SCARLET WITCH

Publication Date: 5th May 2022
Image Work: Gremlin and Peter Luzifer.
Alternate Versions

ALTERNATE VERSIONS

In the alternate reality presented in What If..? (2nd series) #5, Wanda’s life was irrevocably changed by the fact that Wonder Man survived his first encounter with the Avengers and joined the team before her. When she eventually joined the Avengers as well, Wanda immediately found herself attracted to Simon Williams and he returned her romantic interest. However, Wanda’s over-protective brother Quicksilver objected to Wonder Man’s advances and finally abandoned the team when Wanda and Simon continued to pursue their feelings for each other. Quicksilver rejoined Magneto, who used Pietro’s hatred of Wonder Man to manipulate him into battling his former teammates. In the ensuing battle between the Avengers and Magneto, the Master of Magnetism tried to kill Wanda for betraying mutantkind. Not wanting to see his sister die, Quicksilver pushed her out of the way and was crushed beneath the heavy machinery Magneto tried to topple on Wanda. He was killed instantly. Overcome by grief, Wanda turned her hex power on Magneto, causing his body to explode from within. In the aftermath of that incident, Wanda eventually married Wonder Man, becoming Wanda Williams and finding a new happiness in their life together. After dying in battle against Ultron, Simon’s brain patterns had to be transferred into the synthezoid body of Ultron’s servant, the Vision. Eventually, Wanda came to accept this radical change in her husband and the two shared a happy life together.


In the Age of Apocalypse, the early death of Charles Xavier inspired his friend Magnus to form the X-Men in far off Wundagore. Magneto’s original team of mutants, dedicated to Xavier’s dream of peaceful human/mutant co-existence, included his daughter Wanda as well as Colossus, Jean Grey, Storm, Iceman and Quicksilver. When a frightened, young Rogue was entrusted to Magneto’s care by her foster mother Mystique, it was Wanda who reached out and helped to ease her transition to Wundagore. Not much later, the X-Men went on their first public mission to oppose Apocalypse’s forces, though Magneto insisted that Wanda remain behind to carry on his work should the X-Men fall in battle. Unfortunately it was she who paid the ultimate price, as during the X-Men’s absence, Magneto’s mutant sanctuary was attacked by Nemesis. While dying from the injuries she sustained, Wanda made Rogue promise to be there for Magneto, to care for him and be a friend to him in an effort to ease the burden of responsibility he has taken on. The dying wish of the Scarlet Witch sure had a lasting effect on Rogue, whose loyalty to Magneto and her efforts to befriend him led to their eventual marriage.


The Scarlet Witch was killed at the second wedding of Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne in the potential future depicted in the Last Avengers Story. Long-brewing tensions between the Vision and Wanda’s brother Quicksilver finally came to a head that day, resulting in a full-blown battle  between the two. When Wanda tried to stop the fight she got caught in the middle… literally. She was crushed between her speedster brother and the diamond-hard body of her synthezoid husband. Wanda’s death led to Pietro’s immediate suicide and the Vision went mad and allowed the molecules of his body to drift apart. His mother’s death drove Wanda’s son William to become the villainous Grim Reaper, whereas his twin brother Tommy Maximoff became Doctor Strange’s disciple and later joined the remaining Avengers. Naturally, the brothers were eventually forced to face each other in battle, though seeing this brought the Vision out of his self-imposed mental exile. He re-formed his body to end the battle against Ultron-59, ultimately sacrificing his life in order to defeat Ultron by merging with him. As he realized that even a synthezoid could die, the Vision begged his son William not to give up on humanity as he had after Wanda’s death.


The Scarlet Witch was not immune to the tragedies wrought in the dark future timeline referred to as the Days of Future Past. Wanda barely survived an attack on Mount Wundagore, during which her brother, Quicksilver, was apparently killed, only to be captured by Shinobi Shaw and Elisabeth Braddock, the ruling couple of the re-organized Hellfire Club. Shaw saw a use for the Scarlet Witch’s unique mutant powers and constructed what he called a Cataclysm Engine. This device drained and amplified Wanda’s mutant probability-altering powers and directed it at the Earth itself causing natural disasters worldwide. Shaw’s plan was to use these natural disasters to destabilize the world and its governments so that he and his new “Council of the Chosen” could assume control. In an effort to rescue his daughter, Magneto struck an uneasy alliance with two former members of the X-Men: Jubilee and Wolverine. Magneto had hoped that Wolverine could use his abilities to rescue Wanda without a direct confrontation with Shaw and his Red Queen. Unfortunately, the rescue team was discovered and a battle ensued. Once freed, Wanda turned her power against the Cataclysm Engine. During his conflict with Shaw, the installation was destroyed and Magneto’s legs were crushed by falling debris. Days after their escape, Wanda died from the toll taken on her body by her long imprisonment, but right before her death she reconciled with her father who vowed to dedicate the remainder of his life to making a difference in the world the way that Wanda had.


In a rather interesting twist of fate, there is at least one reality, dubbed Professor W’s X-Men, where the Scarlet Witch fell in love with Nightcrawler of the X-Men. Although seeming like an odd coupling at first glance, they have something in common as they both were raised by traveling Romany. Kurt and Wanda even had a daughter, Talia Josephine, aka Nocturne, who later joined the X-Men too, whereas Wanda continued to serve among the Avengers. Whether or not Wanda was actually married to Nightcrawler is unclear, though.


The Scarlet Witch of the Ultimate universe is not too far removed from her counterpart in the main reality. However, one difference is that Wanda was fully aware of her relationship to Magneto and willingly served him in his Brotherhood of Mutants. The entire dynamics of Magneto’s family seemed extremely dysfunctional, and there was some underlying incestuous tone to the relationship of Wanda and Pietro, which was later overtly confirmed. The Scarlet Witch expressed romantic interest in Cyclops (during the time he was briefly a member of the Brotherhood), much to Pietro’s chagrin. The siblings assumed leadership of the Brotherhood during a time that Magneto was believed dead, and they even attacked a military convoy in an effort to recover their father’s body. After the Brotherhood disbanded, Wanda and Pietro began to work as covert operatives for the U.S. government’s team - the Ultimates. Her teammates were not particularly fond of Wanda, thanks to her attitude, but she was nevertheless an asset to the team, once using her powers to disarm dozens of nuclear warheads. When an evil group of super beings dubbed “the Liberators” invaded New York, the Scarlet Witch pushed her powers to the limits by altering the probabilities within every invading soldier, destroying countless soldiers of the enemy.

The twins tried to straddle the line between ruling the Brotherhood and acting as mutant liaisons to the Ultimates. When Magneto returned, however, the Brotherhood remained completely loyal to his militant view on mutant rights, leaving Wanda and Pietro behind. The twins remained with the Ultimates until Wanda was executed by a sniper's bullet. It was eventually revealed the murderer was Ultron, one of Hank Pym's sentient robots who had become obsessed with her. Wanda's death pushed Pietro back towards the Brotherhood and led Magneto to unleash the Ultimatum Wave, causing a catastrophic loss of life in Manhattan and killing a number of heroes.

After her death, it was revealed that Wanda and Pietro's mother Magda had also conceived a son with Wolverine, making Jimmy Hudson their half-brother. Several parties used telepathy and illusions to convince Quicksilver that Wanda was alive again, including Mister Sinister and Kang, but the real Wanda apparently remained dead.


In the future timeline called Earth X, Wanda died among her fellow Avengers when they fought a  rampaging Absorbing Man, him having absorbed the power and persona of the Avengers‘ arch-enemy Ultron. One of the few Avengers left, Iron Man experienced a severe case of survivor’s guilt, and eventually tried to replace his deceased teammates with robot replications of them. Called the Iron Avengers, this series of robots looked like the fallen Avengers (Wasp, Giant-Man, Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch) and were programmed with personalities to match those of their templates. The Iron Avenger modeled after Wanda was called the Crimson Sage, and if she was damaged or destroyed, she could be easily replaced with a new model.


A time-traveling experiment gone wrong created another divergent timeline, one in which present day heroes already emerged in the 17th century, the year 1602 to be precise. Mutants were referred to as “witchbreed” and, as such, feared and hunted during the Spanish Inquisition. Those discovered were turned over to the Grand Inquisitor, this reality’s version of Magneto. This timeline’s version of the Scarlet Witch was “Sister Wanda”, a nun, who aided the Grand Inquisitor together with her brother Petros, both convinced that their “witchbreed” gifts came from God. The Inquisitor used the fervor of King James to save some “witchbreed” with less physical mutations from being burned at the stake, but eventually he and his aides were exposed as being mutants themselves. The Grand Inquisitor then sought refuge with his longtime rival, Carlos Javier (who had gathered his own group of witchbreed youngsters), and entrusted him with the long-kept secret that Wanda and Petros were his own children.


The rival team of the dimension-hopping Exiles, Weapon X, once happened upon a reality whose Scarlet Witch herself was pretty similar to the main reality’s version. [Exiles (1st series) #24] This post-apocalyptic Earth being ruled by a corrupt Tony Stark, Wanda lived in a secluded location on the Hawaiian Islands, together with Dr. Strange and a gamma-mutated Wonder Man. Apparently she and Simon were romantically involved.


Wanda’s role in Avengers Disassembled was a pivotal turning point in her life. But What If... she had not acted alone? In one reality, Wanda’s madness was guided by her new husband, Captain America. As their romance blossomed, Cap realized the true potential of Wanda’s reality-shaping powers. They married and together planned to use Wanda’s powers to re-shape the world into a peaceful utopia where they could happily raise a family together. Cap saw the sacrifice of their teammates in the Avengers as a necessary step in attaining the mystical might Wanda required to accomplish this goal. They allied themselves with Magneto and Charles Xavier and restored Genosha before altering reality to meet Captain America’s idealist vision. Their plot was uncovered by the Beast and Ms. Marvel’s investigations into the deaths of their teammates. A coalition of heroes led by Cyclops confronted Wanda and Cap in Genosha and fought them to a standstill. In the course of the battle, Wanda lost control and killed most of the heroes present. As a result, Cap saw the insanity of their plot and the true danger that Wanda’s powers posed. He convinced her to stop fighting and use her powers to reunite them with their fallen teammates. The couple vanished along with the threat posed by their twisted vision of the future.


Alternate realities can vary greatly and in one of them, shown in Exiles (1st series) #85-86, the genders of Magneto’s family were reversed. A female Magneto had given birth to twins, who upon reaching adulthood and manifesting mutant powers joined their mother’s Brotherhood. The life of Wanda’s male counterpart, the Scarlet Warlock, came to end when one of Magneto’s schemes went wrong. Magneto’s son was supposed to transfer Wolverine’s Adamantium skeleton into Magneto’s body, but the hex did much, much more. Rather than simply steal Wolverine’s metal skeleton, the hex merged Magneto and Wolverine along with the rest of the Brotherhood: Mesmero, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Warlock himself. The result was Brother Mutant, an amalgamation of all five mutants. Brother Mutant was never supposed to exist and his/her presence caused a temporal disruption that caught the attention of the Timebreakers who eventually sent the Exiles to defeat and kill the near omni-potent amalgamation.


The dimension-hopping Exiles would host a couple versions of Wanda. “The Witch” of Earth-8823 was a mutant whose powers were explicitly not magical, but rather the ability to interfere with and disrupt any kind of energy transfer. She was destined to die while trying to wield magic and bring her fallen brother back to life, only to be sucked out of reality at the last minute to join the Exiles. This team of Exiles had their first mission on Earth-90361, where rival princesses Wanda and Lorna vied for the approval of their father Magneto, ruler of Genosha. The Exiles’ mission led to Magneto being dethroned and the mutant alliance falling apart. However, the Exiles’ Witch was posing as her doppelganger when the local Emma Frost killed her out of revenge. The Witch of Earth-90361 then left her reality with the Exiles in order to avoid her rivals and the fall of the monarchy. When last seen, this group of Exiles was unaware the exchange had taken place.


In the realm known as the Cancerverse, Captain Mar-Vell refused to succumb to cancer and made a pact with the Many-Angled Ones to empower him and his allies to kill Death itself. Unchecked, tumorous, Lovecraftian life spread to dominate all of known space. The Scarlet Witch’s hexcraft allowed her to retain some independence from Lord Marvel. She worked in secret to aid her husband, the Vision, and the robotic entities who proved immune to the Man-Angled Ones’ influence.

Still, she served with Mar-Vell’s Revengers until they discovered Earth-616 on the far side of the Fault, a new avenue for growth. When Thanos and the Guardians of the Galaxy arrived from that reality, she sided with them and brought them to the site of the Necropsy ritual, although Mar-Vell devoured her soul in the process.


On Battleworld, another version of the House of M reality existed among Doom’s domains. 

Broadly similar, a major difference from the original reality is that here Wanda Magnus was openly living as a powerful, reality-altering mutant instead of posing as Magneto’s “human” daughter. Her sons, Thomas and William Magnus, had grown into rebellious teenagers named Wiccan and Speed who undermined the anti-human efforts of their grandfather. Despite their civil disobedience and confrontations with S.H.I.E.L.D., Princess Wanda made it clear to agents like Shaw and Logan that her sons were outside the law. Her royal pedigree and enormous power enabled her to easily enforce this rule, even against the authorities of the House of Magnus.


In Legion’s pocket reality from the Age of X, the Phoenix’s devastation in Albany, New York created the impetus for technologically advanced Exonim Sentinels, who began hunting mutants in the streets. Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch were among countless mutants who fell to the Exonims’ initial onslaught in what was termed “the Decimation.”


In Mephisto’s Heroes Reborn, the Avengers never formed and Wanda never RE-formed. Her driving force in life came when the X-Men fought the Squadron Supreme of America and Quicksilver died, burning himself out while trying to catch the super-speedster, the Blur. Through her grief and chaos magic, Wanda transferred Pietro’s speed to herself and became the Silver Witch, Speedster Supreme. In the years that followed, Wanda sought vengeance against the Blur. She would work with anyone, from the Siege Society to the Masters of Doom, if it meant her hypersonic hexes could kill the man she blamed for her brother’s death.