Scarlet Witch

The Scarlet Witch is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby, the character first appeared in The X-Men #4 in March 1964, in the Silver Age of Comic Books. Originally described as having the power to alter probability, the Scarlet Witch evolved into a powerful sorceress by the 1980s. Over time, she has occasionally tapped into immense magical forces, allowing her to alter reality itself. She is widely recognized as one of Marvel’s most powerful heroes.

The Scarlet Witch, an alter ego of Wanda Django Maximoff, was first introduced as a reluctant supervillain alongside her twin brother, Quicksilver, both founding members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. A year later, she joined the Avengers and became a longtime member of various teams like the West Coast Avengers and Force Works. In 1975, she married her android teammate Vision and magically conceived twin sons. Their tragic loss in 1989, along with Vision's emotional reset, led to their marriage's end and fueled major storylines like Avengers: Disassembled and House of M. Her sons, Wiccan and Speed, would later return as teenage heroes.

Originally depicted as a mutant, later stories revealed her powers stem from experiments by the High Evolutionary, combined with inherited magical abilities. A 2015 retcon clarified she was never truly a mutant but gave a false-positive on 'X-gene" tests. Wanda's origins have changed over time: initially unnamed parents, later Golden Age heroes Whizzer and Miss America, and then Magneto and Magda. Eventually, it was revealed she is the daughter of Natalya Maximoff, a Roma sorceress and previous Scarlet Witch, with Django and Marya Maximoff as her aunt and uncle.

Elizabeth Olsen portrays Wanda Maximoff in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, making the character's live-action debut in Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). She went on to play key roles in Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019), with her most prominent appearances in WandaVision (2021) and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022).