Doctor Strange’s writer addresses fans’ biggest question about Wanda
Immediately after Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness premiered, some fans started rebelling over some of the film’s biggest plot points, particularly the ending. Major changes to a familiar character will do that. Inevitably, theories and protests started flying, and the fate of the movie’s villain sparked immediate online arguments, hypotheses, and hopes. Polygon recently spoke with the film’s screenwriter, Michael Waldron, also a writer and producer on the Marvel Studios series Loki and on Rick and Morty. We asked him two of the questions that have come up most on the internet since the Doctor Strange sequel premiered — specifically about Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch.
[Ed. note: Major plot spoilers and ending spoilers ahead for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.]
Some fans bridled at the reveal that happens early in the first act of Multiverse of Madness — Wanda, fresh off a new trauma and a life-changing experience with her two seemingly imaginary children in WandaVision, winds up being the film’s villain. She’s obsessed with using the potential of the multiverse to find a world where her children are real and alive, and she’s willing to kill anyone who gets in the way of that goal. By the end of the movie, though, she has a moment of regret and clarity, and she seems to take her own life while destroying a site that gave her immense power.
Fans don’t necessarily want to believe Wanda’s dead, though. Is she? Waldron says he really couldn’t say for sure.
“I can’t,” he tells us. “I hope she isn’t, but I have no idea. A giant mountain fell on her, but she’s pretty strong. So I guess I don’t know. Time will tell. But as a fan of Wanda and Lizzie [actor Elizabeth Olsen], I’d sure like to see her
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