she wears being red, which is considered a lucky color, to some of the outfits she wears as the Scarlet Witch to even her face shape and her hair. While she was a white washed Romani depiction in the comics, she never lost who she was. A Jewish and Romani woman.

The MCU got rid of all of that, even at one point putting multiple crosses in her room in Civil War. Not only that, but the actress that they hired to play her has previously refered to Wanda with a common slur used against Romani people and never apologized for it. Not only that, but making Wanda a Sokovian Fortune Teller for Halloween was even worse playing into the trope that Romani people were fortune tellers to steal your money and that it's okay to wear something like that as a costume.

EDIT: there is another thing that I forgot and it's Wanda and Pietro g up to be part of struker's experiments. The Romani people were the second largest group affected by the Holocaust and for people that didn't know, Hydra is essentially Nazis. Having a group of people that were targeted by the Nazis volunteer for the Nazis wasn't a good move on the MCU's part.

There are certain things you cannot get rid of when it comes to her character and who she truly is though. Maximoff is a Romani name. Wanda was inspired by a Romani writer that Marvel creators knew and respected, and they made him Wanda and Pietro's namesake. That part, you can never take away.

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↷✧; ..⃗. 𝑻 𝑶 𝑷 𝑰 𝑪 O3 ° ❀ ⁾⁾

Her powers shouldn't be tied to her emotions.

Now I know this is going to rub a lot of people the wrong way and to that I say: why are you still reading this? Either way, I digress. I mentioned earlier that Wanda's has displayed massive amounts of power in both the comics and the MCU. The MCU had a chance to have an extremely powerful character with little to no tropes written in, but they really leaned into quite possibly one of the worst tropes this powerful woman was written with.

Everytime we see Wanda displaying her powers, they are tied to her emotions, which is rooted in misogyny. Plain and simple. They made her this earth shattering powerful woman and the only time she displays that kind of power is when she's emotional. Seems a little off to me.

Making her character so powerful, but then only showing off those powers when she's heartbroken (Age of Ultron, WandaVision, Multiverse of Madness) is a horrible mistake. It reinforces the idea that when women get angry they will just destroy everything. If they had just made her powerful and had written that she was able to learn about her powers, it would have worked out a lot better, but the MCU decided to lean into this trope and made it the talking point of her being a villain, which is distasteful at best.

Does the comics do this better? No, sadly. My point is that the MCU had the chance to really write in this powerful character and say that her emotions aren't the soul driver for her powers and that she was powerful just as who she is, but they didn't do that. They didn't even do it for Captain Marvel, so my hopes are non-existent.

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↷✧; ..⃗. 𝑻 𝑶 𝑷 𝑰 𝑪 O4 ° ❀ ⁾⁾

Is there any hope of saving Wanda's character?

Sadly enough, I don't think there is. I think so much damage has been done to her character that it's almost irreversible. Yes, it sucks, but I think that Marvel should take it upon themselves and either fix something so that it's shown that she's Romani and Jewish or they apologize for writing that part of her character out, but unfortunately, I don't think they will, leaving us with this white version of Wanda that should have never had existed if Marvel had just put in the time and effort to create powerful and meaningful representation.

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⊱ 𝑶 𝑼 𝑻 𝑹 𝑶 જ :: ʕ •ᴥ• ʔ

‐ There was an idea

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If you read all of this, I thank each and every one of you. This blog touches on a few topics that are not subtle in any way shape or form. I hope you enjoyed the blog, and thank you for reading.

The headers are not mine, they belong to @haerins-lover and @natashowlet on Tumblr

-Wanda

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