The first part of Phase Four for the Marvel Cinematic Universe came to a dramatic close on Friday as the final showdown between Wanda Maximoff and Agatha Harkness raged on, all while the future of Westview and Wanda’s family hung in the balance. With Agatha’s thirst for power brought strife between magical forces in the small New Jersey town.
If one thing has been evident throughout Wanda’s life, it’s that she has been nothing but remade. From the beginning, she has been a magical child, then a magical orphan, a powerful Avenger and finally a being of mythic proportion. Her metamorphosis has proved to be forging a force admittedly more powerful than Doctor Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme.
Monica Rambeau, the soon-to-be-dubbed Photon, uncovers Agatha’s biggest lie that sparked thousands of theories several episodes back about Pietro Maximoff, Wanda’s late brother. Replacing Aaron Taylor-Johnson with Evan Peters was a genius move, honestly.
Bringing in an actor from the X-Men cinematic universe distracted audiences enough to ignore the fact that Agatha really didn’t have that amount of power as she essentially was a magical battery, stealing from those she deemed undeserving. The true identity of Agatha’s Pietro was a massive forehead-slap moment for audiences as it turned out to be nothing more than a middle school-level innuendo.
The series finale also had us seeing double, or maybe it was the two separate Visions. Either way, the S.W.O.R.D. project supposedly disassembling the most advanced sentient weapon was nothing more than an effort to recommission the corpse of Vision from Avengers: Infinity War. This debunked even more theories that Ultron, the robot originally primed for Vision’s body in Avengers: Age of Ultron, was set to make a return in the series.
It’s one thing to know your title, it’s an entirely separate instance to accept it. It wasn’t until the very end that Wanda became the Scarlet Witch, despite her lifelong abilities. Her acceptance of her title as one of the most powerful forces in the universe granted her new powers and a long-awaited costume upgrade.
Though the series was only nine episodes, the journey seemed much more extensive and immersive. In the course of a week, Wanda Maximoff created an entirely new reality, raised a family and lost it all. The two post-credit scenes introduced a complex future for Monica in space and Wanda mastering her full power through reading the Darkhold. The Scarlet Witch is set to return in 2022 starring in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness.
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