A few thoughts about Wanda leaving at the end of "WandaVision"
Probably an unpopular opinion... Oh well.
Wanda leaving Westview and going into self-imposed exile rather than turning herself into the authorities has never struck me as Wanda trying to escape punishment or justice for her actions. Rather, I've always seen it as Wanda taking the best course of action available to her to prevent something like Westview ever happening again.
Whenever Wanda has hurt innocents before, not only has it always been unintentional, but it has also always been because of her lack of knowledge, either of her own power or of the situation (or both):
- She sides with Ultron at first because she doesn't know Ultron's true intentions. Once she does, however, she immediately switches sides and joins with those who she has once considered foes.
- She inadvertently kills civilians in Lagos while trying to save hundreds of other civilians, largely because of a miscalculation and her control of her powers slipping briefly.
- She still didn't fully understand her powers after *Endgame,* to the point that she doesn't really know what's going on after she first creates the Hex; and when she does realize she is the one who created and is controlling it, she still doesn't know how she managed to do it and thus doesn't quite know how to fix it - or even why it needs fixing in the first place. As Agatha repeatedly points out, Wanda's lack of knowledge is a problem.
And so, rather than turn herself in to be arrested - a situation that, let's face it, would do next to nothing to change what the citizens of Westview had gone through and would do absolutely nothing to solve the underlying problem of Wanda's ignorance which has caused so many issues in the first place - she takes herself far away from other people and vows to learn more about her powers.
Because if she knows more about them, maybe she can control them better. And if she can control them better, maybe she won't accidentally hurt anyone else.
***(As an aside: there's an argument to be made, of course, that incarceration - while not rectifying the harm already done - at least ensures dangerous criminals can't do any more harm. So Wanda letting herself be arrested might be considered her attempt to "make amends" by showing people she accepts being locked away rather than hurting anyone else. Even with this in mind, I still believe Wanda left not to escape punishment, but to try to solve the root of the problem - her own ignorance - and in this way ensure she would do no more harm. ~~Basically I think "Prison!" is *one* answer but shouldn't be the *only* answer when considering how best to mete out justice. Anyway...~~ )
Wanda leaving Westview and going into self-imposed exile rather than turning herself into the authorities has never struck me as Wanda trying to escape punishment or justice for her actions. Rather, I've always seen it as Wanda taking the best course of action available to her to prevent something like Westview ever happening again.
Whenever Wanda has hurt innocents before, not only has it always been unintentional, but it has also always been because of her lack of knowledge, either of her own power or of the situation (or both):
- She sides with Ultron at first because she doesn't know Ultron's true intentions. Once she does, however, she immediately switches sides and joins with those who she has once considered foes.
- She inadvertently kills civilians in Lagos while trying to save hundreds of other civilians, largely because of a miscalculation and her control of her powers slipping briefly.
- She still didn't fully understand her powers after *Endgame,* to the point that she doesn't really know what's going on after she first creates the Hex; and when she does realize she is the one who created and is controlling it, she still doesn't know how she managed to do it and thus doesn't quite know how to fix it - or even why it needs fixing in the first place. As Agatha repeatedly points out, Wanda's lack of knowledge is a problem.
And so, rather than turn herself in to be arrested - a situation that, let's face it, would do next to nothing to change what the citizens of Westview had gone through and would do absolutely nothing to solve the underlying problem of Wanda's ignorance which has caused so many issues in the first place - she takes herself far away from other people and vows to learn more about her powers.
Because if she knows more about them, maybe she can control them better. And if she can control them better, maybe she won't accidentally hurt anyone else.
***(As an aside: there's an argument to be made, of course, that incarceration - while not rectifying the harm already done - at least ensures dangerous criminals can't do any more harm. So Wanda letting herself be arrested might be considered her attempt to "make amends" by showing people she accepts being locked away rather than hurting anyone else. Even with this in mind, I still believe Wanda left not to escape punishment, but to try to solve the root of the problem - her own ignorance - and in this way ensure she would do no more harm. ~~Basically I think "Prison!" is *one* answer but shouldn't be the *only* answer when considering how best to mete out justice. Anyway...~~ )
Commentaires
Wanda didn't kill anyone in WestView.
I am not justifying Wanda's actions in WestView, by the way.
And anyway, this discussion is straying from the point I made in my post. I'm not arguing what may or may not have happened in reality, nor am I arguing why Wanda would/should have been imprisoned. I'm simply stating that I don't believe Wanda left WestView with the primary goal of escaping prison time - I believe she had other goals in mind, including making sure she had control of her powers so she wouldn't hurt anyone else.
You're arguing that she should avoid having to answer for the obvious crimes she committed, or face any sort of punitive action - so yeah, you are.
Not what I said. At all.
Stark caused more harm with Ultron than Wanda did at Westview.
What consequences did stark face?
He ‘retired’ and was making jokes about living on a farm at the end of the movie.
And after the blip those same authorities have stolen the body of the person she loves and started carving it up. Not to mention firing a gun at one of her children.
I think a mistrust of authority is justified here.
I will also add that the point is clearly made in the show that this goes against Vision's living will because he did NOT want to be turned into a weapon. Not only does Hayward disregard this, we as the viewers also see that he shows Wanda the body only in hopes that she will reanimate him.
I think we're overlooking the facts that Agatha had just recently threatened Wanda's children and held them hostage to force Wanda into reliving traumatic memories to satisfy Agatha's curiosity, had created a fake Pietro in order to get information, attacked Wanda, tried to steal her power, manipulated the people of Westview and lied about fixing the Hex to try to get what she wanted.
I guess I figure that after all that, wording Wanda's actions as "stealing a book from someone she had just gleefully subjugated and enslaved" is almost like saying "Steve Rogers irreversibly crippled America's intelligence apparatus just because he had a grudge against a dead scientist."
>Wanda obviously thought she was beyond reproach
I can't come to that conclusion when she is so obviously horrified upon discovering that the citizens of Westview are feeling her own grief and pain, apologizes profusely and tries to let them go; when she immediately took down the Hex and let her own family die right after she defeated Agatha; when she admits to Vision that she realizes she should have told him the truth once she had realized what she'd done; when she again reveals how sorry she is about what she had done and links her apology to her decision to learn how to better control her powers.
>the spoils of her victory over westview
? Westview was never Wanda's adversary.
Yep. Part of the time she didn't even know what was going on; part of the time she was in denial.
>left the mind-controlled town to tell the authorities to stay out
After they sent a drone to attack her. She was still operating under the assumption that everything was fine and happy in Westview under her control, and the military was a threat not only to her but to the town. Was her assumption correct? Nope. And she eventually comes to realize this.
>then she felt bad when they suffered psychic trauma
Yep, and so she took down the Hex to fix her mistake.
>stole a big evil book of magical evil to study how to do big evil magic
I'm still waiting for anyone to point to any specific scene in the show where Wanda is informed in no uncertain terms that the book is a sentient entity that will turn its readers evil. Wanda as a character has not read the Marvel comics herself. She does NOT know what the Darkhold is or what it does. Someone would have to actually explain that to her. Her only understanding is that it's a book that Agatha reads from to define what the Scarlet Witch is, and therefore it must have some information about her powers. (Much like I myself, as someone who has not read the comics, had no idea what the Darkhold is or what it does, and certainly didn't get any clue solely from what's presented in the show. Heck, even after watching *Multiverse of Madness,* I had to look up a wikipedia summary to really understand what was up with that stupid book.)
Wanda's intention was NOT to "study how to do big evil magic"! She very clearly states "I'm sorry for all the pain I caused. I don't understand this power [referring to her chaos magic], but I will." Her intention was to study herself and her own magic.
The only person that can stop her is her and I believe that was likely her mindset at the time of her leaving.
Like, she was a straight up villain for 70% of that movie. The Maximoffs knew who the Avengers were before attacking them. She allowed Stark to take the scepter because she hoped the he, the guy known for making bombs, would do something destructive with them to ruin himself. She wanted revenge and was okay with a LOT of blameless people dying to achieve it. And that was HER decision. Pietro wanted to kill him and be done with it. She also unleashed the HULK on an unsuspecting city. They attacked innocent people in Seoul.
They turned against Ultron because his plan would have ended with them and their beloved country destroyed. Good for them, but let's not pretend that they were in it out of the goodness of their hearts.
I truly believe that if Ultron's long term plans hadn't affected her country, she wouldn't have turned.
Take Loki, for example. The fandom has sympathized with him for YEARS (long before *Ragnarok,* *Infinity War,* and *Loki*) and considered his hate for Odin to be justified because *checks notes* Loki was second in line for the throne and Odin didn't tell Loki he was adopted.
Meanwhile, here's Wanda who grew up in the middle of a civil war where Tony Stark's weapons were openly used (and quite possibly were legitimately being purchased by one side or the other), orphaned at a young age and left on her own with her brother in a country rife with conflict and loud opposing viewpoints... And somehow the fandom doesn't understand why Wanda and other Sokovians hated/distrusted the Avengers.
Let me be clear: **Wanda shouldn't have ever sided with Ultron at all. That was wrong and she did bad things.** But I find it disingenuous to ignore the context that shaped and informed her perspective at that time, when we so willingly will apply that kind of nuance to other flawed characters. (Heck, even Steve Rogers sympathized with the twins' situation at the beginning, even though he didn't agree with what they were doing.)
So, yes, I do think it speaks more to Wanda's character and her true intentions/priorities that she decides to turn on Ultron and then *stay* with the Avengers.
Wanda was seeking revenge for her parents and her country. Her motives were directly opposed to the Avengers but her intentions are patriotic from Sokovia’s viewpoint.
Ultron wanted to destroy all humanity because he believed them flawed. That’s a villain.
Based on your take, Tony Stark and everyone aligned with him would have been the villains for most of Civil War.
One bad decision she makes is thinking that the only person that can judge her, is herself. That leads to the irredeemable monster she becomes in Dr Strange 2.
She's boring now because she's become an unthinking monster that kills for no reason. She has less motivation and character growth than the shark from Jaws or the xenomorph from Aliens.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: there is absolutely no punishment that would have made up for Wanda imprisoning the residents of Westview. I think her self-imposed exile was fitting because ultimately, she had to not only understand her powers but also move on from everything that has happened to her.
She got corrupted by the Darkhold, much like Barton had been corrupted by Loki's use of the Mind Stone on him. Do we blame Barton for what he did under the Mind Stone's influence? Wanda had no idea what the Darkhold was or could do; she was genuinely trying to figure out how to control her powers. Did she succeed? No. But that doesn't change what her intentions had been.
Instead of asking anyone, like Dr Strange what the Darkhold was, she took this obviously powerful device off to play with by herself. Immediately after doing what she did in WandaVision.
You compare this to what Loki did to Hawkeye. I compare it to an alcoholic who hurts many people while drinking and driving, then finding a bottle of fine scotch, drinking it all, and then killing multiple people while again driving a Sherman tank on a crowded highway.
She was explicitly warned about the corrupting nature of the book by Agatha. Instead of even trying to figure out if there was any danger, the woman willingly fully immersed herself, without any sort of precaution taken.
Getting drunk and losing control isn't an excuse anywhere. Wanda had a chance to atone and learn, and instead she risked the world to fulfill her personal delusions.
When? Literally the only thing Agatha says about it is "The Darkhold, the Book of the Damned." Stating a title does *not* explicitly warn anyone that the book is practically a sentient entity that overtakes and corrupts its readers.
From Wanda's perspective, she's taking a textbook to study more about her abilities. She's not willfully running off with a "powerful device to play with."
>Instead of asking anyone, like Dr Strange what the Darkhold was
Just gonna throw out there that Wanda barely knows who Dr. Strange is at this point. The first time they "meet" is during the final battle in *Endgame.* So I can't blame her for not immediately thinking of going to him.
>Getting drunk and losing control isn't an excuse anywhere. Wanda had a chance to atone and learn, and instead she risked the world to fulfill her personal delusions.
You are correct that getting drunk and losing control isn't an excuse. And I'm not excusing Wanda, simply stating my views of what her intentions are. She took the Darkhold and went into exile as a way to atone and learn. She wasn't trying to "fulfill her personal decisions."
To use your analogy, it's like she was trying to get into an AA program to learn how to manage her drinking problem, instead of going to jail. She wasn't aware that what she thought was an AA program was instead going to tempt her daily with fine bottles of scotch. No, her ignorance doesn't excuse what she does; but it is an important factor when considering her motives and herself as a character.
She created them (like all parents essentially create their children). People inside and outside the Hex interacted with them.
What's more, *Agatha All Along* shows Billy surviving when the Hex was taken down because he ends up in the body of another boy who died in an accident. Essentially indicating that the twins' bodies were connected to Wanda's Hex, but their souls/spirits (whatever you want to call them) are separate and exist on their own.
The children were absolutely real.
Them: OMG A HERO!
Loki takes…countless lives, including an incredibly public display of terror, and is responsible for the Battle of New York. Later, his variant becomes a hero.
Them: (weeping maniacally and applauding) He was so misunderstood. Such a good guy. Best show ever.
Wanda torments a town in a depressive episode and removes it, and herself, in order to stop hurting people.
Them: SHE’S A VILLAIN! NO REDEMPTION!
I think that about sums up the recurring themes here
...and then runs off with a book of soul-eating corruption to study the darkest, most forbidden arts so she can do more evil.
That’s like saying Bucky Barnes jumped off the train so he can go and join Hydra and assassinate people.
Wanda didn’t know the book was evil, Wanda didn’t know the book had corruptive properties; and Wanda herself vowed that she was gonna learn more about her powers and magic so that a Westview incident never happens again.
Wanda's a bigger villain than Thunderbolt Ross.
Let's do one for Tony next!