# Dr Strange 2: In the Multiverse of Madness (Spoilers)



## Stalker0 (May 6, 2022)

So just saw Dr Strange 2. Ultimately it was a good movie, but its a very different movie than what I was expecting, and I've had to come to terms with that a bit.

I had assumed Dr Strange 2 was going to be the first "avengers esque" movie of phase 4, connecting all of the plotlines, ramping up a big new threat, etc. This was going to be the next big full fury movie. Instead....it is surprisingly restrained and "small".

*Wanda*
Probably the biggest surprise to me, was they pulled no punches with Wanda. Her path on Wandavision is pushed into tragedy. She showed us in Wandavision that when in pain, she has no issues manipulating and hurting people to get what she wants. A lot of people (myself included) thought she would have some remorse or penance for those acts in this movie, but she doubles down.... and goes full villain. While you can blame the darkhold from pushing her completely off the cliff (and why very reasonable things like....Wanda feel free to go start a family no one is stopping you, aren't even considered by her), this is not a GOT Season 8 denearyes heel turn, the signs were clearly there in Wandavision, and now they make good.

I get the feeling Wanda is not dead at the end of the movie, and I am worried that with her final "act of sacrifice" they are going to push her down the path of redemption. All I'll say is, if they are going that route, there had better be a LOT of penance. She has killed a lot of people at this point, cruelly and utterly without mercy. She is 100% villain, and any reversal of that has to be at the end of a long hard road before I'd accept it.

*Strange*
I like the ways that subtly dropped a few personal points for Steven. The note about his sister was really well done, the only person Steven could ever talk about that to was effectively himself, and as the other one immediately notes, "but that is not something we talk about is it". It gives you an idea that may have been what pushed him into becoming a dr in the first place. Its subtle, quick, and powerful all at the same time.

Ultimately this movie's premise....both for Wanda and Steven....was you can't control everything. In Wanda's case, somethings you just have to let go. And for Steven, sometimes you have to let other people take the reigns. Steven showed some solid moves away from his ego, he learned to work with America, learned to trust a version of Christine, and finally gave Wong the respect he is due. That said, there is still plenty of ego there, and Steven will still pay some consequences for his meddling most likely.

*Wong*
Who doesn't love Wong! My only issue with Wong in this movie was when he gave in to Wanda when she was torturing his people and gave her the secret to ultimate power. I'm sorry, but this is the same Wong that had just thrown an army of people to fight her, and was willing to die himself. This was the Wong that ultimately told Strange to "take the girl's power...which would kill her" to stop Wanda. I expect Wong to spit in her face and be ready to die, only for Wanda to rip it from his mind. Not for Wong to feebily just give in....it was the one scene that really did not work for me in character.

*The Great Scene that Wasn't*
I do complain a lot in Marvel movies in that its only a cinematic universe when they want it to be. But this time its REALLY noticeable. Wanda gives Dr Strange a day to give up America. Him and Wong both agree that with her abilities and America's combined, Wanda would be a MULTIVERSAL THREAT. They have some time to prepare. Where the HELL is everyone??!!! Where is Falcon, where is our new buddy Shang-Chi, or how about some of that crazy good dragon armor/weapons that can fight mystical creatures. Someone give Captain Marvel a ring for lord's sake.

It might have made sense if they just completely misread how strong Wanda is. But the second Wong learns she's the scarlet witch, the emergency bells go off for him. He knows the prophecies, he knows how dangerous she could be. Every single possible marker should have been called in for that fight, every last bleeding one.

The scene is actually a really cool one....and yet it should have been so much more. I thought this was going to be the big "avenger scene". We see all the people's, maybe they all get super injured and now its up to Strange alone to beat her (and the rest of the movie continues as it did)....but they would be there at the minimum.

*The Smallness*
As I said before, for a movie about the multiverse, I really expected more "stuff". I figured there would be cameos galore, it was like a free pass for Marvel, throw in any cameo you want, no plot consequence (its just an alternate version after all). But they had surprisingly little.

The events of Loki....not even referenced. Spiderman....barely a mention. I was surprised Professor X didn't check Strange out and go "I see you almost caused an incursion yourself"....because, he almost did. They didn't even cover that many multiverses really.

Lastly, at least at first glance....nothing was really pushed in the "greater metaplot". I was expecting a Captain America 2, where we get a major revelation that launches new plot for the next series of movies. But plotwise it ends in a feeling of one and done. Again...just much smaller in scope than I had expected.

*Final Thoughts*
If I can get over myself of my expectations for the movie, I actually think its pretty solid. Good character growth, Wanda was a great and scary villain, America Chavez was cool (though I kept getting her confused with Ms Marvel and that caused me a lot of consternation), the plot for the most part made sense, John Krasinski got to be Reed Richards!. The battle scenes were pretty neat, an actual decent wizard battle.

As a standalone Marvel movie, its very solid.
As a launchpoint for pushing the events of Phase 4 like I thought it was going to be....a dud on the rocketpad.


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## pukunui (May 6, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> As a launchpoint for pushing the events of Phase 4 like I thought it was going to be....a dud on the rocketpad.



I'm beginning to think that we're either in a sort of Phase 3.5 (e.g. Finish up the aftermath of Endgame and set up the next generation of superheroes/villains plus the opening of the multiverse) and Phase 4 hasn't really started yet, or else Phase 4 is just a transitional phase and they're saving all the big stuff for Phase 5.


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## trappedslider (May 6, 2022)

Well, iirc Kevin has stated that they are done with the Avengersque style of movie, for now, and parts of it honestly felt like a horror movie.

I loved the musical cue for Professor X and he got his yellow hoverchair!  Also the nod to the verse number for the comic being 616, I guess that was easier than saying 9999.


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## Older Beholder (May 6, 2022)

I agree that it felt smaller in scale than was expected, with pretty much the focus on Strange and Wanda.
I enjoyed it though, it has Sam Raimi's finger prints all over it. Both in it's humor and it's horror. If you watch a lot of horror this will still feel pretty tame, but if you still have scars from watching Evil dead as a kid, some of the imagery might push some buttons.


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## Imaculata (May 6, 2022)

There are some really strong Evil Dead vibes in this movie. A lot of Raimi's wacky surreal camera work, but also Bruce beating himself up, and the Darkhold is pretty much Marvel's necronomicon.

I loved the horror in this, but also the exploration of the characters. Wanda makes an excellent villain.

So, was anyone able to spot Raimi's delta 88 (the classic) car in this? It always makes a cameo in his movies.


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## pukunui (May 6, 2022)

Never mind! I figured it out.


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## John R Davis (May 6, 2022)

Wanda & The Deus Ex Machinarmy of Darkness

Suitable Raimi-Esque


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## trappedslider (May 7, 2022)

This really shows how powerful Wanda really is and kind of how arrogant the Illuminati are/were. "We can deal with your scarlet witch"


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## Imaculata (May 7, 2022)

Great to see Wanda full power.


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## Richards (May 7, 2022)

pukunui said:


> I'm beginning to think that we're either in a sort of Phase 3.5 (e.g. Finish up the aftermath of Endgame and set up the next generation of superheroes/villains plus the opening of the multiverse) and Phase 4 hasn't really started yet, or else Phase 4 is just a transitional phase and they're saving all the big stuff for Phase 5.



Works for me - I've had a lot of good things coming from a "3.5" over the years.

I really enjoyed this movie, even more so than the original _Doctor Strange_, I think (probably because the villain - Caecilius - was rather subpar in the first one).  Great use of Wanda, nice name-dropping of "Chthon," and America Chavez was rather well-handled (although I don't really know a whole lot about her character, so if they made any major changes from her comic version I likely wouldn't notice).  I would have preferred them not referring to MCU Strange's universe as "616" - as that's the Marvel Comics Universe, not the Cinematic one - but I can console myself with that's just the universe notation system used in the universe with the Illuminati, which just happens to coincide with the number in the comics.  And I loved seeing John Krazinski's Reed Richards - he did as good a job as I expected when I first heard of him associated in the role.  I also like how Strange made a 1960s reference when he was first introduced to Mr. Fantastic, which lends credence to the idea the eventual MCU Fantastic Four movies will be set in the 1960s, which handily explains why they haven't been around in the MCU thus far.

And it looks like we get Clea in the next movie - good call!

Johnathan


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## DeviousQuail (May 8, 2022)

I loved this movie. Compare the magic in this with the first Doctor Strange movie and it's like we graduated from youth sports to the big leagues. Everything was weird and dark and so much fun. Wanda taking on the Illuminati and mopping the floor with them was my favorite scene. My favorite aspect of the movie was watching Olsen go full nightmare evil villain. She nailed it. Strange has also done a lot of growing in his last couple appearances and I'm happy with where their going with it. 

I didn't really have much in the way of expectations for this film. It seems like everyone's doing their own thing with one or two other folks in the MCU these days. Not really building quickly to any Avengers level stuff. I think I'm fine with that for now, especially if they keep giving us movies like this. But at some point we'll need to see everyone coming together again.


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## DeviousQuail (May 8, 2022)

Also, I remember some YouTuber suggesting years ago that since Multiverse of Madness has the initials MOM it could be a storyline about Wanda going evil looking for her kids. That guy must be feeling pretty vindicated right now.


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## Nikosandros (May 8, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> *Wong*
> Who doesn't love Wong! My only issue with Wong in this movie was when he gave in to Wanda when she was torturing his people and gave her the secret to ultimate power. I'm sorry, but this is the same Wong that had just thrown an army of people to fight her, and was willing to die himself. This was the Wong that ultimately told Strange to "take the girl's power...which would kill her" to stop Wanda. I expect Wong to spit in her face and be ready to die, only for Wanda to rip it from his mind. Not for Wong to feebily just give in....it was the one scene that really did not work for me in character.
> pad.



I've liked the movie a lot, but I agree that this scene was really jarring for me. I've tried to rationalize it by thinking that Wong was sure that the demons (or whatever they were) protecting Mount Wundagore would destroy any interlopers.


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## pukunui (May 8, 2022)

Richards said:


> I also like how Strange made a 1960s reference when he was first introduced to Mr. Fantastic, which lends credence to the idea the eventual MCU Fantastic Four movies will be set in the 1960s, which handily explains why they haven't been around in the MCU thus far.



I thought that was just Dr Strange conflating the Fantastic Four with the Fab Four.


Overall, I think I enjoyed the movie for what it was, but it wasn't really what I was expecting. For one thing, I was expecting it to draw on the events of _Loki _but it doesn't. Granted, hardly anyone anywhere in the multiverse other than two specific Lokis (well, a Loki and a Sylvie) actually know what is going on, but I just thought the splitting of the "sacred timeline" was meant to be what caused the opening of the multiverse, but this movie made it seem like the multiverse had always been there, full of variants.

I'm also not 100% sure I like the direction they took Wanda in. Yes, the Darkhold was going to make her go bad, and she became fixated on trying to reunite with her children ... but if she created them using magic, how can there still be versions of her where she's seemingly living a happy, normal suburban life with them (and, apparently, without Vision)?

Also, I feel like there's a bit of sexism in how the Darkhold makes traumatized Wanda go out of control evil but Dr Strange, who is repeatedly criticized for being arrogant and controlling and is repeatedly warned about the dangers of using the Darkhold, gets away with it. Wong even says "I don't want to know" when he sees Strange using the Darkhold to puppet a zombie version of himself.

Yes, Wanda points out this double standard herself early in the film, but the filmmakers then proceed to let Strange continue to break the rules and remain a hero while Wanda ends up having to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to make up for he villainry. (Yes, I know, the Darkhold has had some kind of effect on Strange, now that he's got his own third eye, but the implications of that won't be revealed until some future film.)

I presume _our_ Wanda is now dead, and if she appears again in any future shows or movies, it'll be a variant Wanda. If so, this is a bit disappointing, because I was looking forward to seeing _our_ Wanda reunite with Vision (and the boys). It would be nice for Wanda to get a real happy ending after everything she's been through.

All that said, Elizabeth Olsen really nailed villainous Wanda.



I also felt like introducing a bunch of new characters and variants of existing characters (as the Illuminati) only to kill them off moments later was a bit strange. Will we now see another variant of Professor X and/or Reed Richards in a future MCU product?

In the Star Wars sequels, Luke Skywalker quips that "No one's ever really gone." The MCU multiverse puts a whole new spin on that. The death of a beloved character no longer carries as much meaning. We've already got a new Loki and a new Gamorra. Who's next? Will they bring back Tony or Nat?


Another thought: All the Dr Stranges we saw in this film looked like Benedict Cumberbatch. Likewise, all the Wandas looked like Elizabeth Olsen. But all the Peter Parkers we got in the last Spider Man film looked completely different. How common is that, or will they just handwave it away because they wanted to bring back the other actors who played Parker?


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## DeviousQuail (May 9, 2022)

pukunui said:


> I thought that was just Dr Strange conflating the Fantastic Four with the Fab Four.
> 
> 
> Overall, I think I enjoyed the movie for what it was, but it wasn't really what I was expecting. For one thing, I was expecting it to draw on the events of _Loki _but it doesn't. Granted, hardly anyone anywhere in the multiverse other than two specific Lokis (well, a Loki and a Sylvie) actually know what is going on, but I just thought the splitting of the "sacred timeline" was meant to be what caused the opening of the multiverse, but this movie made it seem like the multiverse had always been there, full of variants.
> ...



Specifically talking about the darkhold and it's effect(s) on Strange in comparison to Wanda we got four Dr. Stranges in this film. Each one of the non-616 Stranges gives 616 Strange a different look at what happens when dealing with the Darkhold. He can go without it and feels forced to act for "the greater good" and dies after betraying someone who thought they were friends, use it and realize he's going bad and asks to get vocalized into nothingness, or use it and eventually destroy so much because he's looking for happiness in the wrong way. Each one of these examples occurs before he uses the Darkhold, giving him a much better idea of what he's getting into.

Wanda didn't have any of this. She got the Darkhold right after a traumatizing period and then spent potentially years alone with it. We see how much it has warped her over that time during the grove scene going from thriving to barren and foreboding. Just very different circumstances for the characters and imo not sexism.


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## Eric V (May 9, 2022)

DeviousQuail said:


> Wanda didn't have any of this. She got the Darkhold right after a traumatizing period and then spent potentially years alone with it. We see how much it has warped her over that time during the grove scene going from thriving to barren and foreboding. Just very different circumstances for the characters and imo not sexism.



Well, if the Darkhold were a real thing and this was objectively how it worked, but it's not...it's a decision made by human beings making the movie and they decided to make the female character get overwhelmed and become the obsessed mom whilst having the arrogant doctor work with it just fine.  The optics aren't great.


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## Richards (May 9, 2022)

pukunui said:


> I thought that was just Dr Strange conflating the Fantastic Four with the Fab Four.



Ah - I hadn't made that connection.  I was just recalling something I had read about the MCU FF movie being possibly set in the 1960s...and in doing a little searching, I found the article - but it's just supposition.

CBR Link

Johnathan


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## DeviousQuail (May 9, 2022)

Eric V said:


> Well, if the Darkhold were a real thing and this was objectively how it worked, but it's not...it's a decision made by human beings making the movie and they decided to make the female character get overwhelmed and become the obsessed mom whilst having the arrogant doctor work with it just fine.  The optics aren't great.



They also showed a version of Strange that was so overwhelmed by the Darkhold that he destroyed his world and killed numerous other Stranges. So you have a male and female character both being overwhelmed for the exact same reason: wanting a person(s) to love and make them happy that they couldn't have. Then you have 616 Strange use the Darkhold for a comparatively brief time compared to the others, get a weird third eye from it, and also gets told by Charlize Theron that he caused an incursion and needs to fix it. We saw how bad incursions can be so to say that it worked fine isn't true. He is going to have to pay a price for using it just like Wanda and other Strange paid a price.


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## pukunui (May 9, 2022)

Google it. I'm hardly the only one to notice the sexist overtones. People are saying it's a classic example of "female too powerful for her own good". People are also complaining that they Disneyfied America by making her a wide-eyed, helpless kid who doesn't know how to use her powers until the male hero gives her a pep talk.

Sam Raimi has also admitted to not having watched all of _WandaVision_.


Wanda killed herself in the end (theoretically). Strange has got a weird third eye and another problem he needs to fix. Big difference. Oh, and he is now humble enough to bow to Wong. Big character development there!


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## Stalker0 (May 9, 2022)

Eric V said:


> Well, if the Darkhold were a real thing and this was objectively how it worked, but it's not...it's a decision made by human beings making the movie and they decided to make the female character get overwhelmed and become the obsessed mom whilst having the arrogant doctor work with it just fine.  The optics aren't great.



Wanda was going bad before the dark hold, she is a VILLAIN in wandavision, she tortures an innocent town, shows no remorse for it, and then walks alway. While Agatha was no peach, Wanda enslaved her that reality for potentially forever, a fate thst the people of the town said was worse than death.

The darkhold might have pushed Wanda farther down the path, but she was already quite villainous before this movie started. In contrast strange had plenty of warning about the darkhold, begrudgingly used its power for a brief time…and it still appears he might have been tainted by its use. So it’s not like strange is getting out of jail free here


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## John R Davis (May 9, 2022)

She joined the MCU with vengeful/villainous tones and in WV was pretty vindictive.
Gives the character a lot more dimension ( not very funny pun intended!).

I did think it was quite dark and scary for its certificate


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## Jahydin (May 9, 2022)

Imaculata said:


> There are some really strong Evil Dead vibes in this movie. A lot of Raimi's wacky surreal camera work, but also Bruce beating himself up, and the Darkhold is pretty much Marvel's necronomicon.



I know it was just a joke, but the whole "three weeks" part seemed kind of cruel...


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## Staffan (May 9, 2022)

pukunui said:


> Overall, I think I enjoyed the movie for what it was, but it wasn't really what I was expecting. For one thing, I was expecting it to draw on the events of _Loki _but it doesn't. Granted, hardly anyone anywhere in the multiverse other than two specific Lokis (well, a Loki and a Sylvie) actually know what is going on, but I just thought the splitting of the "sacred timeline" was meant to be what caused the opening of the multiverse, but this movie made it seem like the multiverse had always been there, full of variants.




The way I see it, the multiverse has always existed. Now. It hadn't always existed a year ago, but now it always has.


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## Umbran (May 9, 2022)

pukunui said:


> Google it. I'm hardly the only one to notice the sexist overtones. People are saying it's a classic example of "female too powerful for her own good". People are also complaining that they Disneyfied America by making her a wide-eyed, helpless kid who doesn't know how to use her powers until the male hero gives her a pep talk.




So, if they made America in full control of her power, folks would complain that she's Mary Sue.  So, they lose either way.  There's a reasonable trope that young super-powered people have to learn how to deal with powers and/or life.  Mutilpe Spider Men have needed to go through it, for example, so the argument that it is sexist is a little weak.

And, that scene is explicitly and specifically less about a male hero giving a pep talk, as it is about a male hero who has demonstrated control issues, learning to trust a young woman to do what needs doing, rather than take control himself.  And that's in a movie that is nominally _about him_, rather than her.


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## Umbran (May 9, 2022)

Staffan said:


> The way I see it, the multiverse has always existed. Now. It hadn't always existed a year ago, but now it always has.




Exactly - in Loki, we _saw_ the multiverse branching at all points within the timeline "at once" so to speak.  For those inside, the multiverse has always existed.  Only for those couple of people outside the timeline entirely is there a point when the multiverse didn't' exist.


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## Umbran (May 9, 2022)

John R Davis said:


> She joined the MCU with vengeful/villainous tones




Yeah, she was originally a _terrorist_, willing to set the Hulk loose on a city full of people. 

What this movie does show us is that most of the issues in the MCU could be prevented or solved with suitable application of mental health professionals.  We don't need the Sorcerer Supreme so much as we need all these people to get good therapists.


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## Bolares (May 9, 2022)

pukunui said:


> but I just thought the splitting of the "sacred timeline" was meant to be what caused the opening of the multiverse, but this movie made it seem like the multiverse had always been there, full of variants.



From the moment they split the sacred timeline the multicerse was “always there”. The ripples from that split affect the past too


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## Staffan (May 9, 2022)

Umbran said:


> Yeah, she was originally a _terrorist_, willing to set the Hulk loose on a city full of people.



That's a pretty big difference between Comics Wanda and MCU Wanda. Comics Wanda was basically press-ganged into working with Magneto and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. But when MCU Wanda was given the opportunity to work with Hydra to go after Stark, she jumped in with both feet and didn't look back.


Umbran said:


> What this movie does show us is that most of the issues in the MCU could be prevented or solved with suitable application of mental health professionals.  We don't need the Sorcerer Supreme so much as we need all these people to get good therapists.



I'd love to see a Doc Samson show on Disney+.


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## Stalker0 (May 9, 2022)

Jahydin said:


> I know it was just a joke, but the whole "three weeks" part seemed kind of cruel...



I ignored that because it was so used to set up such a blatant joke at the end, that I knew it was meant to be 132% comedic. I do agree that if you look at it objectively it is WAY too much of an overreaction to getting accused of not paying for your food, which to be fair.....she didn't!



People's notes about Wanda being a terrorist, thank you for reminding me! So MCU Wanda actually has a clear pattern, her grief makes her vengeful, time and time again.


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## Umbran (May 9, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> People's notes about Wanda being a terrorist, thank you for reminding me! So MCU Wanda actually has a clear pattern, her grief makes her vengeful, time and time again.




So, I'd push back a little bit on that.  In neither Wandavision nor Multiverse of Madness, is she "vengeful".  She isn't out to do harm to people who have done her wrong.  She is out to get what she thinks will relieve her grief.  She no longer cares about the welfare of others in pursuit of that end.


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## Stalker0 (May 9, 2022)

Umbran said:


> So, I'd push back a little bit on that.  In neither Wandavision nor Multiverse of Madness, is she "vengeful".  She isn't out to do harm to people who have done her wrong.  She is out to get what she thinks will relieve her grief.  She no longer cares about the welfare of others in pursuit of that end.



that's fair. Its less she actively seeks to hurt people and more "she has no care of the consequences as long as she gets what she wants"


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## Eric V (May 9, 2022)

Staffan said:


> I'd love to see a Doc Samson show on Disney+.



YES PLEASE.


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## RangerWickett (May 10, 2022)

I saw Wanda in her show as having a great character arc of overcoming her dark side and realizing that losing someone you love doesn't mean you lose yourself, because grief is love enduring.

This movie doesn't respect that, and doesn't do the work to justify why she'd turn her back on that. "Oops the book made her do it" feels crappy.


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## Jahydin (May 10, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> I ignored that because it was so used to set up such a blatant joke at the end, that I knew it was meant to be 132% comedic. I do agree that if you look at it objectively it is WAY too much of an overreaction to getting accused of not paying for your food, which to be fair.....she didn't!



Yeah, in my headcanon, he was just joking around with her, haha.


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## Thomas Shey (May 10, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> Wanda was going bad before the dark hold, she is a VILLAIN in wandavision, she tortures an innocent town, shows no remorse for it,




Point of order; she absolutely does at the last episode.  She even acknowledges there's no reason for them ever to forgive her.

But she's still driven to jump into the Darkhold to understand what she is, and her phantom family still has too much a grip on her.  The result of those two things and her established tendency toward dysfunctional handling of grief leads her right down the road to hell.


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## Thomas Shey (May 10, 2022)

RangerWickett said:


> I saw Wanda in her show as having a great character arc of overcoming her dark side and realizing that losing someone you love doesn't mean you lose yourself, because grief is love enduring.
> 
> This movie doesn't respect that, and doesn't do the work to justify why she'd turn her back on that. "Oops the book made her do it" feels crappy.




The Darkhold feeding someone's worst angels is absolutely what its always been about, though.  I don't know any incarnation of it where extended contact with it didn't wreck someone.


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## Asisreo (May 10, 2022)

My sister said she stayed up at night and kept a nightlight on after watching it. 

My sister is a lawyer lol


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## RangerWickett (May 10, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> The Darkhold feeding someone's worst angels is absolutely what its always been about, though.  I don't know any incarnation of it where extended contact with it didn't wreck someone.




Sure, if this were a documentary, I'd totally be okay with them recounting how Wanda got corrupted. But it's a choice of a fiction writer who could decide what to do, and who chose to look at a character who'd gone through the events of Wandavision, and to undo that character growth due to the influence of an inanimate object.

Like, you could make a sequel to The Shawshank Redemption where Andy Dufresne does meth before the movie starts and then becomes a drug addicted criminal, and yeah, I guess that's possible. But it's hardly a satisfying follow-up to the previous story.


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## Jahydin (May 10, 2022)

RangerWickett said:


> Sure, if this were a documentary, I'd totally be okay with them recounting how Wanda got corrupted. But it's a choice of a fiction writer who could decide what to do, and who chose to look at a character who'd gone through the events of Wandavision, and to undo that character growth due to the influence of an inanimate object.



Maybe just a way to get rid of her so they didn't have to constantly decide how to incorporate such a powerful character into future stories?


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## Bolares (May 10, 2022)

People are ignoring the real ending to wandavision. She ends that show using a illusion to hide the fact that she doce completely in to the darkhold, and is hearing the cries for help of her children. Sure, she regrets enslaving westview, but right after that goes after the power of a demonic relic. What she is in this movie was directly set up in wandavision


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## Umbran (May 10, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> The Darkhold feeding someone's worst angels is absolutely what its always been about, though.  I don't know any incarnation of it where extended contact with it didn't wreck someone.




In fact, it is kind of important that it does.  Wanda is _insanely powerful_.  And, dramatically, that's a problem.  It means there's no real challenge for her to overcome.  The influence of the Darkhold provides that challenge.  It shifts the movie from being about who is stronger with magic (a boring question) and shifts the questions to really be about the moral questions of what we do for what ends.


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## Thomas Shey (May 10, 2022)

RangerWickett said:


> Sure, if this were a documentary, I'd totally be okay with them recounting how Wanda got corrupted. But it's a choice of a fiction writer who could decide what to do, and who chose to look at a character who'd gone through the events of Wandavision, and to undo that character growth due to the influence of an inanimate object.




See, I read it more as someone desperately reaching for a ledge and missing.  And it didn't completely undo it; the end of the movie at hand shows that.

And what does do, as do a lot of the things with the alternate Stranges, is show that magical power is particularly hard to keep your arms around without it corrupting you even before the Darkhold gets into it.


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## Thomas Shey (May 10, 2022)

Umbran said:


> In fact, it is kind of important that it does.  Wanda is _insanely powerful_.  And, dramatically, that's a problem.  It means there's no real challenge for her to overcome.  The influence of the Darkhold provides that challenge.  It shifts the movie from being about who is stronger with magic (a boring question) and shifts the questions to really be about the moral questions of what we do for what ends.




Yeah.  And as noted, we already knew at the end of Wandavision that this was at least going to be a problem.

As I noted, its clear she went into delving into the Darkhold with the best of intentions; but she suffers at that point from literally _not knowing what she's doing_.  In D&D terms, she's very much a sorcerer, not a wizard.  And the only way to find out she has at hand is this kind of spooky ancient magic book, but for all she knows, that's just how magic rolls.  She theoretically could have gone to Strange, but she already knows she's done something bad with Westfield, so who knows how he'll react?
If I have anything to complain about, its that the tail end business with her hearing her children's voices crying for help falls completely out of the picture.  I seriously wonder if in the pre-reshoot version that played more of a part and the reshoot was done because she came across as a bit too sympathetic with that in the picture.


----------



## Bolares (May 10, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> If I have anything to complain about, its that the tail end business with her hearing her children's voices crying for help falls completely out of the picture. I seriously wonder if in the pre-reshoot version that played more of a part and the reshoot was done because she came across as a bit too sympathetic with that in the picture.



I read that as a sensorial way to demonstrare the darkhold influencing her. She was not actually hearing her children crying for help. It was the darkhold making her hear that, and pushing her to go the route she went on the movie


----------



## RangerWickett (May 10, 2022)

Bolares said:


> What she is in this movie was directly set up in wandavision



In WV she messes with people's minds. The last three scenes are her getting revenge on Agatha for trying to kill her, her voluntarily giving up her loved ones to move on, and then the stinger of her looking at the book and hearing voices.

The next scene we see of her, she's admitting to sending demons to kill a child, and then one scene later she sees an injured sorcerer crawling away and disintegrates him.

Messing with minds to full on merciless murder. There is a pretty marked jump between the end of WV and the start of MoM.

Like, sure, time jump can explain it, but it's bad storytelling.


----------



## Imaculata (May 10, 2022)

The only thing I feel they could have done better, is actually showing Wanda's descend into darkness, rather than her starting off evil right away.


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## Thomas Shey (May 10, 2022)

RangerWickett said:


> In WV she messes with people's minds. The last three scenes are her getting revenge on Agatha for trying to kill her, her voluntarily giving up her loved ones to move on, and then the stinger of her looking at the book and hearing voices.
> 
> The next scene we see of her, she's admitting to sending demons to kill a child, and then one scene later she sees an injured sorcerer crawling away and disintegrates him.
> 
> ...




I think this is just one of the things that's going to bother you that doesn't others.  I don't consider it bad storytelling, because it was set up the moment we see she's diving into the Darkhold.  While it'd have been possible she could have walked away, with what we know of her issues ending up somewhere like this seems far the more likely outcome to me.  That just can't feel like bad storytelling to me; it seems entirely earned.


----------



## Stalker0 (May 10, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> I think this is just one of the things that's going to bother you that doesn't others.  I don't consider it bad storytelling, because it was set up the moment we see she's diving into the Darkhold.  While it'd have been possible she could have walked away, with what we know of her issues ending up somewhere like this seems far the more likely outcome to me.  That just can't feel like bad storytelling to me; it seems entirely earned.



I agree. Now for people who haven't seen Wandavision, this could seem out of left field. This movie tests the MCU's belief that all of its products are going to be consumed, as they really do expect people to have seen the tv show to know what's going on, and the movie really doesn't explain that much.

But if you have, I mean Wanda really goes down the hole in that show, doing a lot of bad things. It doesn't seem weird at all that you take that, add in a super evil book constantly corrupting you, that after a bit of time you have a witch that has gone full dark side.

I do think the Darkhold is narratively important to get her there "so quickly". Without it, I could see Wanda getting there eventually, but I would need to see that progression (else we have another Season 8 GOT Dennerys heel turn). But the book acts as a catalyst, accelerating Wanda through that progression and making her more unable to listen to reasonable arguments than she might have otherwise. Considering that Strange used it for like 10 minutes and may already have corruption in his body....it seems very reasonable that a person using it for several weeks (months?) could be completely corrupted.


----------



## Staffan (May 10, 2022)

RangerWickett said:


> In WV she messes with people's minds. The last three scenes are her getting revenge on Agatha for trying to kill her, her voluntarily giving up her loved ones to move on, and then the stinger of her looking at the book and hearing voices.
> 
> The next scene we see of her, she's admitting to sending demons to kill a child, and then one scene later she sees an injured sorcerer crawling away and disintegrates him.
> 
> ...



It's a fairly big time jump. It's been at least one, maybe two years between Wandavision and Multiverse of Madness. Wandavision took place pretty much directly after Endgame, in 2023. Multiverse happens after Spiderman: No Way Home, which takes place in late 2024. It's unclear how long after, but definitively after (it could be in the interval between The Big Fight and Peter swinging around at Christmas in the end scene, so it's possible but unlikely that Multiverse is in 2024 but more likely to be 2025).

And two years with a Book of Evil Badness working its way into Wanda's mind? Yeah, I'll buy her becoming unhinged.

Plus, as has already been established, Wanda was never much of a paragon of Good. She deliberately triggered the Hulk into going on a rampage in a densely populated area, just because she wanted to get back at Stark for building the weapons that killed her parents.


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## RangerWickett (May 10, 2022)

Staffan said:


> Yeah, I'll buy her becoming unhinged.



Then show it.


----------



## Thomas Shey (May 10, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> I do think the Darkhold is narratively important to get her there "so quickly". Without it, I could see Wanda getting there eventually, but I would need to see that progression (else we have another Season 8 GOT Dennerys heel turn). But the book acts as a catalyst, accelerating Wanda through that progression and making her more unable to listen to reasonable arguments than she might have otherwise. Considering that Strange used it for like 10 minutes and may already have corruption in his body....it seems very reasonable that a person using it for several weeks (months?) could be completely corrupted.




In fact, we pretty much know at least two other incarnations of Strange fell down completely that way.

Honestly, you can of course have an issue with the Darkhold as plot device, but that's pretty much how its worked out for anyone who messed with it for an extended period.  Its well established in prior fiction.  Of course they didn't have to give it to her, but once that was set up there's pretty much have to been active intervention on someone's part (say, Strange getting his oar in much earlier) for some awful outcome not to have been likely; Wanda's just been shown as someone who struggles too much with her better and worse angels not for that to be expected, given how the Darkhold puts its thumb on the scale (and frankly, one gets the feeling the nature of her maturing power didn't help).


----------



## Thomas Shey (May 10, 2022)

RangerWickett said:


> Then show it.




How much flashback time do you want in a movie that's already two hours long, that needs to also show where Strange is at right now, and give at least some time to America Chavez?

Like someone else said, you can argue that the need to have seen Wandavision is a potential problem here, but I'm hard pressed to see where things pointed at the end of that and where they arrived here being dissonant.


----------



## ART! (May 10, 2022)

RangerWickett said:


> Then show it.



This kind of reads as "FIGHT ME!!"


----------



## Umbran (May 10, 2022)

RangerWickett said:


> Messing with minds to full on merciless murder.




So, I find this a misrepresentation.

She wasn't "messing with people's minds".  She was committing mass torture.  The children of Westview were taken from their parents.  The people had their agency taken away, under threat of whatever Wanda's power could do to them.  They were mostly not allowed to sleep, and when they could sleep, they had the nightmares of a woman who was traumatized in youth, was experimented on by Nazis, had her brother die, had the only person she loved die at her own hand, and then at the hand of another....

At the end of Wandavision, they literally beg her to either let them go, or let them die.  Continued existence as her toy was _worse than death_.

The only mitigation on this was that she seems to have not been fully consciously aware of their state, but it looked like a significant amount of knowing denial was involved.  Either way, in her grief, some part of her was willing to subjugate nearly 4,000 people to her will without regard to the impact on them.  Killing a handful or two no longer seems a great jump.


----------



## tomBitonti (May 10, 2022)

Bolares said:


> People are ignoring the real ending to wandavision. She ends that show using a illusion to hide the fact that she doce completely in to the darkhold, and is hearing the cries for help of her children. Sure, she regrets enslaving westview, but right after that goes after the power of a demonic relic. What she is in this movie was directly set up in wandavision




Yeah, I thought that was odd.  The presentation at the end of WandaVision seems to be that she realized that what she did was wrong and was on a redemptive path.  But, the DarkHold has been shown to be extremely corrupting.  Most but not all succumb to its influence: Aide is wholly corrupted, while Radcliff sees his errors in the end.  I'm thinking that the presentation at the end of WandaVision was of her reading from the DarkHold, while projecting an external "normal" scene.  I had thought that to be her sitting outside her house while having an astral projection read the DarkHold.  That ending scene wasn't clear enough in foreshadowing Wanda's corruption.

To me, a weakness is the gap between the end of WandaVision and Wanda's appearance in the movie.  While I understand the movie is already quite long, the transition is not adequately presented.  I wonder how folks who have *not* seen WandaVision will handle the transition.  There is too much which is not explained unless WandaVision has been seen.  I think some showing of Wanda gradually becoming worse and worse are needed.  The scene with her and the boys is too small to explain what happened, and feel disconnected.  Who are these boys?  Where did they come from?

I would have handled the withered forest reveal differently: Have Dr Strange invite Wanda to the monastery.  Have him twig to something being off, and figure out that Wanda has been corrupted just before she is to arrive, just in time to prevent America from being taken.

TomB


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## Umbran (May 10, 2022)

RangerWickett said:


> Then show it.




Being traumatized as a child to the point where she becomes a terrorist and unleashes the Hulk on a city didn't show that?

Or, what, you think that goes away on its own when more trauma is dropped on top of it, and exactly no mental health steps are taken?


----------



## Umbran (May 10, 2022)

Another way to see this...

Wanda's story is the best media version of the Dark Phoenix Saga we are likely to ever get.


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## tomBitonti (May 10, 2022)

Umbran said:


> Being traumatized as a child to the point where she becomes a terrorist and unleashes the Hulk on a city didn't show that?
> 
> Or, what, you think that goes away on its own when more trauma is dropped on top of it, and exactly no mental health steps are taken?




Except, at the end of WandaVision, she lets her recreated Vision and children dissolve, effectively killing them, as a necessary loss to remedy her taking control over the town.  She has a redemptive moment.  There is a hint that she might see Vision again at some time in the future.

Also, she is aghast at her mistake in the market in Civil War (although, it is misplaced: There were many people in the market who would have otherwise died, and who knows how many would have died if the biological agent was released.)

What I see as a problem is that she recognizes that controlling the townsfolk is *wrong*, but then decides that killing America and (presumably) killing and taking the place of an alternate Wanda are *OK*.  (And, killing lots of people along the way.)  That's a huge shift.

TomB


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## Umbran (May 10, 2022)

tomBitonti said:


> Except, at the end of WandaVision, she lets her recreated Vision and children dissolve, effectively killing them, as a necessary loss to remedy her taking control over the town.  She has a redemptive moment.




Redemptive moments don't fix trauma.  Redemptive moments are not a substitute for a few years with a good therapist. 

Her first action after that redemptive moment was to run away and stew in isolation with a book of evil power.  Good luck with that redemption.


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## Umbran (May 10, 2022)

Oh.  Another thought - I've seen folks mention that the Book of the Vishanti seems like a red herring. It is supposed to give the sorcerer whatever power he needed to face the threat.  He gets it and... nothing.

Except he, the only Strange to get the book, is also the only Strange who doesn't dive too deep into the Darkhold, the only Strange to not try to kill America, the only Strange who _lets others help him_.

So, either he already had what he needed, so the book didn't have to give him anything, or the book gave him the little extra trust/willpower/bravery he needed.

Nobody said the Book of the Vishanti was about _blatant_ power.


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## DeviousQuail (May 10, 2022)

Umbran said:


> Redemptive moments don't fix trauma.  Redemptive moments are not a substitute for a few years with a good therapist.
> 
> Her first action after that redemptive moment was to run away and stew in isolation with a book of evil power.  Good luck with that redemption.



This makes me think of Thor. He gets trauma piled on and doesn't deal with it even after he does everything else right to defeat the bad guys. He spirals because of it and we only really see him coming out of that after Endgame and in the trailer for Love and Thunder.


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## Umbran (May 10, 2022)

DeviousQuail said:


> This makes me think of Thor. He gets trauma piled on and doesn't deal with it even after he does everything else right to defeat the bad guys. He spirals because of it and we only really see him coming out of that after Endgame and in the trailer for Love and Thunder.




Awesome point.  The MCU is a number of studies in trauma and its various effects.  We can add Iron Man in there too...

But, let's talk Thor for a moment.  Aside form how they are different people, what's a major difference between Thor and Wanda?  Support structure.

Thor gets to continue to hang around with people who mostly like and respect him, like Korg and the other Asgardians who still accept him.  Thor has people come to him for help because they respect him.  Thor gets to talk to his mother.  Thor gets to have Mjollnir tell him that _he is still worthy_, and even his friends are worthy!  

Wanda had her brother, but he's only one person, and he dies.  She had Vision, but he dies, twice, once at her own hand.  She ends up isolated.  When she comes back from the Snap... as far as we know _not a soul in the world_ reaches out to her.  Totally.  Alone.

No stuff she doesn't deal with her trauma well.


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## Thomas Shey (May 10, 2022)

tomBitonti said:


> Yeah, I thought that was odd.  The presentation at the end of WandaVision seems to be that she realized that what she did was wrong and was on a redemptive path.  But, the DarkHold has been shown to be extremely corrupting.  Most but not all succumb to its influence: Aide is wholly corrupted, while Radcliff sees his errors in the end.  I'm thinking that the presentation at the end of WandaVision was of her reading from the DarkHold, while projecting an external "normal" scene.  I had thought that to be her sitting outside her house while having an astral projection read the DarkHold.  That ending scene wasn't clear enough in foreshadowing Wanda's corruption.
> 
> To me, a weakness is the gap between the end of WandaVision and Wanda's appearance in the movie.  While I understand the movie is already quite long, the transition is not adequately presented.  I wonder how folks who have *not* seen WandaVision will handle the transition.  There is too much which is not explained unless WandaVision has been seen.  I think some showing of Wanda gradually becoming worse and worse are needed.  The scene with her and the boys is too small to explain what happened, and feel disconnected.  Who are these boys?  Where did they come from?





While I do have some concerns about how necessary Wandavision was to understand this, honestly I don't think the movie could have worked with the extra setup if you didn't see it.  My feeling is it would have needed at least another 30-60 minutes of context.


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## Thomas Shey (May 10, 2022)

Umbran said:


> Oh.  Another thought - I've seen folks mention that the Book of the Vishanti seems like a red herring. It is supposed to give the sorcerer whatever power he needed to face the threat.  He gets it and... nothing.
> 
> Except he, the only Strange to get the book, is also the only Strange who doesn't dive too deep into the Darkhold, the only Strange to not try to kill America, the only Strange who _lets others help him_.
> 
> ...




Uhm, I have to point out _he didn't get the book_.  It was destroyed just as he got to it.


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## Umbran (May 10, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> Uhm, I have to point out _he didn't get the book_.  It was destroyed just as he got to it.




As I recall, he got it - lifted it off its base - but didn't have a chance to read it before it was destroyed.


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## Thomas Shey (May 10, 2022)

Umbran said:


> As I recall, he got it - lifted it off its base - but didn't have a chance to read it before it was destroyed.




That might be correct--I don't remember that precisely--but at the very least he didn't _use_ it, so it adds up to the same thing.


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## pukunui (May 11, 2022)

While people have made some good points here, I still think there's an element of sexism in the way Wanda and Strange are portrayed.

Overall, I think I enjoyed Moon Knight more than this movie.


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## Eric V (May 11, 2022)

pukunui said:


> While people have made some good points here, I still think there's an element of sexism in the way Wanda and Strange are portrayed.
> 
> Overall, I think I enjoyed Moon Knight more than this movie.



Sure.  Again, these aren't real things, they're merely the product of decisions made by human writers, and they decided Psycho Mom trope for Wanda and Strange being able to handle it.

I wonder how people who have no experience with the comics but love the MCU see this; for a lot of us, we know Wanda's comic history, so her turning heel is inline with what we know (we also know what the Darkhold is), but for someone who only knows the character through Olsen's performance, I wonder...


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## Older Beholder (May 11, 2022)

One of my favourite scenes in the film was the musical fight towards the end, with the Doctor Strange in the incursion effected universe. It did a good job of keeping up the visually inventive action from the first movie.


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## pukunui (May 11, 2022)

Eric V said:


> I wonder how people who have no experience with the comics but love the MCU see this; for a lot of us, we know Wanda's comic history, so her turning heel is inline with what we know (we also know what the Darkhold is), but for someone who only knows the character through Olsen's performance, I wonder...



Raises hand.

I haven’t read a single Marvel superhero comic ever. I am aware that Wanda vacillates between hero and villain in the comics but do not know the specifics.

While I am not opposed to her becoming a villain (again), I was not satisfied with the way it happened in this movie.

For one thing, it didn’t follow the show well enough for my liking, and it raised more questions than it answered. Is the Wanda from WandaVision dead? How many other Scarlet Witch versions of Wanda are there out there? If this version of Wanda created her kids with magic in a magic bubble, how are there versions of her out there with the same kids not in a magic bubble? How did they come to exist? If we see Wanda again, will it be a non-Scarlet Witch version of her?

And so on and so forth.

I was also expecting to see Wanda and new Vision reunite (at some point, not necessarily in this film) and have him turn back into old Vision (I understand this happens in the comics), but now it seems like that may not happen. Or if it does, it will also be different to my expectations.


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## DeviousQuail (May 11, 2022)

Eric V said:


> Sure.  Again, these aren't real things, they're merely the product of decisions made by human writers, and they decided Psycho Mom trope for Wanda and Strange being able to handle it.
> 
> I wonder how people who have no experience with the comics but love the MCU see this; for a lot of us, we know Wanda's comic history, so her turning heel is inline with what we know (we also know what the Darkhold is), but for someone who only knows the character through Olsen's performance, I wonder...



This thread was the first place I heard about sexism. None of the 8ish people I know that have seen it brought it up when we talked about the movie. I was also able to find numerous reviews that brought it up though so it is something people are seeing. Unfortunately, they were just movie reviews so they couldn't exactly deep dive into the subject. As it stands I'm not convinced there is in the case of Strange and Wanda having different outcomes with the Darkhold (my reasoning is up thread). However, with this much talk about it I'm sure we'll get those deep dives eventually and it'll be worthwhile to see what comes of it here and in Marvel studios.


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## Davies (May 11, 2022)

Yeah, I hated hated hated this movie. Complaints that aren't about the abuse of female characters to the overwhelming joy of most of the audience.

1. Characters being depicted as horror movie villains is one thing. Characters acting like the idiotic protagonists of horror movies is another. WHY did they just stand around staring at the door when Wanda failed to appear through it?

2. Absolute lack of tension in the climax. Wanda starts to drain Amy. Strange sees Wanda draining Amy. Strange engages in complicated strategy to get to where they are, including extended fight scene. He nevertheless arrives just in the nick of time.

3. Repetition of the "I need you to watch my bod" from the first Dr. Strange movie.

But of course I'm probably just stirring the pot again.


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## Thomas Shey (May 11, 2022)

Eric V said:


> Sure.  Again, these aren't real things, they're merely the product of decisions made by human writers, and they decided Psycho Mom trope for Wanda and Strange being able to handle it.
> 
> I wonder how people who have no experience with the comics but love the MCU see this; for a lot of us, we know Wanda's comic history, so her turning heel is inline with what we know (we also know what the Darkhold is), but for someone who only knows the character through Olsen's performance, I wonder...



 As noted, its not like MCU version didn't have some issues from day one.  She _started_ with a heel-face turn after all.


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## Asisreo (May 11, 2022)

Davies said:


> WHY did they just stand around staring at the door when Wanda failed to appear through it?



It must have been comic relief because I was laughing the entire time during that scene. 


Davies said:


> 2. Absolute lack of tension in the climax. Wanda starts to drain Amy. Strange sees Wanda draining Amy. Strange engages in complicated strategy to get to where they are, including extended fight scene. He nevertheless arrives just in the nick of time.



Movie magic, literally, never has real consequences, especially in this movie. When anyone can do anything all of the time, but only sometimes, your suspension of disbelief reaches a limit.


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## RangerWickett (May 11, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> How much flashback time do you want in a movie that's already two hours long, that needs to also show where Strange is at right now, and give at least some time to America Chavez?




You could probably do it in a minute or two. Like, when Strange goes to her orchard, and she says she's being reasonable, and Strange says no, she could try to just mind-whammy him then and there. Maybe he manages to fight free of some mindscape weirdness by casting a spell to conjure forth someone's greatest fear, and that's when we get to see a cascade of images from Wandavision, then a montage of her being corrupted by the Darkhold.

The trick for me, though, is that I don't want Wanda's agency taken away. I want her villainy to be the result of an intentional character choice, not an unexpected consequence or a situation where she's being victimized by an inanimate object she cannot later defeat. She's been manipulated by Strucker, Ultron, and Agatha, and she's lost loved ones to Thanos and even that S.W.O.R.D. guy whose name I forget. 

It just frikkin sucks if she becomes a villain because she's gone cuckoo or because an evil book makes her do it. 

Heck, going full nihilist would work for me. Maybe she watches other universes where she sees other Wandas and Pietros and Visions and various friends in the Avengers get murdered, and she becomes numb to it. You could have her say that she saw all their sacrifices be in vain, and it made her realize that the sacrifice she made - giving up Vision and her kids - was also pointless. And yes, she saw countless ways people suffered at the hands of different villains, but the thing was, at least the people who were doing the hurting were the ones in charge. And she decided that she wanted to be the one making decisions for herself.

She had all the power in the world and tried to play by the rules and lost people over and over again. So now she's going to make the rules.

---

Just present that on the screen. Sure, maybe the Darkhold is nudging what she sees, keeping her from seeing the paths where she uses her powers to make a positive difference. But we'd still be seeing her make a choice, with a motivation.


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## Stalker0 (May 11, 2022)

pukunui said:


> If this version of Wanda created her kids with magic in a magic bubble, how are there versions of her out there with the same kids not in a magic bubble? How did they come to exist?



My head cannon is that when Wanda first made her Tv reality, its the first time she touched into her Scarlet Witch powers, and got a glimpse of the multiverse. In it, she saw her kids from another reality, and that was the template she used to create her "magic kids".


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## Stalker0 (May 11, 2022)

RangerWickett said:


> The trick for me, though, is that I don't want Wanda's agency taken away. I want her villainy to be the result of an intentional character choice, not an unexpected consequence or a situation where she's being victimized by an inanimate object she cannot later defeat. She's been manipulated by Strucker, Ultron, and Agatha, and she's lost loved ones to Thanos and even that S.W.O.R.D. guy whose name I forget.



This point I can respect. In some ways it could have been a lot cooler if Wanda did just go full villain on her own, especially if people are right and its been a few years since Wandavision (so you don't need a mcguffin to her quickly). She stewed in her cabin for a while, and said, you know what.... f this, I am just done.


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## trappedslider (May 11, 2022)

Davies said:


> Yeah, I hated hated hated this movie. Complaints that aren't about the abuse of female characters to the overwhelming joy of most of the audience.
> 
> 1. Characters being depicted as horror movie villains is one thing. Characters acting like the idiotic protagonists of horror movies is another. WHY did they just stand around staring at the door when Wanda failed to appear through it?
> 
> ...




Tropes are not bad ymmv


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## trappedslider (May 11, 2022)

pukunui said:


> I thought that was just Dr Strange conflating the Fantastic Four with the Fab Four.



 There was indeed a lesser-known soul group
	
 known as the Fantastic Four, no relation to the Marvel characters, that formed in 1965, something that Strange would know, given his established knowledge of obscure music trivia.


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## Davies (May 11, 2022)

trappedslider said:


> Tropes are not bad



Except when they naughty word well are.


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## trappedslider (May 11, 2022)

Davies said:


> Except when they naughty word well are.



noticed you removed the YMMV


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## Davies (May 12, 2022)

Very reluctantly, I take pen in hand to admit that there were things that I liked about it, as I do not wish to be relentlessly negative.

1. Xochitl Gomez is excellent as America Chavez, and I look forward to seeing more of her until the writers decide to -- I look forward to seeing where her story takes her.

2. They brought back Anson Mount to play Black Bolt, despite how that went the first time. And he actually does a good job until they demonstrate that -- he actually does a good job.

3. Rintrah looked awesome until you realize that he's -- Rintrah looked awesome.

4. Give Hayley a movie where she can kick ass for real you poltroons!


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## Paul Farquhar (May 12, 2022)

Davies said:


> They brought back Anson Mount to play Black Bolt, despite how that went the first time.



The script was the problem, they had a decent cast.


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## John R Davis (May 12, 2022)

Yeah the Inhumans plot was a bit dull. Thought the cast was pretty good


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## Thomas Shey (May 12, 2022)

Paul Farquhar said:


> The script was the problem, they had a decent cast.




Honestly at least half of that cast was let down by a mediocre script and the people putting on the show trying to get by with too little budget..


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## Staffan (May 12, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> Honestly at least half of that cast was let down by a mediocre script and the people putting on the show trying to get by with too little budget..



Yeah, when the first thing that happens is that they shave Medusa's head because they can't afford the FX, that's not a good start.


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## Umbran (May 13, 2022)

Paul Farquhar said:


> The script was the problem, they had a decent cast.




And when your character largely can't speak, that's a hard acting challenge at the best of times.


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## Thomas Shey (May 13, 2022)

Umbran said:


> And when your character largely can't speak, that's a hard acting challenge at the best of times.




Which is one of the things that impressed me about Mount in that.  He did a startlingly good job of conveying a great deal without dialog, in a series where they didn't give him too much good to work with.


----------



## Staffan (May 13, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> Which is one of the things that impressed me about Mount in that.  He did a startlingly good job of conveying a great deal without dialog, in a series where they didn't give him too much good to work with.



Yeah, that's why I was happy when I heard he had been cast as Christopher Pike in Discovery. Basically, "If he can be that good with crap material and one hand metaphorically tied behind his back, just imagine what he'll be able to do when he can *talk*."


----------



## DrunkonDuty (May 16, 2022)

Not the best Marvel movie. Fun but lacking.

As for tropes not being bad just because they're tropes. True. But some tropes are bad in and of themselves. The Crazy Woman trope is old, and tired, and sexist. Now, for me, a lot can be forgiven if something is done well. It was done well in WandaVision because we had the in-depth look at Wanda's hurt and it turned it from a trope to a character study. It was not done well in MoM. 

The whole Darkhold thing was very much story by telling and not story by showing. Sometimes you need the short hand of telling but the Darkhold being key to Wanda's fall needed to be shown, IMO. Look, I get it, Sam Raimi has a thing for evil books. But maybe he could cut back.

@RangerWickett 's outline in post #75 of this thread would have worked for me. Yes, taking time to explain things and build drama would have cut into the SFX time. No big loss.

I would like to suggest that the scene where America lets Wanda find out exactly what "her" sons would think of her in the context of their actual mother being murdered and replaced should have been done early in the film. Then the story could have moved on from there. Maybe Wanda and Strange could have shared a journey of self-realisation while trying to patch up holes in the multiverse.



(I'll have to re-watch WandaVision as it seems my memory of it is not tallying with what I've read others say here in the thread.)


----------



## Thomas Shey (May 16, 2022)

I will just note the Darkhold didn't come out of nowhere; that was set up in Wandavision.


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## tomBitonti (May 16, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> I will just note the Darkhold didn't come out of nowhere; that was set up in Wandavision.



It’s only in the Agents of Shield that the Darkhold is really shown.  WandaVision has it, but we are only told that it is evil.  We aren’t shown.  And, while Agnes is evil, she seemed that way before getting the book, and didn’t seem to be worse for having it.

If folks knew that Wanda had the darkhold, they out to have convened at her location as if she had an un-exploded hydrogen bomb.

TomB


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## Thomas Shey (May 16, 2022)

tomBitonti said:


> It’s only in the Agents of Shield that the Darkhold is really shown.  WandaVision has it, but we are only told that it is evil.  We aren’t shown.  And, while Agnes is evil, she seemed that way before getting the book, and didn’t seem to be worse for having it.
> 
> If folks knew that Wanda had the darkhold, they out to have convened at her location as if she had an un-exploded hydrogen bomb.
> 
> TomB




The key phrase her is "if".  To the best of our knowledge, the only people who knew about it being there were her and Agnes.

And as to being told and not shown--at a certain point, I'm really hard pressed to require filmmakers to unpack every statement they make on screen.  If someone says that a particular bioweapon is singularly deadly, they don't have to show me that it is for me to take them at their word.


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## BrokenTwin (May 16, 2022)

Watched it, enjoyed it, but I wasn't really happy with the direction they took Wanda. I mean, I get it, and it works, but now there's no way for the twins to exist natively in the 616 MCU reality, which means my fleeting hopes of actually seeing the galactic power couple that is Wiccan and Hulkling appear in the MCU is pretty much gone. And I guess all the plot threads that got established in Wandavision (nuVision, the twins, Agatha) are just getting dropped.

I liked America Chavez, though she was a little too macguffin-girl for my tastes. And as much as I fanboyed over the Illuminati cast, they could have stood to be cut from the script to tighten the focus on the core characters.

Visuals were a lot of fun. Strange's third eye looks ridiculous though.


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## tomBitonti (May 16, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> The key phrase her is "if".  To the best of our knowledge, the only people who knew about it being there were her and Agnes.
> 
> And as to being told and not shown--at a certain point, I'm really hard pressed to require filmmakers to unpack every statement they make on screen.  If someone says that a particular bioweapon is singularly deadly, they don't have to show me that it is for me to take them at their word.




Not every statement, sure.  But key plot points should be shown.  (I think this is good point to be made for designing adventures.)

There is a scene at the beginning of “The Rock” with Nicholas Cage where a deadly biotoxin is being stolen.  There is an accident and some of the toxin is released.  Some of the thieves are sealed in a bunker and left to die.  We see the fast acting toxin kill them in seconds as they foam at the mouth and their skin blisters.

Further, there is another scene where the Cage character attempts to diffuse a bioweapon.  His parter accidentally sets it off and they have to take extra-ordinary steps to save themselves.

The lethality of the stolen biotoxin is a key plot point.  We are not just told.  We are very clearly shown the lethality of the toxin.  This really helps to propel the story.

TomB


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## Thomas Shey (May 16, 2022)

tomBitonti said:


> Not every statement, sure.  But key plot points should be shown.  (I think this is good point to be made for designing adventures.)




I used the example I did for a reason.  In a movie where a super-deadly bioweapon exists, its a key plot point.

You still don't need to show me.  If you've got the time it may add some emotional heft to the movie, but I don't need you to kill a bunch of people to sell me on the weapon being deadly.

Similarly, if you sell a book of evil magic on being basically the Necronomicon, you don't have to present proof in advance.  Its a premise thing, and you don't have to prove your premise.

(The only time this is a problem is when you tell me X and the story actually shows Y.  Informed attributes in conflict with shown attributes are a problem, but ones that are informed and then shown later are fine, and I think the expectation to always have them demonstrated up front is not a particularly reasonable ask).



tomBitonti said:


> There is a scene at the beginning of “The Rock” with Nicholas Cage where a deadly biotoxin is being stolen.  There is an accident and some of the toxin is released.  Some of the thieves are sealed in a bunker and left to die.  We see the fast acting toxin kill them in seconds as they foam at the mouth and their skin blisters.
> 
> Further, there is another scene where the Cage character attempts to diffuse a bioweapon.  His parter accidentally sets it off and they have to take extra-ordinary steps to save themselves.
> 
> ...




As I said, if you have the time the first is a virtue--but its not a necessity, and may not be the best use of screen time if you have other things going on.

(I'd argue the equivelent of your second case did take place in the movie--at least _twice_, both involving alternate Stephen Stranges.)


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## Stalker0 (May 16, 2022)

tomBitonti said:


> It’s only in the Agents of Shield that the Darkhold is really shown.  WandaVision has it, but we are only told that it is evil.  We aren’t shown.  And, while Agnes is evil, she seemed that way before getting the book, and didn’t seem to be worse for having it.
> 
> If folks knew that Wanda had the darkhold, they out to have convened at her location as if she had an un-exploded hydrogen bomb.



This is a fair point. Agatha doesn't really seem "corrupted" by the book anymore than she was already, and she might have had the thing for years for all we know. On the other hand, I think the movie does a good job in its own scences highlighting how destructive and corrupting the book is....by its affects on other strange's in other multiverses. So I think the movie is consistent within itself, its just not necessarily consistent with Wandavision. On the other other hand, perhaps the fact taht Agatha was already pretty twisted means the book didn't have much it needed to do.

The note about the "unexploded hydrogen bomb"....I do feel like one major element that was completely missing from Wandavision and this movie is... the utter incompetance of Kamotajj. There was a major magical event on Earth, and not a peep from them. Hell when Thor and Loki come to earth looking for Odin, Dr Strange immediately picks up on them. But an entire town gets mindcontrolled by chaos power and they are like..."meh".

Now I can respect that we didn't want Dr Strange in Wandavision, and having some excuse why they couldn't get there "in time" I'm fine with, I can accept it. But they never followed up....never found out what happened, never tracked down Wanda to see if she was actually back to normal? I mean only SHIELD has shown that level of incompetance, and at least they were constantly being undermined from within by an evil splinter organization, what is Kamotajj's excuse?

I would love if that was an actual plot point, Wong being critical of himself because of things slipping through the cracks, maybe we find out that the Ancient One was so powerful and wise that she had held the organization practically by herself, and without her leadership the Wizards are actually in a massive upheaval right now. Or maybe it was all going to hell even during the Ancient One's reign...perhaps that little bit of darkness she had been feeding on was making her just a liiiiiitle complacent when it came to certain dark threats, giving some interesting fodder for Mordo's arguments. That could be really cool to learn about....as opposed to "sorry wanda, should have probably looked in on you in the year or so since you had a nervous breakdown and enslaved an entire town with more magic than one witch should be capable of doing....our bad".


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## Staffan (May 16, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> The note about the "unexploded hydrogen bomb"....I do feel like one major element that was completely missing from Wandavision and this movie is... the utter incompetance of Kamotajj. There was a major magical event on Earth, and not a peep from them. Hell when Thor and Loki come to earth looking for Odin, Dr Strange immediately picks up on them. But an entire town gets mindcontrolled by chaos power and they are like..."meh".



No-price explanation: since the effect was both limited by and bounded by the hex, it wasn't detectable outside of it to sorcerous methods. We do see that when the Vision tries to leave, he starts disintegrating because he just doesn't exist in the outside world.


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## Stalker0 (May 17, 2022)

Staffan said:


> No-price explanation: since the effect was both limited by and bounded by the hex, it wasn't detectable outside of it to sorcerous methods. We do see that when the Vision tries to leave, he starts disintegrating because he just doesn't exist in the outside world.



I love that explanation.... except Agatha found it using sorcerous methods

Now if she had found it because of the darkhold....ok now we have ourselves a reasonable explanation.


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## Umbran (May 17, 2022)

DrunkonDuty said:


> The Crazy Woman trope is old, and tired, and sexist.




I find that the fact that we see her trauma every step of the way rather keeps it from being a trope. We've had several male characters have difficulties dealing with what they've been through in the MCU already.  To _not_ have a woman also represented would be a problem.


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## Thomas Shey (May 17, 2022)

Umbran said:


> I find that the fact that we see her trauma every step of the way rather keeps it from being a trope. We've had several male characters have difficulties dealing with what they've been through in the MCU already.  To _not_ have a woman also represented would be a problem.




And_ in general_, the MCU version of magic seems to lean in to being that way; as noted Strange dances around the edge of it constantly.


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## Thomas Shey (May 17, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> This is a fair point. Agatha doesn't really seem "corrupted" by the book anymore than she was already, and she might have had the thing for years for all we know. On the other hand, I think the movie does a good job in its own scences highlighting how destructive and corrupting the book is....by its affects on other strange's in other multiverses. So I think the movie is consistent within itself, its just not necessarily consistent with Wandavision. On the other other hand, perhaps the fact taht Agatha was already pretty twisted means the book didn't have much it needed to do.




Agatha may have also had the advantage that she knew up-front the risks she was dealing with, so even if she was corrupt from the start, the slope wouldn't necessarily been that steep.  In the case of Wanda, well, a friend has a quote she uses that applies: "Desperate people do desperate things."  On a more or less comparable level, I'll direct people to Strange Supreme from What If? who knows better than Wanda what he's getting into and still goes there.


----------



## Older Beholder (May 17, 2022)

BrokenTwin said:


> And I guess all the plot threads that got established in Wandavision (nuVision, the twins, *Agatha*) are just getting dropped.




Agatha is getting her own series. 

I don't think you can count out anyone showing up in the MCU, it'll just take a while. 
That's one issue with the fact that Marvel being more a group of franchises under one banner at this point, it can take 4-5 years to get back around to each thread of the story.


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## Davies (May 17, 2022)

Umbran said:


> I find that the fact that we see her trauma every step of the way rather keeps it from being a trope. We've had several male characters have difficulties dealing with what they've been through in the MCU already.



Name one of those characters who became a murderous supervillain.


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## Umbran (May 17, 2022)

Davies said:


> Name one of those characters who became a murderous supervillain.




Hawkeye (as Ronin).
Doctor Strange (in What If...? and Multiverse of Madness)

And need we note that Stark's drive to make a suit of armor for the world led to the creation of Ultron, and who knows how many deaths in Sokovia?


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## Davies (May 17, 2022)

Umbran said:


> Hawkeye (as Ronin).
> Doctor Strange (in What If...? and Multiverse of Madness)
> 
> And need we note that Stark's drive to make a suit of armor for the world led to the creation of Ultron, and who knows how many deaths in Sokovia?



Allowed redemption, not the real Doctor Strange, and allowed redemption versus crushed to death -- an actual punishment for witches, I abruptly realize. Wonder why.


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## Imaculata (May 17, 2022)

Davies said:


> Allowed redemption, not the real Doctor Strange, and allowed redemption versus crushed to death -- an actual punishment for witches, I abruptly realize. Wonder why.



Wanda surely will redeem herself again in a future movie. Keep in mind that in the comics, Wanda is often a villain. Whereas the other male examples are usually portrayed as the heroes.


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## Thomas Shey (May 17, 2022)

Davies said:


> Allowed redemption, not the real Doctor Strange, and allowed redemption versus crushed to death -- an actual punishment for witches, I abruptly realize. Wonder why.




Assuming that's what happened.  And redemption-by-death is a thing too; as I noted, its entirely legitimate to argue destroying every copy of that book ever evens the scales out considerably.


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## Davies (May 17, 2022)

Imaculata said:


> Wanda surely will redeem herself again in a future movie. Keep in mind that in the comics, Wanda is often a villain.



No. She is not _often_ portrayed that way. And even if she was, it doesn't matter.


Imaculata said:


> Whereas the other male examples are usually portrayed as the heroes.



GEE, I WONDER WHY.


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## DrunkonDuty (May 17, 2022)

Umbran said:


> I find that the fact that we see her trauma every step of the way rather keeps it from being a trope. We've had several male characters have difficulties dealing with what they've been through in the MCU already.  To _not_ have a woman also represented would be a problem.




Okay, I just re-watched the last ep of WandaVision.

I must have missed the final post-credits scene when I watched it first time, because I have no memory of it. Not that it really changes how I feel about Wanda's suddenly becoming a homicidal maniac. Yes that scene hints at Wanda dabbling with Forbidden Things. But... so what? That scene, with some oft repeated lines about "the Darkhold is Bad, mm'kay" comes across as inadequate motivation for Wanda's _extreme_ change. And that, the failure to give justification equal to the character's change, is why it feels like a lazy trope. Look, it's clearly a case of YMMV. I don't object to Wanda going bad. I object to the way in which it was done in MoM.

Regards not seeing any of the MCU's female characters have trauma responses when several of the male characters do, I agree that would be poor. But, as @Davies has pointed out, Wanda's response to her trauma, and the come-uppance she gets given, are written dramatically differently to those written for Hawkeye, Thor, Strange and Stark. Also, let's not forget Black Widow. Or Captain Marvel's arc in her first movie. Or Wanda in WandaVision. There's plenty of women with trauma there.

I'll just finish with I enjoyed MoM. It was dumb fun. Exactly what I expect from Sam Raimi.


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## Davies (May 17, 2022)

"The Darkhold taints all it touches!"
"But not me, right?"
"Yes, even you, Steven Strange!"
"Well, I'll probably be fiaaaaahhh I've grown an eye in the middle of my forehead!"
"See, even you, Steven Strange!"
"... actually this is kind of cool. It seems that I'm just as good of a guy with a third eye as I was without one. Wow, I'm really privileged!"
"Yes, that is exactly the right word."


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## Asisreo (May 17, 2022)

Davies said:


> "The Darkhold taints all it touches!"
> "But not me, right?"
> "Yes, even you, Steven Strange!"
> "Well, I'll probably be fiaaaaahhh I've grown an eye in the middle of my forehead!"
> ...



I feel like they're setting up this strange as the new Strange Supreme and will have them be a villain for the next phase. 

Right now, he's set up to be the villain that will end up trying to right his own wrongs at the very end, imo.


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## Thomas Shey (May 17, 2022)

If people are gonna feel this is unearned and came out of nowhere, they just are.  Looks anything but to me.


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## tomBitonti (May 17, 2022)

DrunkonDuty said:


> I must have missed the final post-credits scene when I watched it first time, because I have no memory of it. Not that it really changes how I feel about Wanda's suddenly becoming a homicidal maniac. Yes that scene hints at Wanda dabbling with Forbidden Things. But... so what? That scene, with some oft repeated lines about "the Darkhold is Bad, mm'kay" comes across as inadequate motivation for Wanda's _extreme_ change. And that, the failure to give justification equal to the character's change, is why it feels like a lazy trope. Look, it's clearly a case of YMMV. I don't object to Wanda going bad. I object to the way in which it was done in MoM.




Additional text omitted.  Folks who saw Agents of Shield season 4 would understand what a terrible peril is reading the Darkhold.  It helps people do what they want while insidiously amplifying their negative aspects.

But, Agents of Shield is *not* canon, and I would expect the folks who saw season 4 are a smaller group than those who watched WandaVision.  WandaVision was watched by about 6.5 million people (in the united states), and MoM seems to be easily surpassing that ($90,000,000 earnings in the US in the first weekend).  WandaVision is again a smaller group than watched MoM.

And, I really don't think viewers of the movie should be expected to have watched either Agents of Shield or WandaVision to understand the nature of the DarkHold, not to the degree which is necessary to understand the role the DarkHold plays in the movie.

TomB


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## This Effin’ GM (May 17, 2022)

Just thinking about Proff X saying out loud “you should escape” and then bouncing cause he knew he had to get to Reed before Reed did that not so fantastic thing of info dumping everything the villain needs to know.


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## trappedslider (May 17, 2022)




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## DrunkonDuty (May 18, 2022)

tomBitonti said:


> Additional text omitted.  Folks who saw Agents of Shield season 4 would understand what a terrible peril is reading the Darkhold.  It helps people do what they want while insidiously amplifying their negative aspects.
> 
> But, Agents of Shield is *not* canon, and I would expect the folks who saw season 4 are a smaller group than those who watched WandaVision.  WandaVision was watched by about 6.5 million people (in the united states), and MoM seems to be easily surpassing that ($90,000,000 earnings in the US in the first weekend).  WandaVision is again a smaller group than watched MoM.
> 
> ...




(PSA: I'm drifting away from whether or not Wanda's personality shift was done well or not.)

This does raise an interesting question about how we watch media as part of an extended universe. Even discounting non-canon (Agents of Shield) there's an issue with how much an audience member is supposed to know. Kevin Feige has said (I paraphrase) : that each movie stands alone and there's no need to see other movies to enjoy one of them. In the same statement he also said being across the wider MCU will have pay offs in terms of a richer experience. This second part is much more true than the first part.

Most extreme example: What would someone who watched Avengers Endgame have gotten out of it if they hadn't at least watched Infinity War? Likewise Wanda's Face-Heel turn would be totally out of the blue for someone who hasn't seen WandaVision. 

I've got no answers here. Just pondering.


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## Thomas Shey (May 18, 2022)

DrunkonDuty said:


> (PSA: I'm drifting away from whether or not Wanda's personality shift was done well or not.)
> 
> This does raise an interesting question about how we watch media as part of an extended universe. Even discounting non-canon (Agents of Shield) there's an issue with how much an audience member is supposed to know. Kevin Feige has said (I paraphrase) : that each movie stands alone and there's no need to see other movies to enjoy one of them. In the same statement he also said being across the wider MCU will have pay offs in terms of a richer experience. This second part is much more true than the first part.




I think its uneven how this works.  Though I quite liked Multiverse of Madness, I'll freely admit that parts of it are going to be very much informed situations without having watched at least the last couple episodes of Wandavision.



DrunkonDuty said:


> Most extreme example: What would someone who watched Avengers Endgame have gotten out of it if they hadn't at least watched Infinity War? Likewise Wanda's Face-Heel turn would be totally out of the blue for someone who hasn't seen WandaVision.
> 
> I've got no answers here. Just pondering.




I think Infinity War/Endgame are a special case.  Though avowedly separate movies, at the end of the day they're really two parts of one very long movie (and its not a coincidence at one point in process were going to be called Infinity War Part One and Part Two).


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## tomBitonti (May 18, 2022)

DrunkonDuty said:


> Most extreme example: What would someone who watched Avengers Endgame have gotten out of it if they hadn't at least watched Infinity War? Likewise Wanda's Face-Heel turn would be totally out of the blue for someone who hasn't seen WandaVision.



(Additional text omitted.)

I think Avengers Endgame works stand-alone, actually, pretty well.

A part of that is due to the lengthy build-up, where the effects of the snap are both described and shown quite clearly.

I think this works better for AE than it does for MoM because the primary effect is external, and relatable.  You could substitute any world-changing effect, such as a limited nuclear war or bio-weapon release and have a similar outcome.  One doesn't have to reach very far to understand what happened and to see the consequences.

In MoM, on the other hand, the effects are internal: The conversion of Wanda to her unbalanced, misdirected, self.  While I would argue the effect is simply not shown well enough, there is an extra difficulty in that the effect is internal, which makes it harder to understand.  We need a lot more character development for Wanda.

(I personally think that the story-telling in MoM being not as good as in AE makes the story work less well, stand-alone, but that is a different matter.)

I have a question: Why would Wanda want to raise the children from a different Branch of the Multiverse?  While the characters are similar, they are definitely not the same.  Why would she want to displace an alternate version of herself to raise children who would not really be her own?  If she was afraid for their safety, couldn't she act as a Multiversal guardian?

Or, wouldn't there be some Branches where Wanda was killed, and the children left as orphans?

Wanda: "Hey, America, my alternate died in Branch XYZ, could you send me over there so that I could look after the children she left behind?"

America: Sure thing!

TomB


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## DrunkonDuty (May 18, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> I think its uneven how this works.  Though I quite liked Multiverse of Madness, I'll freely admit that parts of it are going to be very much informed situations without having watched at least the last couple episodes of Wandavision.
> 
> I think Infinity War/Endgame are a special case.  Though avowedly separate movies, at the end of the day they're really two parts of one very long movie (and its not a coincidence at one point in process were going to be called Infinity War Part One and Part Two).




Yeah the experience is definitely uneven depending on what any given audience member has seen. I guess it can't be anything but, a "shared universe" is big by definition and different people are going to commit differently.

The longer a character is the in MCU the more narrative weight (hell, let's just call it baggage) they bring with them. More baggage means more expectation on the audience to know the baggage OR the more work that has to be done by a given piece of media.

It makes me wonder how long things can go before the MCU gets too impenetrable and people start switching off.

Which is a problem the comics themselves have faced and (I think) failed to overcome.



tomBitonti said:


> (Additional text omitted.)
> 
> I think Avengers Endgame works stand-alone, actually, pretty well.
> 
> ...




I agree on all points. Especially given just how dangerous the life of an Avenger is, you'd expect a high body count of Wandas. (What a strange sentence.  ) There _must _be some orphan versions of the kids in need of looking after.


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## Thomas Shey (May 18, 2022)

tomBitonti said:


> Or, wouldn't there be some Branches where Wanda was killed, and the children left as orphans?
> 
> Wanda: "Hey, America, my alternate died in Branch XYZ, could you send me over there so that I could look after the children she left behind?"
> 
> ...




This, by the by, I _do_ consider something of a plot hole.


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## Thomas Shey (May 18, 2022)

DrunkonDuty said:


> It makes me wonder how long things can go before the MCU gets too impenetrable and people start switching off.




I suspect the fact any given character has a limited shelflife will mitigate this.


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## Umbran (May 18, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> This, by the by, I _do_ consider something of a plot hole.




As far as we and the characters understand it, for the majority of the film, America has no conscious control over when she creates a portal, or where her portals go.  Wanda wants to steal the power because America _cannot choose_ to use it for her.

Strange works it out at the end, but by that time Wanda's too deep into the Darkhold and the conflict to listen to reason.


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## Davies (May 18, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> This, by the by, I _do_ consider something of a plot hole.



In addition to what has already been pointed out, by the middle of this ... film ... Wanda has graduated to "I need this power in order to insure that my boys are always safe from anything." And, not spelled out, but I expect that she included "growing up and leaving me" among the "anything".


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## trappedslider (May 18, 2022)

So, if when you dream you're dealing with another version of you in the multiverse that means somewhere out there I got chased by chicken nuggets as a kid.


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## Mirtek (May 19, 2022)

DrunkonDuty said:


> I've got no answers here. Just pondering.



The idea is probably that this someone is not a fan of the MCU and just want to watch some random action flic with high powered people beating on each other. 

I know plenty of people who don't care about comics, can't tell which character belongs to which publisher and have only seen a random connection of MCU movies and none of the shows. 

I was in No Way Home with someone who had never seen any of the Spider Man movies before. And had not seen Dr. Strange.

He just found it to be a good enough movie experience embedded between us eating a pizza and having a couple of cocktails afterwards.


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## Blue (May 22, 2022)

pukunui said:


> Wanda killed herself in the end (theoretically). Strange has got a weird third eye and another problem he needs to fix. Big difference. Oh, and he is now humble enough to bow to Wong. Big character development there!



When one character has had it for an hour or so while another character deeply and obsessively studied it over time while in a vulverable emotional state and the two characters have different effects, trying to say "the difference is their gender" is unsubstantiated.  Look where the rest of the variables are the same and then compare apples to apples.

Wanda killed herself in the end after realizing what she was doing.  The Dr. Strange who used it as much as Wanda didn't have the emotional fortitude to kill himself, killed multiple other incarnations of himself (while Wanda just wanted to replace one) and was killed while trying to do in yet another variant of himself.  I don't think you can make any rational case that Wanda was the weaker of those two.


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## Thomas Shey (May 22, 2022)

Blue said:


> When one character has had it for an hour or so while another character deeply and obsessively studied it over time while in a vulverable emotional state and the two characters have different effects, trying to say "the difference is their gender" is unsubstantiated.  Look where the rest of the variables are the same and then compare apples to apples.
> 
> Wanda killed herself in the end after realizing what she was doing.  The Dr. Strange who used it as much as Wanda didn't have the emotional fortitude to kill himself, killed multiple other incarnations of himself (while Wanda just wanted to replace one) and was killed while trying to do in yet another variant of himself.  I don't think you can make any rational case that Wanda was the weaker of those two.




Lets not forget that Wanda not only killed herself (if that's what happened; its strongly implied but there's a large element of fictional "villain died in massive explosion" there that can't be ignored) but deliberately used her unique position vis-a-vis her power to remove the source of her corruption to prevent it harming others.


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## Blue (May 25, 2022)

pukunui said:


> If this version of Wanda created her kids with magic in a magic bubble, how are there versions of her out there with the same kids not in a magic bubble? How did they come to exist? If we see Wanda again, will it be a non-Scarlet Witch version of her?



I know this is a late response, but it was established in the movie that you see yourself from other multiverses in your dreams.  From the beginning with Dr. Strange knowing of the battle with America, to even the corrupted Strange "Do you ever dream of falling from a large height?  That's my doing." line.  So she has been probably dreaming of those children well before WandaVision started, not realizing that it was anything more than an errant dream.  She wanted a family with Vision, and subconsciously she had already seen her children to make them.


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## Blue (May 25, 2022)

DrunkonDuty said:


> Regards not seeing any of the MCU's female characters have trauma responses when several of the male characters do, I agree that would be poor. But, as @Davies has pointed out, Wanda's response to her trauma, and the come-uppance she gets given, are written dramatically differently to those written for Hawkeye, Thor, Strange and Stark. Also, let's not forget Black Widow. Or Captain Marvel's arc in her first movie. Or Wanda in WandaVision. There's plenty of women with trauma there.



Can we look as Hawkeye as Ronin.   Because it seems he fell a lot further than Wanda in trauma response, she just has more power at her fingertips to do things about it.

She attempted to be "reasonable", to kill to take the power of one multiversal traveler and one alternate Wanda to replace her.  She several times tried to talk to Strange that she could easily escalate but doesn't want to - just give her America.  And, she has the partial justification that she is being lead down a dark path by a corrupting evil artifact.

He went on an intentional murder spree of plenty of people who were just criminals.  Not even super powered ones.  He turned that way on his own.  They both lost their family, but he didn't have the additional pushes of the Darkhold nor of having to kill his partner to try to save the universe and failing anyway.

Really, Ronin intentionally chose mass murder as an end-goal for the similar trauma and without the corrupting influence of the mythic evil book.  He did worse and with less provocation.  Just imaging if he had Wanda's level of power to carry out his spree.


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## Stalker0 (May 25, 2022)

Blue said:


> Can we look as Hawkeye as Ronin.   Because it seems he fell a lot further than Wanda in trauma response, she just has more power at her fingertips to do things about it.



At the end of the day though, scale does matter. People kill each other every day, but that guy with the nuke....yeah I'm watching every move he makes, because if he has a bad day..... a LOT of people are going to die.

Wong and Strange saw Wanda for what she was.... a multiversal threat. You just can't let that kind of destructive power do what it wants, because a "little evil" from Wanda will do more damage than a lifetime of "big evil" that Clint could muster.


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## Blue (May 25, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> At the end of the day though, scale does matter. People kill each other every day, but that guy with the nuke....yeah I'm watching every move he makes, because if he has a bad day..... a LOT of people are going to die.
> 
> Wong and Strange saw Wanda for what she was.... a multiversal threat. You just can't let that kind of destructive power do what it wants, because a "little evil" from Wanda will do more damage than a lifetime of "big evil" that Clint could muster.



But the contention I was replying to was about treating the character differently due to gender differences.  Everything you are saying is true, but does not change that they had Clint fall further and without the Darkhold as provocation.  Heck, if Strange was "reasonable" and willing to give up one life instead of all the ones that were lost, then Ronin's death toll would have been much higher as well - with the less power.

I agree what you are saying about the level of power, but I don't think it changes that Marvel have had characters of different genders fall hard and didn't only give that treatment to a woman.


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jun 22, 2022)

This made it to Disney+ today in the US, not sure about other countries, so I finally got to see it. I enjoyed it, but some things definitely confused me about timelines and universes. I need to read through this thread now and poke around online and see if my questions are answered before I ask them in this comment.


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## Morrus (Jun 22, 2022)

I can confirm that this is now a film that I have seen. It was... a film, I guess?


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## pukunui (Jun 22, 2022)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> This made it to Disney+ today in the US, not sure about other countries, so I finally got to see it. I enjoyed it, but some things definitely confused me about timelines and universes. I need to read through this thread now and poke around online and see if my questions are answered before I ask them in this comment.



It's available on Disney+ here in NZ as well. Since I saw it in the theater previously, I'm not really in any hurry to watch it again. I'm still of two minds about it. I enjoyed it as a film, but I'm not sure I particularly like the direction they took Wanda in. 

It was also disappointing to see the Illuminati characters get killed off so quickly - but I guess the whole multiverse thing means that they can show up again as other variants of themselves. To paraphrase Luke Skywalker, in the MCU multiverse, no one's ever really gone.


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## Rune (Jun 23, 2022)

tomBitonti said:


> Or, wouldn't there be some Branches where Wanda was killed, and the children left as orphans?
> 
> Wanda: "Hey, America, my alternate died in Branch XYZ, could you send me over there so that I could look after the children she left behind?"
> 
> ...



My assumption is that the Darkhold never showed her any such versions.


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jun 23, 2022)

Staffan said:


> It's a fairly big time jump. It's been at least one, maybe two years between Wandavision and Multiverse of Madness. Wandavision took place pretty much directly after Endgame, in 2023. Multiverse happens after Spiderman: No Way Home, which takes place in late 2024. It's unclear how long after, but definitively after (it could be in the interval between The Big Fight and Peter swinging around at Christmas in the end scene, so it's possible but unlikely that Multiverse is in 2024 but more likely to be 2025).
> 
> And two years with a Book of Evil Badness working its way into Wanda's mind? Yeah, I'll buy her becoming unhinged.




Okay, late to the party, but a couple of things to clear up in the MCU timeline, as it unfolds in the future because of the 5-year time jump for Endgame. Yes, Endgame is wraps up in Oct 2023. Wandavision takes place almost right after, end of Oct and first couple of weeks of Nov. Yes, that is all, because all the seeming time passing during the show was all an illusion inside the town. Outside of Westview, maybe 3 weeks total pass. Falcon & Winter Soldier is about April 2024, as it was stated in the show that events were about 6 months after people returned. Spider Man: Far From Home is June/July 2024, with the end-of-school-year class trip. No Way Home picks up shortly after, and is still 2024, with the big battle and the final memory-erasing spell happening in Nov.  Hawkeye is Christmas 2024, despite some incorrect claims it is 2025. According to official timelines, Multiverse of Madness is apparently some time in 2025. With the warmish weather in New York City, it would have to be at least Spring. Definitely too nice to be late Nov/early Dec in NYC.

So Wanda has the Darkhold for around a year and a half to study and learn and become corrupted by it. When she started using the magic to hunt America is unknown. How Wanda even discovered she, and her power, existed, is not explained, especially since there seems to be only one of America in all the multiverse, if the whole dream thing is accurate. Hearing the voices of the boys crying out for help in the final end-credit scene of WandaVision does not match up well to MoM, probably because Raimi did not fully watch the series. We should probably just pretend that scene never happened to make the transition smoother. Sadly, one was setting up for her to do the heroic thing and rescue her boys, while what we get was her going bad and wanting to kidnap her boys out of a happy life.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 23, 2022)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> Hearing the voices of the boys crying out for help in the final end-credit scene of WandaVision does not match up well to MoM, probably because Raimi did not fully watch the series. We should probably just pretend that scene never happened to make the transition smoother. Sadly, one was setting up for her to do the heroic thing and rescue her boys, while what we get was her going bad and wanting to kidnap her boys out of a happy life.




I still think there's a fair probability that there was originally a version of the storyline where they did follow-up on that, but it made her a bit _too_ sympathetic to make a proper villain.  There were some reshoots for _something_.


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## Tonguez (Jun 23, 2022)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> . Hearing the voices of the boys crying out for help in the final end-credit scene of WandaVision does not match up well to MoM, probably because Raimi did not fully watch the series. We should probably just pretend that scene never happened to make the transition smoother. Sadly, one was setting up for her to do the heroic thing and rescue her boys, while what we get was her going bad and wanting to kidnap her boys out of a happy life.




why doesnt it match up though? Theres no indication that they were crying out to her specifically - just that she heard the voices of her sons calling out for _their_ mother - its Wandas corrupted delusion that tells her that _She_ is the mother they need

we dont even know if the alternate kids in the movie were the same ones she heard calling


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## Stalker0 (Jun 23, 2022)

Tonguez said:


> why doesnt it match up though? Theres no indication that they were crying out to her specifically - just that she heard the voices of her sons calling out for _their_ mother - its Wandas corrupted delusion that tells her that _She_ is the mother they need
> 
> we dont even know if the alternate kids in the movie were the same ones she heard calling



Agreed. Its not paint by numbers, but everything is there for you to connect the dots if you want to believe. Darkhold opens up Wanda to alternate dimensions, Wanda starts seeing (hearing) her kids from alternate dimensions (which is what we see in Wandavision). Darkhold keeps taking her further....only _she _can protect the children, it is her _right _to have them, etc.

While I will agree that Wanda's heel turn does seem a bit too quick (though in terms of time passing, like a year and a half I believe, its actually not that slow), I do think the Darkhold provides whatever narrative boost you need to get Wanda to villain. If you were already on the train that says Wanda was going villain anyway, the Darkhold gave her a nudge. If you think she was on the redemptive path....the book gave her a shove. You could argue that we have already done the trope of "Wanda being manipulated by outside forces", and I can respect that....but the book really does allow you to get Wanda as low as you want her to go.

In short summary, I can respect the argument, "This character arc with Wanda is stupid and contrived". But I don't respect the argument, "Wanda would never do that...even though she is under the influence of a super evil, super corrupting book for more than a year"


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 23, 2022)

Honestly, as I said today to my wife "Where the hell were Strange and Wong?  Yeah, maybe they didn't detect the barrier when it went up, but its hard to believe they didn't hear about it later.  You'd think they'd at least wanted to check in on her at that point, and then someone could have said 'If you need to learn about magic, do it almost any way but the Darkhold.  Here, I'll even give you some books.'"


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jun 23, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> Honestly, as I said today to my wife "Where the hell were Strange and Wong?  Yeah, maybe they didn't detect the barrier when it went up, but its hard to believe they didn't hear about it later.  You'd think they'd at least wanted to check in on her at that point, and then someone could have said 'If you need to learn about magic, do it almost any way but the Darkhold.  Here, I'll even give you some books.'"




And the standard answer for that would be that WandaVision is happening within days of the end of Endgame and the return of half the population of the planet. I would think that all the other heroes and organizations, mystical or otherwise, would be a bit busy. And the FBI only showed up because they lost contact with an informant living in Westview. Remember also that Strange was one of those billions who were dust for 5 years.


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## pukunui (Jun 23, 2022)

We all thought that Strange was visiting Wanda in her mountain hideaway when Disney changed the credits scene to include that invisible figure … but it would seem that whole scene got chucked out the window.


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## RangerWickett (Jun 23, 2022)

pukunui said:


> We all thought that Strange was visiting Wanda in her mountain hideaway when Disney changed the credits scene to include that invisible figure … but it would seem that whole scene got chucked out the window.



What are you referencing?


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 23, 2022)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> And the standard answer for that would be that WandaVision is happening within days of the end of Endgame and the return of half the population of the planet. I would think that all the other heroes and organizations, mystical or otherwise, would be a bit busy. And the FBI only showed up because they lost contact with an informant living in Westview. Remember also that Strange was one of those billions who were dust for 5 years.




Its also wrong.  Wanda was dusted.just like a lot of others.  Wandavision has to take place after Endgame.


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jun 23, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> Its also wrong.  Wanda was dusted.just like a lot of others.  Wandavision has to take place after Endgame.




That's what I said. Within days of means after, not before.


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## pukunui (Jun 23, 2022)

RangerWickett said:


> What are you referencing?



This: WandaVision has a new post-credits scene: What it means

They appear to have scrapped having Strange meet Wanda at her isolated mountain cabin, instead having him meet her in her illusory orchard.

(If the invisible figure they added to the scene _wasn’t_ meant to be Strange, then it seems like that thread got dropped entirely.)


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jun 23, 2022)

pukunui said:


> This: WandaVision has a new post-credits scene: What it means




That was debunked last year as being a technical glitch that somehow got in there after the original airing. Strange is not in that scene at all.


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## pukunui (Jun 23, 2022)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> That was debunked last year as being a technical glitch that somehow got in there after the original airing. Strange is not in that scene at all.



Oh really? I never saw that. Got a link?


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jun 23, 2022)

Now, on a totally different note, Earth-838 is now totally unsafe for 838-Wanda and her kids to live in because of what she did while under the control of 616-Wanda. What are the odds that they get relocated to Earth-616 as a safe haven and because 616-Wanda is now dead? Also, with all versions of the Darkhold across all alternate timelines destroyed, we don't have to worry about another version of Wanda being turned evil by it, or at least not having that level of power for all the ones already turned evil.



pukunui said:


> Oh really? I never saw that. Got a link?




For one, Disney denied it and said it was a glitch, though I can't find the article now discussing that. All I can find is more of the same guessing at what was done, and all from the end of June of last year, when this was first noticed.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 23, 2022)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> That's what I said. Within days of means after, not before.




Then I'm not sure what the relevance is; what she did is still the sort of thing that would be brought to Strange or (more likely) Wong's attention.


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jun 23, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> Then I'm not sure what the relevance is; what she did is still the sort of thing that would be brought to Strange or (more likely) Wong's attention.




With all the other potential spikes in magic use around the world and off the world and in other dimensions, they are supposed to notice Wanda and her effort to hide what she is doing from the rest of the world and prioritize it,, while plenty of other more serious stuff is happening? Is it just because people are watching these stories and know these characters and expect them to just show up in each others' stories all the time?


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 23, 2022)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> With all the other potential spikes in magic use around the world and off the world and in other dimensions, they are supposed to notice Wanda and her effort to hide what she is doing from the rest of the world and prioritize it,, while plenty of other more serious stuff is happening? Is it just because people are watching these stories and know these characters and expect them to just show up in each others' stories all the time?



No, because a report came in that someone used magic to completely transform and control a town for at least several days.  If you mean that I think following up on that would be a pretty good priority for the people_ specifically focused on magic_, why yes, yes I do.


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jun 23, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> No, because a report came in that someone used magic to completely transform and control a town for at least several days.  If you mean that I think following up on that would be a pretty good priority for the people_ specifically focused on magic_, why yes, yes I do.




Well, whatever your reasoning, MoM obviously makes it not matter because Strange said so to Wanda when he came to see her. She was expecting some punishment for what she did and Strange was not interested.


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## p_johnston (Jun 23, 2022)

Overall I enjoyed the movie just like I enjoyed most marvel movies. That being said I am on the side of the people who saying that the Wanda heel turn seems abrupt. In terms of screen time the time between "Oh god what I have I done. I must free the town even if it means giving up the children I love." To "I will murder an innocent child, countless people my demons kill across while rampaging across the multiverse and EVERY SORCERER ON EARTH." is about five minutes. We effectively go straight from redemption scene to villain reveal with a 10 second post credit scene being the only thing we have to bridge the gap.

While in universe there has been a couple of years the movie never really makes that clear. If I was told that in universe the movie took place 1 month after Wandavision I would have probably gone "yep makes sense."

Also this movie again brings up a complaint I often have of "the sorcerer supreme is really, really, really bad at his job." In terms of movies/shows since infinity war where the Sorcerer Supreme really should have either known about or done something about it we have
1) Wanda taking over an entire town with magic.
2) Not knowing about the 10 rings that, at least in the past, were being used very blatantly to take over ancient china.
3) Not knowing about Ta-Lo and the Dweller in Darkness (which seems to be very explicitly the kind of thing they are meant to stop)
3) Not knowing about the Eternals who were active in the 1500's
4) Not trying to stop the Celestial baby from destroying the earth.
5) Not interfering as two ancient egyptian gods duke it out in egypt.
6) Not caring when an egyptian god literally turns back the night sky.
And probably more that I've missed.
Edit: My main point in the last complaint is we are explicitly told that the Sorcerer supreme and all the other sorcerers exist to stop otherworldy threats from destroying the earth. We are then repeatedly shown them either being unaware, unwilling, or unable to help with said otherworldly threats.


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## MarkB (Jun 24, 2022)

There were a lot of interesting components in this movie, many of which worked well, but ultimately I just wasn't looking for and did not want a movie in which Wanda became a primary antagonist, so it just didn't work out very enjoyable for me.


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## pukunui (Jun 24, 2022)

p_johnston said:


> Edit: My main point in the last complaint is we are explicitly told that the Sorcerer supreme and all the other sorcerers exist to stop otherworldy threats from destroying the earth. We are then repeatedly shown them either being unaware, unwilling, or unable to help with said otherworldly threats.



This seems to be a common issue among shared universes full of superpowered beings. See also the Forgotten Realms (e.g. Why aren't Elminster, Drizzt, et al stopping the death curse / preventing Tiamat from returning / sending the demon lords back to the Abyss / etc?).

At some point you just have to shrug and suspend that nagging disbelief. Superpowered beings aren't omniscient or omnipotent even when they are literally gods. They can't be everywhere at once.

Also, with visual media, it sometimes simply comes down to "We don't have the budget to get someone like Benedict Cumberbatch in here even as a cameo."


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## RangerWickett (Jun 24, 2022)

I think it might have been a fun reveal for Strange to recruit Wanda, and her to be on board, only to discover at the end of act one that an unconscious part of herself was the villain. So you can get the repentant good guy Wanda on the surface, and the corrupted one that is growing inside her sleeping mind, fueled by the Darkhold. Riff on Forbidden Planet, maybe. Wanda can't trust herself.

They go to Kamar-Taj to try to figure out who is responsible for sending the monsters after America. Wanda, pointing out that the enemy is clearly working across dimensions, offers to use the magic of the Darkhold to dreamwalk and hunt for them. Wong rejects it as horrible dark magic, and instead they try something more mundane, like a seance. Spooky stuff happens. But it doesn't work.

Then that evening Wanda hears a whisper from the book, and decides to take things into her own hands . . . and then she dreamwalks, and goes bad.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 24, 2022)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> Well, whatever your reasoning, MoM obviously makes it not matter because Strange said so to Wanda when he came to see her. She was expecting some punishment for what she did and Strange was not interested.




And like I said, I think that's pretty odd given his and Wong's job.

Edit: To make it clear, I quite liked the movie, and found Wanda's face/heel turn credible given what we already know about her.  But I still also consider the fact the fact the first time the guys in charge of magical threats seem to know its a problem a plot hole, and don't see a reason not to say so just because overall the movie worked for me.


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## trappedslider (Jun 24, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> And like I said, I think that's pretty odd given his and Wong's job.
> 
> Edit: To make it clear, I quite liked the movie, and found Wanda's face/heel turn credible given what we already know about her.  But I still also consider the fact the fact the first time the guys in charge of magical threats seem to know its a problem a plot hole, and don't see a reason not to say so just because overall the movie worked for me.



My understanding is they police the cosmic-level magic threats like Dormammu. *The Sorcerer Supreme* carries the intimidating weight of protecting the world by maintaining a mystical barrier that guards against invasions from other realms.


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## Staffan (Jun 24, 2022)

There's also the implication that there are different types of magic. The whole reason Strange goes to see Wanda is that he (or Wong?) identifies the runes binding the demons pursuing America as witchcraft and not sorcery. If they don't vibe well with one another, that's a good reason why the sorcerers didn't catch on to what was going on in Westview – particularly since it was just post-blip, and many of them were probably busy putting their lives back together.


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## Rabulias (Jun 24, 2022)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> For one, Disney denied it and said it was a glitch, though I can't find the article now discussing that. All I can find is more of the same guessing at what was done, and all from the end of June of last year, when this was first noticed.



I highly doubt it was a glitch. The revised scene was intentional, and the "glitch" looks too much like a person (Strange, in particular) to be random. More than likely, the original plans for _Multiverse of Madness_ changed. Remember, the director Sam Raimi said he did not watch all of _WandaVision_. I would imagine someone told him he is not bound by that now.


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## pukunui (Jun 24, 2022)

Rabulias said:


> I highly doubt it was a glitch. The revised scene was intentional, and the "glitch" looks too much like a person (Strange, in particular) to be random. More than likely, the original plans for _Multiverse of Madness_ changed. Remember, the director Sam Raimi said he did not watch all of _WandaVision_. I would imagine someone told him he is not bound by that now.



They changed the trees in that scene for some reason. It is theoretically possible it was a technical glitch introduced by that change. Whatever the case, we can no longer say it must have been an invisible Dr Strange coming to visit Wanda, because the events of this movie render that an impossibility.


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jun 24, 2022)

Everyone with a real.........eye.......for detail might have realized the villain of the film without spoilers:


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## Stalker0 (Jun 24, 2022)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> Everyone with a real.........eye.......for detail might have realized the villain of the film without spoilers:



That moment when your like, "are you SURE we can't shave a few million off the budget?"


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## Mezuka (Jun 24, 2022)

Maybe it was bad evening for us but we didn't like this movie.

I only enjoyed the scenes with the alternate characters (Captain Britannia?, Haley Atwell). It was a real treat for me to see Reed Richards, Black Bolt and Prof. Xavier. I don't know who the black woman is supposed to be.


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## Davies (Jun 25, 2022)

Mezuka said:


> I only enjoyed the scenes with the alternate characters (Captain Britannia?, Haley Atwell). It was a real treat for me to see Reed Richards, Black Bolt and Prof. Xavier. I don't know who the black woman is supposed to be.



Alternate version of Captain Marvel, portrayed by the same actor who portrayed Maria Rambeau in _Captain Marvel_.


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## MGibster (Jun 25, 2022)

pukunui said:


> Google it. I'm hardly the only one to notice the sexist overtones. People are saying it's a classic example of "female too powerful for her own good". People are also complaining that they Disneyfied America by making her a wide-eyed, helpless kid who doesn't know how to use her powers until the male hero gives her a pep talk.



You mean that same wide-eyed, helpless kid who ended up using her powers and defeating the Scarlet Witch where the main protagonist, Dr. Strange, failed?  Seems like a pretty standard trope for young superhero paired up with an older mentor type.  They did the same thing with Miles Morales and Peter Parker in _Spider-Man:  Into the Spider-Verse.  _The storyline with Wanda didn't strike me as sexist.  She remains the only protagonist of a Marvel show where the titular character was the main villain.  No, it wasn't Agatha all along.  



pukunui said:


> Also, I feel like there's a bit of sexism in how the Darkhold makes traumatized Wanda go out of control evil but Dr Strange, who is repeatedly criticized for being arrogant and controlling and is repeatedly warned about the dangers of using the Darkhold, gets away with it. Wong even says "I don't want to know" when he sees Strange using the Darkhold to puppet a zombie version of himself.



Wanda went evil before she got ahold of the Darkhold as she was the villain of _Wandavision.  _


pukunui said:


> Yes, Wanda points out this double standard herself early in the film, but the filmmakers then proceed to let Strange continue to break the rules and remain a hero while Wanda ends up having to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to make up for he villainry. (Yes, I know, the Darkhold has had some kind of effect on Strange, now that he's got his own third eye, but the implications of that won't be revealed until some future film.)



It was your standard, "we're very much alike," speech villains love to give to protagonist.  When Strange breaks the rules, it's usually to save a life or help someone.  When Wanda breaks the rules, she's enslaving people or working towards murdering the actual mother of the kids she wants to adopt.  Wanda's argument only has legs if you think her and Strange are equivalent, but they're not the same.  Wanda didn't see that she was the villain until America showed her what she looked like through her childrens' point of view.


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jun 25, 2022)

MGibster said:


> Wanda went evil before she got ahold of the Darkhold as she was the villain of _Wandavision. _




She was a pretty classic anti-hero in her show, not a villain. She went full bad after spending over a year+ with the Darkhold. And this is why the MCU can bring in a variant Wanda who never read the Darkhold and have her not be evil. I still think 838-Wanda will show up again, with her kids, and become the regular one for the main MCU, just like GotG got a new Gamora variant as a regular after the main one died.


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## Gradine (Jun 25, 2022)

I think it was Chekhov who wrote that you shouldn't bury a body in act one unless you're going to have it extradimensionally possessed in act three. Sage words


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## MGibster (Jun 25, 2022)

Gradine said:


> I think it was Chekhov who wrote that you shouldn't bury a body in act one unless you're going to have it extradimensionally possessed in act three. Sage words



When they buried the corpse I knew it would show up again at some point in act 3.  But I sure didn't predict how it showed up.  



Enevhar Aldarion said:


> She was a pretty classic anti-hero in her show, not a villain.



Anti-heroes are usually amiguous figures who don't do and aren't motivated by the same things as your typical hero. There's nothing morally ambiguous about enslaving a small town and forcing them to participate in Wanda's little domestic fantasy.  An anti-hero usually doesn't hurt innocent people though they often won't help them either.  Wanda hurt a lot of people who didn't do any harm to her.  She was the villain.


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## billd91 (Jun 25, 2022)

MGibster said:


> Anti-heroes are usually amiguous figures who don't do and aren't motivated by the same things as your typical hero. There's nothing morally ambiguous about enslaving a small town and forcing them to participate in Wanda's little domestic fantasy.  An anti-hero usually doesn't hurt innocent people though they often won't help them either.  Wanda hurt a lot of people who didn't do any harm to her.  She was the villain.



Wanda *is* an ambiguous figure because she created her fantasy town, kidnapping people to populate it, in extreme distress and with lots of unintended collateral effects she had no way of knowing at the time. It's pretty much clear she didn't intend to hurt anyone and was surprised that she was doing so. That's not your typical villain either.


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## trappedslider (Jun 26, 2022)

so, watching it on Disney plus and I realized that before the battle at Kamar-Taj when speaking to Scarlet Witch and she offers to send him to a universe where he is with Christine he's speech comes haltingly like he was forcing himself to keep going.


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## pukunui (Jun 26, 2022)

trappedslider said:


> so, watching it on Disney plus and I realized that before the battle at Kamar-Taj when speaking to Scarlet Witch and she offers to send him to a universe where he is with Christine he's speech comes haltingly like he was forcing himself to keep going.



As in, she’s trying to ensorcel him or he’s just trying to resist the temptation?


----------



## trappedslider (Jun 26, 2022)

pukunui said:


> As in, she’s trying to ensorcel him or he’s just trying to resist the temptation?



He's trying to resist the temptation

Als found this Elizabeth Olsen Reveals Why Wanda Is Weaker on Earth-838


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## wicked cool (Jun 26, 2022)

Loved the movie

Wanda  destroying the Illuminati was epic although I wonder if the one under rubble was dead


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## pukunui (Jun 26, 2022)

wicked cool said:


> Loved the movie
> 
> Wanda  destroying the Illuminati was epic although I wonder if the one under rubble was dead



I was sad to see them killed off so quickly, especially Captain Carter. But then that's just one universe's versions of them. There are countless other Professor Xs, Captain Carters, Black Bolts, etc.


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## trappedslider (Jun 27, 2022)

wicked cool said:


> Loved the movie
> 
> Wanda  destroying the Illuminati was epic although I wonder if the one under rubble was dead



Wanda took Captain Marvel's powers,so yeah she's dead


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## Argyle King (Jun 27, 2022)

I saw the movie last week. 

I don't think I liked it. I say "think" because there's not enough of a plot for me to have an opinion. Somehow, it feels like the movie simultaneously has a lot going on but also doesn't really have much of consequence happen. It ends pretty much where it started.


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## Paul Farquhar (Jun 27, 2022)

Was unimpressed by this movie. Plot almost non-existent. Purely a vehicle for gimmicky cameos and flashy FX.

Best bit was when Stange tells Wanda his solution to Thanos was the only one [Wanda makes an Insight check: Strange is lying].


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## MarkB (Jun 27, 2022)

Paul Farquhar said:


> Best bit was when Stange tells Wanda his solution to Thanos was the only one [Wanda makes an Insight check: Strange is lying].



Is he? We had that whole bit with him going through several hundred million possible futures, and finding only one where they came out on top.


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## Paul Farquhar (Jun 27, 2022)

MarkB said:


> Is he? We had that whole bit with him going through several hundred million possible futures, and finding only one where they came out on top.



We only have his word for that. Cumberbatch was emoting "I'm lying" and Olsen was emoting "I don't believe you" in any case.


----------



## Morrus (Jun 27, 2022)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> She was a pretty classic anti-hero in her show, not a villain.



No she wasn't. What did she do that was heroic?


----------



## wicked cool (Jun 27, 2022)

Can someone explain the 3rd eye? what are the consequences of that


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## Paul Farquhar (Jun 27, 2022)

wicked cool said:


> Can someone explain the 3rd eye? what are the consequences of that



You get funny looks in the street?


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## wicked cool (Jun 27, 2022)

Paul Farquhar said:


> You get funny looks in the street?



does it bring on evil tendencies or additional powers?


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## Paul Farquhar (Jun 27, 2022)

wicked cool said:


> does it bring on evil tendencies or additional powers?



Only when you see the bill from the optician.


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## South by Southwest (Jun 27, 2022)

What a mess that thing was.

Try this: take out all the special effects and musical scores and then tell me the story of that movie. Narratively, how coherent and focused is it? How well does it hold together?


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## Ralif Redhammer (Jun 27, 2022)

If I recall correctly, and I may not, his third eye enabled him to see all sorts of sorcerous things in our world that otherwise remain invisible to normal vision. Things like spirits and demons tormenting people, or just floating around in the air.



wicked cool said:


> Can someone explain the 3rd eye? what are the consequences of that




Just watched it this weekend. I've got mixed feelings on it. Dr. Strange is one of my favorite Marvel superheroes (alongside Thor, and, ahem, _Morbius_) since I was a kid . So seeing him come to life remains a treat. That being said, I came away from this movie pretty unhappy with the treatment of Wanda, relegating her to little more than a Monstrous Feminine trope, ignoring the growth and experience of Wandavision. Her death pretty much parallels that of Ikaris in The Eternals exactly and seemed a cheap form of closure. 

There were parts I liked, sure, but I'm still calling it Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Misogyny.


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jun 27, 2022)

Morrus said:


> No she wasn't. What did she do that was heroic?




She helped beat the real villains of the show.


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## Stalker0 (Jun 27, 2022)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> She helped beat the real villains of the show.



Who?

Agatha?.... all Agatha did was try to figure out what the hell was going on with the crazy magic. Sure eventually she tried to take the power of the scarlett witch...you know...the one prophecized to be a destroyer (which turned out to be on the money).

Sword?.... even though the show desperately wanted to make the head of Sword into a bad guy with the whole shooting Wanda's fake kids (which lets be honest was just plain stupid), at the end of the day Sword was trying to protect a town of innocent people from Wanda....the severe and imminent threat.

I love when Wanda turns their guns back on them and says, "I'm not the one pointing guns"...... why yes Wanda your right, your just mind raping an entire town, its weird how people get angry about that and try to fight back.


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## ART! (Jun 27, 2022)

I rewatched _Winter Soldier_ a couple nights ago, and was really struck by how the first thing we ever see Wanda do in the MCU is explode a wooden (?) block with a cold look of fascination on her face, like a kid who very calmly realizes the incredible power they have when they're burning ants with a magnifying glass. Knowing what we know now, it's chilling. She was a villain waiting to happen all along - it just took a while.


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## billd91 (Jun 27, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> Who?
> 
> Agatha?.... all Agatha did was try to figure out what the hell was going on with the crazy magic. Sure eventually she tried to take the power of the scarlett witch...you know...the one prophecized to be a destroyer (which turned out to be on the money).



Really? Controlling an actor to insert him into the situation as Wanda's dead brother and manipulating Wanda throughout is nothing?



Stalker0 said:


> Sword?.... even though the show desperately wanted to make the head of Sword into a bad guy with the whole shooting Wanda's fake kids (which lets be honest was just plain stupid), at the end of the day Sword was trying to protect a town of innocent people from Wanda....the severe and imminent threat.



A threat they provoked and continually try to escalate against. Agent Woo and Darcy are honestly trying to help the situation. But SWORD is a blunt and stupid instrument trying to subdue Wanda like a trigger happy cop trying to subdue someone who is having an episode while mentally ill. They only make the situation worse.

So while Wanda may be the source of the bubble around the town and the people being miserable there, she is constantly provoked and manipulated by the very two you suggest are just trying to find out what's going on and stop it to protect people when what she needs is *help*.


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## Stalker0 (Jun 27, 2022)

billd91 said:


> Really? Controlling an actor to insert him into the situation as Wanda's dead brother and manipulating Wanda throughout is nothing?



That's the rub though, if we call Agatha a villain for that, then we have to say Wanda is 100x more villianous because that's what she is doing except its the entire town.


billd91 said:


> So while Wanda may be the source of the bubble around the town and the people being miserable there, she is constantly provoked and manipulated by the very two you suggest are just trying to find out what's going on and stop it to protect people when what she needs is *help*.



Grief is not an excuse for capital crimes. If someone loses someone and then goes on a murder spree, we don't send counselors after them.

What Wanda is suffering is very tragic, but that doesn't give her license to torture a town full of people, putting them through circumstances that according to their own words is "worse than death". Now it would be more forgivable if Wanda genuinely has no control, if she is trying to undo things and it doesn't work. But that's not the case, we learn early on in the show that Wanda does have some understanding of what she is doing....and doubles down.


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## billd91 (Jun 27, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> That's the rub though, if we call Agatha a villain for that, then we have to say Wanda is 100x more villianous because that's what she is doing except its the entire town.
> 
> Grief is not an excuse for capital crimes. If someone loses someone and then goes on a murder spree, we don't send counselors after them.



She's not committing capital crimes that I'm aware of. Is there a murder spree going on in her sitcom life?


Stalker0 said:


> What Wanda is suffering is very tragic, but that doesn't give her license to torture a town full of people, putting them through circumstances that according to their own words is "worse than death". Now it would be more forgivable if Wanda genuinely has no control, if she is trying to undo things and it doesn't work. But that's not the case, we learn early on in the show that Wanda does have some understanding of what she is doing....and doubles down.



She has an understanding that she's sequestered the town, not that she's torturing people. She doesn't learn that they're subjected to her nightmares until the end. She may ultimately have control, but she has no knowledge of that "worse than death" downside so intent to inflict that torture is absent.
A significant difference between what Agatha is doing and Wanda is doing is the level of knowledge and intent. Wanda intends to keep her sitcom life sequestered from the outside and,  yes, that involves keeping people there against their will. But she doesn't know the suffering she's inflicting beyond being unable to leave. She doesn't seem fully cognizant just how much she's controlling people aside from forcing them into her sitcom life. Agatha? She is acting with full intent and premeditation, stirring that pot of crazy Wanda stew.


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## pukunui (Jun 27, 2022)

What I want to know is: will the Agatha spin-off be a prequel, covering some of her life before Westview, or will it be a sequel in which she escapes her mental imprisonment and does stuff after?


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jun 28, 2022)

pukunui said:


> What I want to know is: will the Agatha spin-off be a prequel, covering some of her life before Westview, or will it be a sequel in which she escapes her mental imprisonment and does stuff after?




616-Wanda is dead, so I would think her spells are ended as well, which means Agatha is free again to run amuck. Maybe she will do her own show and join Hocus Pocus as the fourth sister.


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jun 28, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> Agatha?.... all Agatha did was try to figure out what the hell was going on with the crazy magic. Sure eventually she tried to take the power of the scarlett witch...you know...the one prophecized to be a destroyer (which turned out to be on the money).




Agatha was already bad and would have probably murdered everyone in the town if it would have gotten her the Scarlet Witch powers. Wanda did not become evil until the Darkhold got her. Westview was collateral damage from the temporary insanity brought on by her intense grief.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 28, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> Who?
> 
> Agatha?.... all Agatha did was try to figure out what the hell was going on with the crazy magic. Sure eventually she tried to take the power of the scarlett witch...you know...the one prophecized to be a destroyer (which turned out to be on the money).




Except her motives had nothing to do with the prophecy and everything to do with wanting the power herself.



Stalker0 said:


> Sword?.... even though the show desperately wanted to make the head of Sword into a bad guy with the whole shooting Wanda's fake kids (which lets be honest was just plain stupid), at the end of the day Sword was trying to protect a town of innocent people from Wanda....the severe and imminent threat.




I guess we're ignoring the whole "Let's dissect Vision's body and see if we can create a new android out of him since he wasn't a _rea_l person"?


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## MGibster (Jun 28, 2022)

South by Southwest said:


> Try this: take out all the special effects and musical scores and then tell me the story of that movie. Narratively, how coherent and focused is it? How well does it hold together?



In a nutshell, it was about Dr. Strange's journey to accept that he couldn't always be in control and sometimes he had to let someone else make the big play.  It's not exactly complicated or groundbreaking, none of the Marvel movies are, but it's coherent.


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## pukunui (Jun 28, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> I guess we're ignoring the whole "Let's dissect Vision's body and see if we can create a new android out of him since he wasn't a _rea_l person"?



That and the whole "Let's show the emotionally traumatized magic user what we're doing to her dead lover's body to see how she reacts" thing as well.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 28, 2022)

pukunui said:


> That and the whole "Let's show the emotionally traumatized magic user what we're doing to her dead lover's body to see how she reacts" thing as well.




I also believe they mentioned their job description as "managing living weapons of mass destruction."  That phrase has some history with Wanda.


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## Paul Farquhar (Jun 28, 2022)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> 616-Wanda is dead



LOL.

Unless here name is Uncle Ben, she is still alive.


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## pukunui (Jun 28, 2022)

Paul Farquhar said:


> LOL.
> 
> Unless here name is Uncle Ben, she is still alive.



I reckon _that_ Wanda is dead. But there's now a whole multiverse of Wandas out there who are still very much alive, so it doesn't really matter.


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## Paul Farquhar (Jun 28, 2022)

pukunui said:


> I reckon _that_ Wanda is dead.



I didn't see any sign of a body. I saw a big explosion around someone with immunity to fire damage.


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## trappedslider (Jun 28, 2022)

Paul Farquhar said:


> I didn't see any sign of a body. I saw a big explosion around someone with immunity to fire damage.



Rocks fall maybe everyone dies?


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## Paul Farquhar (Jun 28, 2022)

trappedslider said:


> Rocks fall maybe everyone dies?



When has a rock fall ever killed any character ever when there is no body?!!


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## trappedslider (Jun 28, 2022)

Sam Raimi confirms that John Krasinski’s Doctor Strange cameo was nothing but fan service
					

About halfway through Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness, the eponymous wizard finds himself lost in the eponymous multiverse, with him and new buddy America Chavez finding themselves in an alternate reality where their Doctor Strange is dead and their preeminent superhero...




					www.yahoo.com


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jun 28, 2022)

Paul Farquhar said:


> I didn't see any sign of a body. I saw a big explosion around someone with immunity to fire damage.




She destroyed every Darkhold in existence and then sacrificed herself. The explosion was the Scarlet Witch essence leaving her body, so that she was vulnerable and could die.


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## Paul Farquhar (Jun 28, 2022)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> She destroyed every Darkhold in existence and then sacrificed herself. The explosion was the Scarlet Witch essence leaving her body, so that she was vulnerable and could die.



That's just speculation. The destruction of the Darkhold in no way confirms her death.


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## Stalker0 (Jun 28, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> I guess we're ignoring the whole "Let's dissect Vision's body and see if we can create a new android out of him since he wasn't a _rea_l person"?



If any hero's dissection could create a new hero to save people, why wouldn't you do it? Ignore that vision was an android, harnessing power for protection is what governmental agencies like Sword are supposed to do.


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## Paul Farquhar (Jun 28, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> If any hero's dissection could create a new hero to save people, why wouldn't you do it? Ignore that vision was an android, harnessing power for protection is what governmental agencies like Sword are supposed to do.



Because you aren't evil?


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## Stalker0 (Jun 28, 2022)

billd91 said:


> Wanda intends to keep her sitcom life sequestered from the outside *and,  yes, that involves keeping people there against their will.*



Sorry, there's no but after that. You don't get to hold people hostage and get called a hero. Even if she was doing it to save the world people would still call her out on the moral issue there, but at least taht would be understandable. But no, she's doing it so she can live in fantasy land....its a villainous act plain and simple.


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## Stalker0 (Jun 28, 2022)

pukunui said:


> That and the whole "Let's show the emotionally traumatized magic user what we're doing to her dead lover's body to see how she reacts" thing as well.



This one I will give you, its both heartless and pretty stupid.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 28, 2022)

Yeah, I have to say that I'm not taking it as a given 616 Wanda is actually dead for a while; that's exactly how you frame a not-really-dead scene in pulp tradition.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 28, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> Sorry, there's no but after that. You don't get to hold people hostage and get called a hero. Even if she was doing it to save the world people would still call her out on the moral issue there, but at least taht would be understandable. But no, she's doing it so she can live in fantasy land....its a villainous act plain and simple.




I'd argue from the context and her reactions later that its a mentally ill act by someone who's powers pulled other people into their illness.  Its not clear at all how much its really volitional in any normal sense, and her understanding later of what she's done seems to pretty strongly show that.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 28, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> If any hero's dissection could create a new hero to save people, why wouldn't you do it? Ignore that vision was an android, harnessing power for protection is what governmental agencies like Sword are supposed to do.




Because its a gross intrusion in body autonomy without permission.  You don't do it because its unethical, and if you do it anyway because you think its desirable, don't expect to be considered a good guy outside anyone who's outside the "hard men making hard decisions" ethic.


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## Stalker0 (Jun 28, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> I'd argue from the context and her reactions later that its a mentally ill act by someone who's powers pulled other people into their illness.  Its not clear at all how much its really volitional in any normal sense, and her understanding later of what she's done seems to pretty strongly show that.



You mean taking the super dark evil book and immediately diving into it?  (and that's not even the movie, that's wandavision)


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## Paul Farquhar (Jun 28, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> You mean taking the super dark evil book and immediately diving into it?



Just like Doctor Strange does?


----------



## Mallus (Jun 28, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> You don't get to hold people hostage and get called a hero.



Doesn't Charles give his school to Magneto when goes off with his space girlfriend (into space)?

Doesn't the White Queen end up running it for a while?

Isn't this kinda par for the course with Marvel?


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## Stalker0 (Jun 28, 2022)

Paul Farquhar said:


> Just like Doctor Strange does?



Doctor Strange

Does it to save the world....the world. Hell maybe the entire multiverse. Not to indulge in fantasy.
Does it for a very limited amount of time.
Has a friend help him because he knows how corrupting it can be, and he needs her to help keep him in check.
Only does it as a last resort after other better options have been tried.

Not the same thing in the slightest.


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## Stalker0 (Jun 28, 2022)

Mallus said:


> Doesn't Charles give his school to Magneto when goes off with his space girlfriend (into space)?
> 
> Doesn't the White Queen end up running it for a while?
> 
> Isn't this kinda par for the course with Marvel?



hehe we can argue morality of other characters in another thread if you like. Wanda is hardly the only case where this issue occurs, but I wouldn't call it "par for the course". It happens more often than it should absolutely.


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## Stalker0 (Jun 28, 2022)

So circiling back to what started this tangent, the argument initially presented was that Wanda was the hero because she beat up the villains.

I feel like I have demonstrated that Wanda is no more heroic in this story than any of the villains. At the end of the day its one villain beating up another, its Thanos vs Ultron if you will. Its basically a turf war.

We can argue how low Wanda got in this show, and how much her acts can be forgiven, but to call her the hero of the story is simply not true.

Also we can point to the beginning of MoM, which is several years after the events of Wandavision. Has Wanda shown any remorse, did she try to help the people she hurt in any way?.....nope, zero, zilch. If we had seen that, we could at least go with the remorseful character that becomes a hero again....but nope we don't get that either.


----------



## Paul Farquhar (Jun 28, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> Doctor Strange
> 
> Does it to save the world....the world. Not to indulge in fantasy.
> Does it for a very limited amount of time.
> ...



Saving the world is just a convenient excuse. Strange couldn't walk past an evil book without catching a quick peak. He's not been in Kamar-taj a week before he's breaking into the forbidden section of the library. Put him on the same plane as the One Ring and he would be taking up occupancy in Barad Dur before you could say Elbereth.


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## billd91 (Jun 28, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> If any hero's dissection could create a new hero to save people, why wouldn't you do it? Ignore that vision was an android, harnessing power for protection is what governmental agencies like Sword are supposed to do.



Body autonomy. It's a *big* deal lately. If Vision or his next of kin gave permission for it, then sure. But they didn't. So no.


----------



## billd91 (Jun 28, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> Yeah, I have to say that I'm not taking it as a given 616 Wanda is actually dead for a while; that's exactly how you frame a not-really-dead scene in pulp tradition.



Why are we talking 616 Wanda? We delving into her status in the comics now?


----------



## Stalker0 (Jun 28, 2022)

Paul Farquhar said:


> Saving the world is just a convenient excuse. Strange couldn't walk past an evil book without catching a quick peak. He's not been in Kamar-taj a week before he's breaking into the forbidden section of the library. Put him on the same plane as the One Ring and he would be taking up occupancy in Barad Dur before you could say Elbereth.



And sure, the character of Dr Strange in the beginning of his first movie is not a hero either...that's the point. He has to go on the journey, learning to deal with his arrogance and focus on the greater good. Even into MoM, we see various Stranges that have gone too far, and become villains in their own right. What helps keep our Dr Strange on the heroic path is that he opens up to Christine and America, relies on them for help, and sees how his obsession could lead to the dark side if he keeps pursuing it, so he doesn't push too far.

But at the end of the day, Dr Strange risks himself to save the world...its a heroic act. Now is that character flaw still there....absolutely. Could it lead to a fall in the future....absolutely. Just as Wanda's power and grief have always been ways she could fall. The difference is....Wanda did fall, Strange hasn't.....yet.

That's what makes the hero's path so difficult, its not a one and done. These heroes have to STAY heroic, that's the real challenge in the narrative.


----------



## Paul Farquhar (Jun 28, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> These heroes have to STAY heroic



Nah, they don't. It's a revolving door.


----------



## billd91 (Jun 28, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> So circiling back to what started this tangent, the argument initially presented was that Wanda was the hero because she beat up the villains.
> 
> I feel like I have demonstrated that Wanda is no more heroic in this story than any of the villains. At the end of the day its one villain beating up another, its Thanos vs Ultron if you will. Its basically a turf war.



That's a pretty terrible take on it. Both of those are mass murder oriented villains. Wanda, while suffering from mental illness, kidnaps a town to create a delusional fantasy world.


----------



## Blue (Jun 28, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> If any hero's dissection could create a new hero to save people, why wouldn't you do it? Ignore that vision was an android, harnessing power for protection is what governmental agencies like Sword are supposed to do.



Even in the real world, we can't harvest organs that could save people unless the person intentionally opted in.  Body autonomy is perhaps the most basic of rights - you own yourself - and at least in the US it still applies after death.


----------



## Stalker0 (Jun 28, 2022)

billd91 said:


> That's a pretty terrible take on it. Both of those are mass murder oriented villains.



Hang on a minute. Sword is never shown as "mass murdering", they are a military oriented arm of the government. If you had your standard movie where the police were dealing with a guy who held 100 people hostage in a bank, and the police were able to snipe the guy and save the hostages.... no one would think the police the villains of that story or mass murderers.

Agatha.... the only people we have seen she murdered was the covenant that tried to kill her. Now could she be a mass murderer, sure I could believe it, but we haven't seen that.


----------



## billd91 (Jun 28, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> Hang on a minute. Sword is never shown as "mass murdering", they are a military oriented arm of the government. If you had your standard movie where the police were dealing with a guy who held 100 people hostage in a bank, and the police were able to snipe the guy and save the hostages.... no one would think the police the villains of that story or mass murderers.
> 
> Agatha.... the only people we have seen she murdered was the covenant that tried to kill her. Now could she be a mass murderer, sure I could believe it, but we haven't seen that.



I *quoted* you - you used THANOS and ULTRON as your examples. That's like comparing the dispute over Northern Ireland's markets between Britain and the EU with the genocidal war between the Nazis and Soviets. There is literally no reasonable comparison there. 

And as far as SWORD and police sniping hostage takers in a bank, if you think sniping someone who has shown no actual inclination of putting the lives of the hostages at risk is acceptable, that's really problematic.


----------



## Paul Farquhar (Jun 28, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> And sure, the character of Dr Strange in the beginning of his first movie is not a hero either...that's the point. He has to go on the journey, learning to deal with his arrogance and focus on the greater good. Even into MoM, we see various Stranges that have gone too far, and become villains in their own right. What helps keep our Dr Strange on the heroic path is that he opens up to Christine and America, relies on them for help, and sees how his obsession could lead to the dark side if he keeps pursuing it, so he doesn't push too far.
> 
> But at the end of the day, Dr Strange risks himself to save the world...its a heroic act. Now is that character flaw still there....absolutely. Could it lead to a fall in the future....absolutely. Just as Wanda's power and grief have always been ways she could fall. The difference is....Wanda did fall, Strange hasn't.....yet.
> 
> That's what makes the hero's path so difficult, its not a one and done. These heroes have to STAY heroic, that's the real challenge in the narrative.



We went across the multiverse and met bunch of different Stranges. And they ALL read the Darkhold.


----------



## Mallus (Jun 28, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> hehe we can argue morality of other characters in another thread if you like. Wanda is hardly the only case where this issue occurs, but I wouldn't call it "par for the course". It happens more often than it should absolutely.



I was partially kidding. I thought someone would reply "Charles Xavier was no prize himself!". Child endangerment is practically his brand.

Seriously, though, I think people swinging between good and bad in comic book stories is fundamentally a positive thing (exaggerated as it must be, given the context). It's honest.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 28, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> You mean taking the super dark evil book and immediately diving into it?  (and that's not even the movie, that's wandavision)




You mean the only source of magical knowledge she has, that as the viewer you have a frame of reference that tells you how bad it is that she doesn't?  I mean, yes, she has reason to believe its not good, but has no idea of the relentlessly corrupting nature of it _because she doesn't know anything about magic._


----------



## Thomas Shey (Jun 28, 2022)

Paul Farquhar said:


> Just like Doctor Strange does?




Strange is much more careful with it (at least ours is); but then, he also has immensely more information about it than she does.  What she knows about it comes from brief conversations with Agatha, who isn't exactly a trustworthy source.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 28, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> We can argue how low Wanda got in this show, and how much her acts can be forgiven, but to call her the hero of the story is simply not true.




To be clear, I'm not arguing she's the hero of this; I'm simply arguing that "villain" in this case has a serious lack of nuance.  Her volition is compromised every step of the way by trauma and a malign magical outside influence.  During Wandavision I'd argue that throughout most of the series she's simply under a psychotic break, and by the time of the the movie, the Darkhold has had its way with her for weeks or months.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 28, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> Also we can point to the beginning of MoM, which is several years after the events of Wandavision. Has Wanda shown any remorse, did she try to help the people she hurt in any way?.....nope, zero, zilch. If we had seen that, we could at least go with the remorseful character that becomes a hero again....but nope we don't get that either.




I have to point out the crowd had made it _abundantly_ clear they wanted nothing more to do with her at the end of Wandavision.  When someone you've harmed tells you pretty much outright to leave them the hell alone, that's what you do.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 28, 2022)

billd91 said:


> Why are we talking 616 Wanda? We delving into her status in the comics now?




That's the term they're using for the core universe in the MCU too; the alternate universe Christing Palmer uses it.


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## Stalker0 (Jun 28, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> I have to point out the crowd had made it _abundantly_ clear they wanted nothing more to do with her at the end of Wandavision.  When someone you've harmed tells you pretty much outright to leave them the hell alone, that's what you do.



What every drug addict is told...you make amends. And if that is standing in front of them so they can rant to you about how nasty you were to them....so be it.


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## Stalker0 (Jun 28, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> You mean the only source of magical knowledge she has, that as the viewer you have a frame of reference that tells you how bad it is that she doesn't?  I mean, yes, she has reason to believe its not good, but has no idea of the relentlessly corrupting nature of it _because she doesn't know anything about magic._



If only she knew about a group that studied magic, and has all sorts of good magical tomes about it....oh wait, she does.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 28, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> What every drug addict is told...you make amends. And if that is standing in front of them so they can rant to you about how nasty you were to them....so be it.




No.  That's making it about you.  If someone tells you they don't want to deal with you, you take them at your word and go away.  Otherwise you've decided its more important what you do than what they want.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 28, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> If only she knew about a group that studied magic, and has all sorts of good magical tomes about it....oh wait, she does.




She knows about Strange.  There's nothing to suggest she knows more than that, and there's nothing that even tells you she knows how to contact him.  Its not like she's one of the people he interacted with much during Infinity War.  And lets not forget that she expects him to come by by himself at some point--which he doesn't do until much, much later.


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## Stalker0 (Jun 28, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> No.  That's making it about you.  If someone tells you they don't want to deal with you, you take them at your word and go away.  Otherwise you've decided its more important what you do than what they want.



There's a big difference between leaving in the moment, and never coming back even a few years later. Of course people are going to be super angry and have the "get out" moment right after the trauma. But some time later, you should at least try again. Or stay in the shadows, doing something in the background to try and make their lives better....something.

Btw, I have this beef with the Avengers as well after Avengers 2 (and its Baron Zemo that points it out). Considering what happened to Sokovia, did any of them help the country that was destroyed? (Especially Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, who share at least some responsibility, if not the majority).


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 28, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> There's a big difference between leaving in the moment, and never coming back even a few years later. Of course people are going to be super angry and have the "get out" moment right after the trauma. But some time later, you should at least try again. Or stay in the shadows, doing something in the background to try and make their lives better....something.




So, stalk them and reopen the trauma?

Still, no.



Stalker0 said:


> Btw, I have this beef with the Avengers as well after Avengers 2 (and its Baron Zemo that points it out). Considering what happened to Sokovia, did any of them help the country that was destroyed? (Especially Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, who share at least some responsibility, if not the majority).




Not parallel situations, I think.


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## Stalker0 (Jun 28, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> Not parallel situations, I think.



It was meant to showcase my beef isn't just with "wanda" doing non-heroic things, aka I don't single her out, there are issues with other movies as well.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 28, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> It was meant to showcase my beef isn't just with "wanda" doing non-heroic things, aka I don't single her out, there are issues with other movies as well.




The difference is I think there's a big difference between someone struggling with trauma and guilt and what they do, and a whole group who knows they have further obligation.

Your whole premise about Wanda assumes a rational actor with a lot more knowledge about a situation than she has.  I think that's very poor framing to approach it with.


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## Blue (Jun 28, 2022)

Does anyone consider Hawkeye a villain in Avengers when he was mind controlled by Loki?  And when he snapped out of it doing everything he could to set it right?

Why the double standard given to the Darkhold?  We see Strange after Strange corrupted by it, why do we try to ignore it's influence?


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## Stalker0 (Jun 28, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> Your whole premise about Wanda assumes a rational actor with a lot more knowledge about a situation than she has.  I think that's very poor framing to approach it with.



So the original premise of my argument was around the statement that Wanda is the "hero" of Wandavision. That is what I'm disputing.

In subsequent debates, I feel her trauma is being used as a way to "excuse" her actions, which I do not accept. They make her more sympathetic certainly, but they don't absolve her from the guilt of those actions.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 28, 2022)

Blue said:


> Does anyone consider Hawkeye a villain in Avengers when he was mind controlled by Loki?  And when he snapped out of it doing everything he could to set it right?
> 
> Why the double standard given to the Darkhold?  We see Strange after Strange corrupted by it, why do we try to ignore it's influence?




The argument usually seems to be that she did not have as good a reason to risk it, which ignores the fact she didn't know as much about it as Strange does, nor was she in a stable mental place at the time.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 28, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> So the original premise of my argument was around the statement that Wanda is the "hero" of Wandavision. That is what I'm disputing.
> 
> In subsequent debates, I feel her trauma is being used as a way to "excuse" her actions, which I do not accept. They make her more sympathetic certainly, but they don't absolve her from the guilt of those actions.




And as I noted, I'm not claiming she's a hero at most points in the process.  But I think your argument still assumes a more rational actor than she is at any point when she makes bad decisions; you're talking about someone who has a psychotic break, then recovers from that to deal with the guilt of what she does while finding out her understanding of the nature of her powers is not the reality of them, and then the immediate and obvious place to find out more about them is far more insidious than she has any way of knowing.

I think that she's absolutely a villain in MoM; I'm less willing to say so in Wandavision, even though she causes considerable harm.  And I think comparing her to Ultron or Thanos is seriously off; if you absolutely have to compare her to another MCU villain, you're at least closer to the mark if you use Zemo or Ghost, though both of them are more in their right mind when they start the process.


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## billd91 (Jun 28, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> I think that she's absolutely a villain in MoM; I'm less willing to say so in Wandavision, even though she causes considerable harm.  And I think comparing her to Ultron or Thanos is seriously off; if you absolutely have to compare her to another MCU villain, you're at least closer to the mark if you use Zemo or Ghost, though both of them are more in their right mind when they start the process.



In WandaVision, she's a tragic hero. She is subject to horrible misfortunes and, through error and misjudgment, creates harm without evil intent. But she is still, at her core, a decent individual and that's obvious by her opposition to Agatha and ultimate giving up of her Vision and kids to release the people she has kidnapped when confronted with the extent of the harm she has caused.
That's pretty solidly a tragic hero.


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## Zaukrie (Jun 28, 2022)

We really liked this movie a lot. I loved the smaller scale, and focus on the characters.


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## MGibster (Jun 28, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> What every drug addict is told...you make amends. And if that is standing in front of them so they can rant to you about how nasty you were to them....so be it.



That sounds more like an ego trip to satisfy the needs and desires of the addict than it does actually making amends.


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## Zaukrie (Jun 28, 2022)

I don't think Wanda is dead. As for the bigger discussion here, I'll stay out, since my Obi takes were so much fun.....


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## MarkB (Jun 28, 2022)

I think it's 50/50 whether Wanda's dead. Before now, their best option for bringing her back would be by having her not have died, but at this point they can just sub in alternate-universe Wanda if they want her. Heck, they already did it to Gamora.


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jun 28, 2022)

Blue said:


> Does anyone consider Hawkeye a villain in Avengers when he was mind controlled by Loki?  And when he snapped out of it doing everything he could to set it right?
> 
> Why the double standard given to the Darkhold?  We see Strange after Strange corrupted by it, why do we try to ignore it's influence?




It is because some people here are not willing to give the same room for doubt, or redemption, for a woman, they way they would for a man. The subtle sexism and misogyny, as well as dismissal of serious mental and emotional trauma, is disappointing, to say the least.


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## Tonguez (Jun 28, 2022)

billd91 said:


> In WandaVision, she's a tragic hero. She is subject to horrible misfortunes and, through error and misjudgment, creates harm without evil intent. But she is still, at her core, a decent individual and that's obvious by her opposition to Agatha and ultimate giving up of her Vision and kids to release the people she has kidnapped when confronted with the extent of the harm she has caused.
> That's pretty solidly a tragic hero.




in the real world a mentally unstable kidnapper doesnt get to walk away because they said sorry and let their victims go. They certainly arent called heroic, even moreso when its implied that Wanda is torturing the people in the town and the children she has suspended in their rooms are slowing dying. Also Agatha is the person attempting to help the town, albeit for her own ends but Wanda opposing her certainly isnt a sign of moral decency.

The Purple Man of Jessica Jones (Netflix) is presented to have been experimented on as a child and to then become an manipulative mind controlling villain. He did exactly the same thing as Wanda did - mind controlled people, killing many, his punishment was execution by Jessica no possibility of redemption.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 28, 2022)

Tonguez said:


> in the real world a mentally unstable kidnapper doesnt get to walk away because they said sorry and let their victims go. They certainly arent called heroic, even moreso when its implied that Wanda is torturing the people in the town and the children she has suspended in their rooms are slowing dying. Also Agatha is the person attempting to help the town, albeit for her own ends but Wanda opposing her certainly isnt a sign of moral decency.
> 
> The Purple Man of Jessica Jones (Netflix) is presented to have been experimented on as a child and to then become an manipulative mind controlling villain. He did exactly the same thing as Wanda did - mind controlled people, killing many, his punishment was execution by Jessica no possibility of redemption.




The difference is that there's no sign the Purple Man had any ability to recognize he'd done anything wrong, which was clearly not the case with Wanda.  Wanda, to the degree she harmed people, did it with no real intent; the Purple Man did it not only without concern, but often maliciously.

If people are gonna make analogies here, you need to at least compare like to like.


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## billd91 (Jun 28, 2022)

Tonguez said:


> in the real world a mentally unstable kidnapper doesnt get to walk away because they said sorry and let their victims go. They certainly arent called heroic, even moreso when its implied that Wanda is torturing the people in the town and the children she has suspended in their rooms are slowing dying. Also Agatha is the person attempting to help the town, albeit for her own ends but Wanda opposing her certainly isnt a sign of moral decency.



Are we down the rabbit hole?


Tonguez said:


> The Purple Man of Jessica Jones (Netflix) is presented to have been experimented on as a child and to then become an manipulative mind controlling villain. He did exactly the same thing as Wanda did - mind controlled people, killing many, his punishment was execution by Jessica no possibility of redemption.



Wow. Just wow.


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## Tonguez (Jun 28, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> The difference is that there's no sign the Purple Man had any ability to recognize he'd done anything wrong, which was clearly not the case with Wanda.  Wanda, to the degree she harmed people, did it with no real intent; the Purple Man did it not only without concern, but often maliciously.
> 
> If people are gonna make analogies here, you need to at least compare like to like.



in WandaVision we get the scene where Wanda comes out of the Hex and tells SWORD to leave her “and her family” alone and later we get the scene where she Purposefully expands the Hex turning the SWORD camp into a circus - that told me that Wanda is aware that She controls the Hex  and the town-illusion, but She deludes herself into living in her fantasy. She may not have been malicious but she did _make a choice_ to cause harm to its residents.


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## MarkB (Jun 28, 2022)

Tonguez said:


> in WandaVision we get the scene where Wanda comes out of the Hex and tells SWORD to leave her “and her family” alone and later we get the scene where she Purposefully expands the Hex turning the SWORD camp into a circus - that told me that Wanda is aware that the She controls the Hex  and the town-illusion, but She deludes herself into living in her fantasy. She may not have been malicious but she did _make a choice_ to cause harm to its residents.



The timings are awkward in the show. Early on, she seems to have little comprehension of what she's actually doing. Later she does, but by that time she has her kids, and the stakes are thus much higher for her. She could release the town, but doing so would kill Vision and her children. Managing to come to the point where she can consciously make that choice and lose her family all over again in order to free the townspeople from her control _is_ a heroic choice, even if everything that had brought her to that point was terrible.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 28, 2022)

Tonguez said:


> in WandaVision we get the scene where Wanda comes out of the Hex and tells SWORD to leave her “and her family” alone and later we get the scene where she Purposefully expands the Hex turning the SWORD camp into a circus - that told me that Wanda is aware that She controls the Hex  and the town-illusion, but She deludes herself into living in her fantasy. She may not have been malicious but she did _make a choice_ to cause harm to its residents.




As MarkB says above, deciding to, essentially, destroy her family sets the stakes of that much higher than you're ascribing.  And honestly, its not even clear to me that at the point she confronts SWORD that she's fully cognizant of what she's doing.  She knows they're threatening her and her family, but has she internalized what that means in terms of the other townspeople?  Does she even _know that the latter are any more real than her family?_  I don't think that's clear from context.


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## Eric V (Jun 28, 2022)

Wanda is not a hero in Wandavision.  She's not even heroic; merely stopping the torture that one has begun is not heroic (or else, the bar is pretty low).

Talk of her sacrifice seems silly, since her kids weren't real.  She sacrificed a delusion.

Agatha might be helping people, but she's not heroic either.  She's looking out for herself.

I read the scenario where Wanda exits the hex and threatens SWORD the same mostly the way @Tonguez does, though I might frame it as "She controls the hex, makes the choice to live her delusion and not care about any possible effects on the townsfolk."  This is to allow for the possibility that she doesn't know the torture she's inflicting...but in the end, it doesn't matter.  Even if the people aren't suffering, per se, they are still marionettes in Wanda's fantasy, she is absconding with their agency, and this is still incredibly bad.

There were no heroes in the show.  And that's fine...except I think the writers did Wanda dirty, myself.  Would have been nice to see her in a more heroic light.


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## Staffan (Jun 28, 2022)

I get the impression that at the start of Wandavision, Wanda is disassociating. Wanda is entirely subsumed into the sitcom role she has created for herself along with the Vision. She is not consciously aware of what she is doing. The ad breaks and the "moments of weirdness" are symptoms of her coming to terms with things, and by episode 3 sitcom-Wanda is essentially a mask worn by real-Wanda, who is now at least situationally aware of the situation – enough to recognize threats and deal with them (like recognizing that "Geraldine" is a SWORD agent and violently expelling her).


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## BrokenTwin (Jun 28, 2022)

I find it funny that in Wandavision the person with the cruelest objective (Agatha trying to steal Wanda's powers) is also the one that does the most "good". Without her forcing Wanda to confront her trauma and acknowledge what she was doing, it's possible Wanda never would have had the strength to overcome her addiction to her "perfect world" and bring down the hex. SWORD was a bunch of "ends justify the means" meatheads completely out of their depth, and Wanda was a multi-trauma victim in the middle of a psychotic break. Who, I might add, STILL arguably handled things better than Hawkeye did. I'm really annoyed that they made Agatha generic evil instead of leaning into her being a "cruel to be kind" mentor for Wanda.

And I still have a hard time reconciling the Wanda at the end of Wandavision with the Wanda we get in MoM. Like, I can see the connective tissue they're working with, but it's kinda trash that the character who has to repeatedly resort to bad options to handle her trauma (and getting punished for it) gets taken out by the character who frequently resorts to bad options because he can (and never gets more than a finger wagging).
MoM could have been a really interesting look at the reasons people grab for power and the way your privileges affect it (a man who came from everything and is given plenty of leeway for his actions vs a woman who came from nothing and is frequently chastised for hers).
Wanda bewitched the people she blamed for killing her family, accidentally caused collateral damage in a fight and unconsiously enslaved a town. Two of those three she was under the command of people she trusted (a father figure in Ultron and her newfound family in the Avengers). Steven knowingly risked the destruction of reality twice, once for a justifiable reason (Dormammu) and once because someone he kind of knew couldn't handle being a public figure (Spider Man). MoM could have been a really nuanced look at the two of them as mirrors and foils to each other, and it just... wasn't.

Also, I'm just really upset that this means there's absolutely no 616 version of her kids for a Young Avengers movie. I want my Wiccan/Hulkling romance in live action!


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 28, 2022)

Eric V said:


> Wanda is not a hero in Wandavision.  She's not even heroic; merely stopping the torture that one has begun is not heroic (or else, the bar is pretty low).
> 
> Talk of her sacrifice seems silly, since her kids weren't real.  She sacrificed a delusion.




I'm not sure how true that is.  These weren't just delusions; they were constructs of chaos magic.  They were clearly dependent on it, too.  But there's very little sign they were just puppets.  There's literally no way to tell.  But I find it suspect that they exactly match the children other versions of her in other worlds have.  That suggests to me that they're could-have-beens given life by her magic.

But if being a construct makes them irrelevant, why does anyone care about Vision-the-android either?  He was a construct too, and though he had a physical existance separate from it, was dependent on the power of the Mind Stone to exist--and the White Vision appears to be fueled partly off her magic.

So what "real" is here is not cut and dried, and it clearly wasn't to her.



Eric V said:


> I read the scenario where Wanda exits the hex and threatens SWORD the same mostly the way @Tonguez does, though I might frame it as "She controls the hex, makes the choice to live her delusion and not care about any possible effects on the townsfolk."  This is to allow for the possibility that she doesn't know the torture she's inflicting...but in the end, it doesn't matter.  Even if the people aren't suffering, per se, they are still marionettes in Wanda's fantasy, she is absconding with their agency, and this is still incredibly bad.




Again, assuming she really understands that's what's going on at that point.  I'm unconvinced from context that she does, until later in the process.



Eric V said:


> There were no heroes in the show.  And that's fine...except I think the writers did Wanda dirty, myself.  Would have been nice to see her in a more heroic light.




Again, I'm not saying she was a hero there--but I'm not sold she was so much a villain, as a sort of natural disaster caused by her psychotic break mixing with her very profound powers.  That's a very different beast from what goes on in MoM.


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## Tonguez (Jun 29, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> Again, I'm not saying she was a hero there--but I'm not sold she was so much a villain, as a sort of natural disaster caused by her psychotic break mixing with her very profound powers.  That's a very different beast from what goes on in MoM.




I think that’s one of the difficulties ascribing morality to “Acts of god”-like beings, It’s the same argument that people must see Superman as a Boy Scout otherwise he is a Monster. but When and how do we mere mortals judge when their action become monstrous? 

 WandaVision was compared to Legion - a reality bending telepath with a disassociative personality Who eventually became the Villain of his show - of course that took 3 seasons not one season and a Semi-connected movie.


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 29, 2022)

Tonguez said:


> I think that’s one of the difficulties ascribing morality to “Acts of god”-like beings, It’s the same argument that people must see Superman as a Boy Scout otherwise he is a Monster. but When and how do we mere mortals judge when their action become monstrous?
> 
> WandaVision was compared to Legion - a reality bending telepath with a disassociative personality Who eventually became the Villain of his show - of course that took 3 seasons not one season and a Semi-connected movie.




It is difficult question; at what point is one a "villain" if you have limited volition or even comprehension of what you're doing?  You're certainly a problem either way, but there's a reason intent is considered an important element in legal matters; if you don't factor intent and understanding into such things, there's no difference between accident and malice.


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## Older Beholder (Jun 29, 2022)

As to whether or not Wanda dies at the end, I believe it was meant to be ambiguous.
There's a flash of red magic that can be seen before the collapse that could either be her dying or using magic to get away.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Jun 29, 2022)

If it's not an innocent bystander, a villain or a hero, maybe it's a force of nature? Maybe a bit like an avalanche - someone could have triggered it, without any intention to do so, but once it started...
But I suppose forces of nature you can manipulate emotionally is... unusual. She can still adjust the avalance on some level...


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## Thomas Shey (Jun 29, 2022)

Well, honestly, that's an intrinsic issue with people with high-end super-powers.  I once played a character on an X-Men themed MUX names Windshear; he was a mutant with Alpha level atmospheric manipulation (think Storm but without the other weather related powers, just wind).  He was of the opinion that he had more personal power than probably anyone should have had (since he could pretty much flatten a city if motivated and no one intervened fairly quickly to stop him).

Once you have that sort of power on someone, over and above what their ethics are, they aren't any more intrinsically immune to mental breakdowns than anyone else; but the fact they have the ability to do much more harm when in that state doesn't mean they have any more control over it than anyone else either.  At some point you either believe mental illness is a thing or you don't, and if you do the moral calculus of it doesn't change just because the consequences with supers can be much, much worse.


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## Mannahnin (Jun 29, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> So circiling back to what started this tangent, the argument initially presented was that Wanda was the hero because she beat up the villains.
> 
> I feel like I have demonstrated that Wanda is no more heroic in this story than any of the villains. At the end of the day its one villain beating up another, its Thanos vs Ultron if you will. Its basically a turf war.



Absolutely not.  She's a hero tragically fallen into a psychotic break, inadvertently hurting others without conscious awareness that that's what she's doing.  She's not the hero of *this *story, and as far as I can see no one in all 270+ posts of this thread has claimed that she is.  She's a tragic victim of her trauma, and a threat to innocents without intending to be one.  As opposed to Agatha, who actually chooses to hurt others for personal power and just for funsies.  And Director Hayward, who desecrated a body and deliberately traumatized Wanda with the sight of that desecration as part of his own pursuit of power.  Monica and Jimmy and Darcy and Vision are the heroes of the story.

Wanda starts to step back to her heroine status at the end of the story when she realizes what she's done and tries to undo the harm, even at the cost of her family.  That doesn't mean she's entirely redeemed, of course.  And then she retreats into isolation to try to learn more about her powers, and the Darkhold does its thing and pushes her back into darkness and into full villain status.



Tonguez said:


> in the real world a mentally unstable kidnapper doesnt get to walk away because they said sorry and let their victims go. They certainly arent called heroic, even moreso when its implied that Wanda is torturing the people in the town and the children she has suspended in their rooms are slowing dying. Also Agatha is the person attempting to help the town, albeit for her own ends but Wanda opposing her certainly isnt a sign of moral decency.



Agatha isn't trying to help the town.  Intent matters.  She just wants the power.  That she winds up shocking Wanda into awareness of what she's doing is ironic; evil containing the seeds of its own destruction.

Wanda gets to walk away, as was discussed in the Wandavision thread, because no one's capable of stopping her.  She's an absurdly powerful supernatural being, and unfortunately no one has the ability to MAKE her get therapy, and no one left around knows enough to warn her about the danger of the Darkhold.


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## Paul Farquhar (Jun 30, 2022)

Mannahnin said:


> no one has the ability to MAKE her get therapy, and no one left around knows enough to warn her about the danger of the Darkhold.



In theory that should have been Wong's job (as he did in Ten Rings). And Wanda is justifiably aggrieved that she only hears from the sorcerers when they want something from her.

Really, neither Wong nor Strange have what it takes to be Sorcerer Supreme. Strange is too corruptible, and Wong is just not very competent.


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## Hussar (Jul 4, 2022)

billd91 said:


> She's not committing capital crimes that I'm aware of. Is there a murder spree going on in her sitcom life?
> 
> She has an understanding that she's sequestered the town, not that she's torturing people. She doesn't learn that they're subjected to her nightmares until the end. She may ultimately have control, but she has no knowledge of that "worse than death" downside so intent to inflict that torture is absent.
> A significant difference between what Agatha is doing and Wanda is doing is the level of knowledge and intent. Wanda intends to keep her sitcom life sequestered from the outside and,  yes, that involves keeping people there against their will. But she doesn't know the suffering she's inflicting beyond being unable to leave. She doesn't seem fully cognizant just how much she's controlling people aside from forcing them into her sitcom life. Agatha? She is acting with full intent and premeditation, stirring that pot of crazy Wanda stew.



Well, at a quick glance we have:

Kidnapping, 
Torture, 
more torture,
torturing children
starving children
more than likely the deaths of more than a few people from neglect or various other effects - did she make sure that Bob over there took his heart medication while she left him comatose and starving to death?

Do people honestly think that Wanda isn't the villain here?  That she feels bad about it doesn't make her not the villain.  She out and out tortures thousands of people for no reason simply because she wants to feel good.  

How is she not 100% the villain here?  Sure, the SWORD guys might not have been the heroes, fair enough.  But, again, putting a bullet in her brain pain to save thousands of people - and who know how many thousands more she's threatening - is hardly the wrong choice morally.  And, hell, shooting Wanda's fake children isn't even murder.  They aren't real.  They aren't actually people.  You can't kill something that's not actually alive.


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## Hussar (Jul 4, 2022)

billd91 said:


> Body autonomy. It's a *big* deal lately. If Vision or his next of kin gave permission for it, then sure. But they didn't. So no.



Except that Vision is actually not a person, and thus, has no next of kin, nor would his marriage even remotely be recognized in the United States (or any other country for that matter).  

This whole argument is predicated on something that has never once been suggested in universe - that Vision was considered legally a person.  

It might be icky.  We might not like it.  But, there is absolutely no suggestion that Vision was considered a person.


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## Hussar (Jul 4, 2022)

I'd point out too that villain doesn't mean that you're evil.  That terrible storm that wrecks the ships in a man vs nature story is still the villain.  That's what a villain is - the thing that drives the plot and is opposed by the protagonist.  Maybe if we use Antagonist instead of villain, people would be happier?

But, make no mistake about it, Wanda is pretty much the villain/antagonist here.  Again, that she's unaware that she's murdering people doesn't really change anything.  I'd point out that she keeps right on murdering people, even after she's aware of it - and it's only right at the tail end of WandaVision when Vision himself makes her face what she's done that she even begins to show the slightest remorse for the torture and murder of thousands of people that she's caused, all for her own personal gain.

Sure, she's a sympathetic villain.  Sure, we feel for her and can most definitely sympathize.  But, it doesn't change the fact that she is out and out a villain in WandaVision and goes right down the path of evil in MoM. 

There's a fantastic quote from Number 5 in Season 3 of Umbrella Academy:

"*You Know What They Call A Hero Who Doesn't Listen To Anyone, A Villain*"


----------



## Paul Farquhar (Jul 4, 2022)

Hussar said:


> "*You Know What They Call A Hero Who Doesn't Listen To Anyone, Doctor Strange.*"


----------



## Hussar (Jul 4, 2022)

Funny thing is, in the comics, it's eventually revealed that there is no such thing as "Chaos Magic" and everything Wanda does is actually just from her own powers.  Of course, that's after she murders half of the Avengers, but, hey.    Then we go off on the House of M storyline where she kills lots and lots more people.  

The comparison to the Dark Phoenix Saga is pretty on point.  It's not so much about being an evil being but rather that having ultimate power like this corrupts.  It's repeated with Wanda, and David Haller (the comparison is made in this thread to Legion), the Beyonder (another 80's character), and a host of others.  It's a pretty standard theme in a lot of Marvel stuff.  

There's a pretty good reason that the Marvel characters are often much, much less powerful than DC characters.  DC characters are virtually gods - Superman, The Flash, Wonder Woman.  These are characters that are extremely powerful.  Generally speaking, anytime a Marvel character gets onto the same level as say, Superman, they become a villain almost every time.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Jul 4, 2022)

Hussar said:


> How is she not 100% the villain here?  Sure, the SWORD guys might not have been the heroes, fair enough.  But, again, putting a bullet in her brain pain to save thousands of people - and who know how many thousands more she's threatening - is hardly the wrong choice morally.  And, hell, shooting Wanda's fake children isn't even murder.  They aren't real.  They aren't actually people.  You can't kill something that's not actually alive.




Again, because for much of it she wasn't in her right mind.  There's a whole lot different a thing between "I deliberately do this thing thought through and have a psychotic break that my powers turn into reality in a way that harms a lot of other people".

And again, your last sentence--was the Vision every alive?  He was a construct too.  I think the answer was "yes" and I think in practice it was true of the magically created Vision and children, too.  They were obviously to self-volitional for me to assume otherwise, though people can play games of them being just Wanda's subconscious in action, but I don't buy it.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Jul 4, 2022)

Hussar said:


> Except that Vision is actually not a person, and thus, has no next of kin, nor would his marriage even remotely be recognized in the United States (or any other country for that matter).
> 
> This whole argument is predicated on something that has never once been suggested in universe - that Vision was considered legally a person.
> 
> It might be icky.  We might not like it.  But, there is absolutely no suggestion that Vision was considered a person.




I think there's every sign that all the other Avengers considered him one.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Jul 4, 2022)

Hussar said:


> I'd point out too that villain doesn't mean that you're evil.  That terrible storm that wrecks the ships in a man vs nature story is still the villain.  That's what a villain is - the thing that drives the plot and is opposed by the protagonist.  Maybe if we use Antagonist instead of villain, people would be happier?




Yes.  There's an enormous semantic difference between the two.


----------



## billd91 (Jul 4, 2022)

Hussar said:


> Except that Vision is actually not a person, and thus, has no next of kin, nor would his marriage even remotely be recognized in the United States (or any other country for that matter).
> 
> This whole argument is predicated on something that has never once been suggested in universe - that Vision was considered legally a person.
> 
> It might be icky.  We might not like it.  But, there is absolutely no suggestion that Vision was considered a person.



That may be the legalistic, bureaucratic justification that SWORD would have been leaning on. But it is supposed to be *massive transgression* to Wanda and to us, the viewers. And it is. And that event, plus the reactions of Jimmy Woo and Darcy Lewis, serve to indicate what sort of organization SWORD is.


----------



## Eric V (Jul 4, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> Again, because for much of it she wasn't in her right mind.



Does this kind of thinking apply to the Joker?


----------



## billd91 (Jul 4, 2022)

Hussar said:


> I'd point out too that villain doesn't mean that you're evil. That terrible storm that wrecks the ships in a man vs nature story is still the villain. That's what a villain is - the thing that drives the plot and is opposed by the protagonist. Maybe if we use Antagonist instead of villain, people would be happier?



Not really, no. She's the protagonist of the story. SWORD and Agatha are obviously her antagonists.


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## billd91 (Jul 4, 2022)

Eric V said:


> Does this kind of thinking apply to the Joker?



In the comics, nobody ever kills the Joker - except in the Kingdom Come miniseries, where it was considered a big turning point that sets up later tragedy.
Joker gets put into Arkham Asylum.


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## Paul Farquhar (Jul 4, 2022)

billd91 said:


> Not really, no. She's the protagonist of the story. SWORD and Agatha are obviously her antagonists.



In Wandavision Wanda is the protagonist, _and_ an antagonist. She has to overcome her own delusions, _and _Agatha.

SWORD is a secondary antagonist, largely in opposition to secondary protagonists Monica and Darcy.

The meaning of antagonist and villain are quite different. It's quite possible to have a villain protagonist with a heroic antagonist. And that's before you get to anti-heroes and anti-villains.


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## Eric V (Jul 4, 2022)

billd91 said:


> In the comics, nobody ever kills the Joker - except in the Kingdom Come miniseries, where it was considered a big turning point that sets up later tragedy.
> Joker gets put into Arkham Asylum.



So, is Joker not a villain, then?


----------



## Stalker0 (Jul 4, 2022)

""*You Know What They Call A Hero Who Doesn't Listen To Anyone, Doctor Strange.*""

Except a major factor of the movie is.... Dr Strange does start to listen, and to change. He relies on others instead of "always holding the scalpel". He relies on Christine to help with the Darkhold, because ultimately, he knows its corrupting and knows he won't make it on his own, he needs someone to keep him tethered.

He overcomes some of his arrogance in finally bowing to Wong as the Sorceror Supreme.

And of course....he doesn't kill scores of people to get what he personally wants. If Strange was truly a parallel to Wanda for example, he would be using his magic to force Christine to be with him instead of letting her go.

Strange is not the most heroic character, but there is no comparison to him and wanda in this movie, she is far far more villainous.


----------



## RangerWickett (Jul 4, 2022)

Eric V said:


> So, is Joker not a villain, then?



Are we using the term in the colloquial comics sense of "person who does a great deal of harm," or in the literary sense of "person who opposes the main character"?

I think that, even as we're enjoying some light popcorn cinema, we should be attentive to the fact that morality isn't black and white, and that categorizing people into good and bad is a simplistic mindset that has led to many people permitting great harm to others.

Now, in nearly every story of the Joker, he's got a twisted sense of how the world should work, but he knows what he's doing is hurting people, and he almost never cares. He can be both ill from mental trauma and be intentional and callous in the harm he causes.

Wanda, at least in the MCU, had been presented in a different light. She's also been traumatized, but she never revels in hurting people. In Wanadavision she does, yes, seem to be in denial that what she's doing is hurting people, and tries to rationalize what she's doing.

She just wants to be left alone to be happy, and she's willfully oblivious to the harm she's causing. It honestly could have been tweaked a bit into a metaphor for consumerism selling a happy lie of a good life while ignoring the harm to society and the environment. But I digress.

She nearly snaps out of it when Vision confronts her about it in the 80s episode, and she seems to be trying to parse the cognitive dissonance, but then Agatha sends Ralph to draw her back into a comforting delusion.

And eventually she does acknowledge she needs to free the people in the hex, and she makes what I saw as a heroic sacrifice to do the right thing, albeit horribly late.

. . .

And then the next time we meet her, she's not struggling at all. She's not in denial. There's no glimmer that her original mind is somehow being controlled by the Darkhold.

Instead, Wanda has gone full, exultant villain.

The writers didn't do the work to make that transition compelling.


----------



## Hussar (Jul 4, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> I think there's every sign that all the other Avengers considered him one.



And I probably would too.

But legally?  Seriosly?  You honestly think the MCU America, in the couple of years that Vision existed, would have enacted legal changes to make a sentient AI a full person under the law AND legalized marriage for him and Wanda, a terrorist in hiding at the time?

Good luck with that.

Sure, we, the audience and certainly Wanda, think of Vision as a full person and consider her marriage to be valid.  No arguments from me about that.  But, when SWORD takes the body and begins to try to reverse engineer it, they are 100% within the law to do so.  Most people wouldn't even bat an eye at them doing this.


----------



## Hussar (Jul 4, 2022)

RangerWickett said:


> And eventually she does acknowledge she needs to free the people in the hex, and she makes what I saw as a heroic sacrifice to do the right thing, albeit horribly late.
> 
> . . .
> 
> ...



Whereas to me, I found it perfectly reasonable.  She was perfectly willing to murder thousands of people just to be "happy" and left alone.  Had no one forced her to see what she was doing, had no one intervened, she quite likely would have killed every single person in that town, just so she could be "left alone" with the family that only exists as something she fabricated out of her own delusions.  

How is that not a villain?  Kidnapping, torturing and then very likely murdering thousands of innocent people for no reason other than your own pleasure?  And not having second thoughts about it until someone else steps in?  That's psychotic at the very least.  

A mea culpa at the end, where not only does she suffer zero consequences for her actions - she gets to go off to a nice cabin on her own to be away from people instead of stuck in the Raft where she belonged (or in the ground which was also a perfectly reasonable response) to stew in her own madness and then send monsters after America, murdering who knows how many other people in the process - just so she can eventually murder herself and take her place as the parent of children that are not her own.

At what point in this is she not the villain?


----------



## Davies (Jul 4, 2022)

Hussar said:


> Whereas to me, I found it perfectly reasonable.  She was perfectly willing to murder thousands of people just to be "happy" and left alone.  Had no one forced her to see what she was doing, had no one intervened, she quite likely would have killed every single person in that town



So what? Why should I give a crap about them? It's not like they're real. You're much too invested in these fictional people.

You asked for it.


----------



## Gradine (Jul 4, 2022)




----------



## Thomas Shey (Jul 5, 2022)

Eric V said:


> Does this kind of thinking apply to the Joker?




There's an argument to be made that the Joker is mentally impaired, and thus not fully responsible for what he does; but he clearly does at least understand on some level what he's doing--and likes it that way..  Its abundantly clear for the first half of Wandavision, that she doesn't.  It'd be like calling a super a villain for killing someone in their sleep.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Jul 5, 2022)

Paul Farquhar said:


> In Wandavision Wanda is the protagonist, _and_ an antagonist. She has to overcome her own delusions, _and _Agatha.




I'd absolutely buy that.



Paul Farquhar said:


> SWORD is a secondary antagonist, largely in opposition to secondary protagonists Monica and Darcy.
> 
> The meaning of antagonist and villain are quite different. It's quite possible to have a villain protagonist with a heroic antagonist. And that's before you get to anti-heroes and anti-villains.




Yup.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Jul 5, 2022)

RangerWickett said:


> Are we using the term in the colloquial comics sense of "person who does a great deal of harm," or in the literary sense of "person who opposes the main character"?




I think as others have averred, you second usage there you're conflating "villain" with "antagonist".  They may sometimes be used colloquially as synonomous, but they are as used in literature.



RangerWickett said:


> I think that, even as we're enjoying some light popcorn cinema, we should be attentive to the fact that morality isn't black and white, and that categorizing people into good and bad is a simplistic mindset that has led to many people permitting great harm to others.
> 
> Now, in nearly every story of the Joker, he's got a twisted sense of how the world should work, but he knows what he's doing is hurting people, and he almost never cares. He can be both ill from mental trauma and be intentional and callous in the harm he causes.
> 
> ...




I don't think for the first half of the show, there's anything particularly willful about it.  She does not at all seem aware that she's not living in reality (she progressively resists things that tell her that she is, but that's a process, not the rest state.)



RangerWickett said:


> She nearly snaps out of it when Vision confronts her about it in the 80s episode, and she seems to be trying to parse the cognitive dissonance, but then Agatha sends Ralph to draw her back into a comforting delusion.
> 
> And eventually she does acknowledge she needs to free the people in the hex, and she makes what I saw as a heroic sacrifice to do the right thing, albeit horribly late.




Yup.



RangerWickett said:


> . . .
> 
> And then the next time we meet her, she's not struggling at all. She's not in denial. There's no glimmer that her original mind is somehow being controlled by the Darkhold.
> 
> ...




Eh.  Only to the degree that we don't see the process.  The Darkhold doesn't _control_, it _corrupts_.  That's how it works in the comics, its how it worked in AoS, and its how it worked here (and that's very clear with the two alternate Strange's who got into bed with it).


----------



## Thomas Shey (Jul 5, 2022)

Hussar said:


> And I probably would too.
> 
> But legally?  Seriosly?




Are you under the impression the viewers are supposed to care, or that SWORD is supposed to be unaware of the ethical element here?  Because I'm unable to follow you there.




Hussar said:


> You honestly think the MCU America, in the couple of years that Vision existed, would have enacted legal changes to make a sentient AI a full person under the law AND legalized marriage for him and Wanda, a terrorist in hiding at the time?
> 
> Good luck with that.
> 
> Sure, we, the audience and certainly Wanda, think of Vision as a full person and consider her marriage to be valid.  No arguments from me about that.  But, when SWORD takes the body and begins to try to reverse engineer it, they are 100% within the law to do so.  Most people wouldn't even bat an eye at them doing this.




Again, I don't think where what they were doing was legal or not is even faintly relevant here.


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## Davies (Jul 5, 2022)

Hussar said:


> But legally?  Seriosly?



Individuals not recognized as persons do not normally file living wills, which are then referenced in regards to the disposal of their remains, last I checked.


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## Hussar (Jul 5, 2022)

Davies said:


> Individuals not recognized as persons do not normally file living wills, which are then referenced in regards to the disposal of their remains, last I checked.



What living will?  Sorry, did Vision have a living will?  I honestly missed that.

But, all this about body autonomy and all that, while great story telling, does rather miss the point that as far as the world would be concerned, Vision really wasn't a person.  Which makes what happens to him horrifying.  We're SUPPOSED to be horrified by what's being done to him.  Of course we are.  But, at the same time, it doesn't make the murder and torture of thousands of people somehow okay.

The only actually good characters in WandaVision are Vision, Monica Rambeau, Jimmy Woo and Darcy Lewis.  Everyone else is various shades of bad.  I just don't get the notion that Wanda is anything other than the villain here.   Tragic villain?  Oh, absolutely.  Sympathetic?  Again, totally agree.  100% think that.  But, at no point in WandaVision or MoM is she anything other than the straight up villain.


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## Hussar (Jul 5, 2022)

Davies said:


> So what? Why should I give a crap about them? It's not like they're real. You're much too invested in these fictional people.
> 
> You asked for it.



Dude, I honestly have no idea where this hostility is coming from.  It would be really, really appreciated if you'd dial it back a notch or just put me on ignore if what I'm saying is causing you so much angst.  

Are you seriously, from an in universe perspective, claiming that the children that Wanda magically creates, then magically force ages, complete with personalities and memories 100% fabricated from her own imagination are real, but, the people of the town are just fictions?  Sorry, but, the children are just delusions.  The only reason they're not delusions, is because Wanda is this incredibly powerful godlike being who can reify her delusions.  They are not her children.  If they were her children, and not just echoes from other dimensions, she wouldn't have to murder an iteration of herself and replace herself as the mother of these children.


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## Rabulias (Jul 5, 2022)

billd91 said:


> In the comics, nobody ever kills the Joker - except in the Kingdom Come miniseries, where it was considered a big turning point that sets up later tragedy.



And _The Dark Knight Returns_ miniseries, but that may not count as the Joker kills himself by moving his head around after Batman breaks the Joker's neck.


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## Davies (Jul 5, 2022)

Hussar said:


> Are you seriously, from an in universe perspective,



You're the one who was complaining that people who defended Wanda were contemptible for being so invested in the defense of a fictional character. I return the favor.

And I'm always hostile to people who want to burn the witch, and cite the finale of the Dark Phoenix saga as a model for other stories rather than a disgusting narrative foisted on the writer by a pederast artist and a misogynist editor. Put me on ignore if you have a problem with that.


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## Eric V (Jul 5, 2022)

Davies said:


> You're the one who was complaining that people who defended Wanda were contemptible for being so invested in the defense of a fictional character. I return the favor.
> 
> And I'm always hostile to people who want to burn the witch, and cite the finale of the Dark Phoenix saga as a model for other stories rather than a disgusting narrative foisted on the writer by a pederast artist and a misogynist editor. Put me on ignore if you have a problem with that.



I don't think anyone has used the word 'contemptible'...or insinuated anything close to it, really.

I also don't think anyone wants to 'burn the witch.'  @Hussar can speak for himself, but I don't think anyone thinks this writing of Wanda in Wandavision (and certainly not MoM) is a good reflection of the character...they did her dirty.


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## Tonguez (Jul 5, 2022)

Hussar said:


> What living will?  Sorry, did Vision have a living will?  I honestly missed that.



yeah, the Sword guy mentions Vision left a Living Will in WandaVision. 
how SWORD got posession of the remains is a gap - but maybe by signing the Sokovia Accord, Vision put himself in their custody


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## Davies (Jul 5, 2022)

Eric V said:


> I also don't think anyone wants to 'burn the witch.'



He said that he wanted her "in the ground". I'm sure that he enjoyed watching her get crushed by rocks, but would prefer a more European style execution.


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## Eric V (Jul 5, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> There's an argument to be made that the Joker is mentally impaired, and thus not fully responsible for what he does; but he clearly does at least understand on some level what he's doing--and likes it that way..  Its abundantly clear for the first half of Wandavision, that she doesn't.  It'd be like calling a super a villain for killing someone in their sleep.



Yeah, we disagree about her level of understanding after she confronts SWORD midway through the season...I think she knows full well* nothing good is happening to the citizens in the town but she just doesn't care...not compared to her own issues.

*Even if she doesn't know, for sure, she's torturing them...she certainly takes no steps to find out if the bubble is affecting them in any negative way at all, and when wielding power of her level, there's a moral imperative to do so.  But again, the writers decided to...do what they did.


----------



## Eric V (Jul 5, 2022)

Davies said:


> He said that he wanted her "in the ground". I'm sure that he enjoyed watching her get crushed by rocks, but would prefer a more European style execution.



I...did not see that at all.  I mean, I may have just missed it; the closest I saw was when he was trying to explain SWORD's perspective as a law-enforcement agency.


----------



## Davies (Jul 5, 2022)

Eric V said:


> I...did not see that at all.






Hussar said:


> instead of stuck in the Raft where she belonged *(or in the ground which was also a perfectly reasonable response)*]




*Emphasis* mine.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Jul 5, 2022)

Eric V said:


> Yeah, we disagree about her level of understanding after she confronts SWORD midway through the season...I think she knows full well* nothing good is happening to the citizens in the town but she just doesn't care...not compared to her own issues.




Yeah, that's not my reading at all.



Eric V said:


> *Even if she doesn't know, for sure, she's torturing them...she certainly takes no steps to find out if the bubble is affecting them in any negative way at all, and when wielding power of her level, there's a moral imperative to do so.  But again, the writers decided to...do what they did.




While you can roll off anything with the blame-the-writers card on this sort of thing, I still think this assumes she's thinking straight in a way I don't believe she's depicted as until after the confrontation with Agatha.


----------



## Tonguez (Jul 5, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> Yeah, that's not my reading at all.
> 
> While you can roll off anything with the blame-the-writers card on this sort of thing, I still think this assumes she's thinking straight in a way I don't believe she's depicted as until after the confrontation with Agatha.



SWORD confronts her with guns and directly tell her she’s holding hostages. She is in complete control of that situation, knows that its an illusion (Vision is falling apart when he goes through) and if she wanted to she could have let the townsfolk go then - she didnt have to loose her family either as she could have reduce the Hex just just her house and kept her family inside. But she doesnt make the good choice instead she acts selfishly and doubles down on her Hex


----------



## Thomas Shey (Jul 5, 2022)

Tonguez said:


> SWORD confronts her with guns and directly tell her she’s holding hostages. She is in complete control of that situation, knows that its an illusion (Vision is falling apart when he goes through) and if she wanted to she could have let the townsfolk go then - she didnt have to loose her family either as she could have reduce the Hex just just her house and kept her family inside. But she doesnt make the good choice instead she acts selfishly and doubles down on her Hex




Sorry, I still don't read that scene as her knowing its an illusion; I read it as her thinking she has a protective barrier and is confused when Vision starts to have his problem walking through it.  SWORD tells her she's holding hostages, but why in the world would she believe _anything_ from them?

It sets her mind on the path that she later does realize what she's been doing, but at that point?  Naw.


----------



## billd91 (Jul 5, 2022)

Tonguez said:


> SWORD confronts her with guns and directly tell her she’s holding hostages. She is in complete control of that situation, knows that its an illusion (Vision is falling apart when he goes through) and if she wanted to she could have let the townsfolk go then - she didnt have to loose her family either as she could have reduce the Hex just just her house and kept her family inside. But she doesnt make the good choice instead she acts selfishly and doubles down on her Hex



Tragic heroes sometimes do that - their tragedy is brought on by external forces but compounded by rash decisions.


----------



## billd91 (Jul 5, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> Sorry, I still don't read that scene as her knowing its an illusion; I read it as her thinking she has a protective barrier and is confused when Vision starts to have his problem walking through it.  SWORD tells her she's holding hostages, but why in the world would she believe _anything_ from them?



Simple fact is - she wouldn’t. They had already poisoned any possible relationship they could have had with her.


----------



## Tonguez (Jul 5, 2022)

billd91 said:


> Tragic heroes sometimes do that - their tragedy is brought on by external forces but compounded by rash decisions.



Sure but denial of the facts doesnt actually make them wrong. When dictators invade other countries and oppress the citizens do they believe they are doing wrong?
Afterall Doctor Doom is the Hero of Latveria and believes what he does is good too (avoiding real world examples)


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## billd91 (Jul 5, 2022)

Tonguez said:


> Sure but denial of the facts doesnt actually make them wrong. When dictators invade other countries and oppress the citizens do they believe they are doing wrong?
> Afterall Doctor Doom is the Hero of Latveria and believes what he does is good too (avoiding real world examples)



Big Difference: Doom isn‘t driven by trauma and grief but by megalomania. Same with invading dictators. Was Hussein motivated by trauma when Iraq invaded Kuwait? When Hitler’s Germany invaded damn near everybody within reach? No. They weren’t. The comparisons aren’t close.


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## Hussar (Jul 5, 2022)

billd91 said:


> Big Difference: Doom isn‘t driven by trauma and grief but by megalomania. Same with invading dictators. Was Hussein motivated by trauma when Iraq invaded Kuwait? When Hitler’s Germany invaded damn near everybody within reach? No. They weren’t. The comparisons aren’t close.



Ok.

What's the difference between Wanda and Thanos?  Other than scale?  If Wanda succeeds, doesn't she cause an incursion between two universes, meaning that even if she succeeds, she will murder trillions of beings?  In WandaVision, she is motivated by trauma to torture thousands of people.  Thanos is motivated by trauma to save the universe.  

Is there a difference?  Does being "motivated by trauma" excuse anything?  It explains things, sure.  And I'll totally agree that Wanda is a sympathetic character.  Fair enough.  But, at the end of the day, doesn't she have any responsibility for her actions?  And, if she doesn't, why do we see Thanos as the villain?

Or, is it that the situation is a bit more nuanced that simply good guy/bad guy?  Which, honestly, is how I see it.  I can totally sympathise with Wanda while at the same time condemn her for her actions.


----------



## Hussar (Jul 5, 2022)

Just to add a further thought that occurred to me as I walked to work.  There's a common complaint that MCU villains aren't very interesting.  I can buy that.  But, something that the MCU does do well is make sympathetic villains.  Whether it's someone like Killmonger from Black Panther, or Whiplash from Iron Man 2, or Tony Stark in Civil War (yeah, that's a very debatable point about whether or not he's a villain but, he's certainly sympathetic) or various other baddies over the years, heck, even Thanos himself, the MCU has been pretty good about getting us to care about the villain.  

To me, Wanda is just another in that same vein.  Someone who cannot move past their trauma and makes incredibly bad, self destructive decisions because of their pain.  I do think it's something that the MCU does rather well actually.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Jul 5, 2022)

*Mod Note:*

Let’s dial back the hostility and loaded rhetoric a bit, please.


----------



## Paul Farquhar (Jul 5, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> ""*You Know What They Call A Hero Who Doesn't Listen To Anyone, Doctor Strange.*""
> 
> Except a major factor of the movie is.... Dr Strange does start to listen, and to change. He relies on others instead of "always holding the scalpel"



Which is, in fact, nonsense. He is still holding the scalpel. America Chevez *IS* the scalpel. And he has been using other people as his scalpel for ages. His whole plan for defeating Thanos involved spending 5 years dusted whilst others did everything.


Stalker0 said:


> And of course....he doesn't kill scores of people to get what he personally wants.



No, he engineers the deaths of half the people in the universe.


----------



## Hussar (Jul 5, 2022)

Paul Farquhar said:


> Which is, in fact, nonsense. He is still holding the scalpel. America Chevez *IS* the scalpel. And he has been using other people as his scalpel for ages. His whole plan for defeating Thanos involved spending 5 years dusted whilst others did everything.
> 
> No, he engineers the deaths of half the people in the universe.



Wait, what?

Are you saying Doctor Strange is to blame for the Blip?  That he, what, went on holiday for five years to defeat Thanos?  Now there's an interpretation that I've never seen before.


----------



## Paul Farquhar (Jul 5, 2022)

Hussar said:


> Are you saying Doctor Strange is to blame for the Blip?



"Blame" is too strong a word, but he certainly chose to let it happen so that it could un-happen. Which still left dead all those people who died as a consequence of other people being dusted (such as passengers in vehicles). Which would be many many billions across the universe.

Now, all the other outcomes may well have been worse, and his choice was the lesser evil. But choosing a lesser evil is not the same as choosing good. Captain America wouldn't have made that call.


Hussar said:


> That he, what, went on holiday for five years to defeat Thanos?



I'm sure he is the sort of person who hates holidays.


----------



## Hussar (Jul 5, 2022)

Paul Farquhar said:


> "Blame" is too strong a word, but he certainly chose to let it happen so that it could un-happen. Which still left dead all those people who died as a consequence of other people being dusted (such as passengers in vehicles). Which would be many many billions across the universe.
> 
> Now, all the other outcomes may well have been worse, and his choice was the lesser evil. But choosing a lesser evil is not the same as choosing good. Captain America wouldn't have made that call.
> 
> I'm sure he is the sort of person who hates holidays.



Wasn't the whole point that there was one, and only one outcome where Thanos didn't just win?  That was pretty firmly established wasn't it?  Or am I misremembering.  So, wasn't the options - Thanos blips everyone, end of story, or Thanos blips everyone and five years later we undo the Blip.  

Not sure that's really the "lesser of two evils" as much as "this is the only option, full stop".  

Again, this is an interpretation I've just never seen anyone make before.  That Doctor Strange had any other option.


----------



## Eric V (Jul 5, 2022)

Hussar said:


> Wasn't the whole point that there was one, and only one outcome where Thanos didn't just win?  That was pretty firmly established wasn't it?  Or am I misremembering.  So, wasn't the options - Thanos blips everyone, end of story, or Thanos blips everyone and five years later we undo the Blip.
> 
> Not sure that's really the "lesser of two evils" as much as "this is the only option, full stop".
> 
> Again, this is an interpretation I've just never seen anyone make before.  That Doctor Strange had any other option.



Tony asked how many versions they won in, and Strange said "one."  So no, according the established narrative, Strange had no other option.


----------



## Eric V (Jul 5, 2022)

Paul Farquhar said:


> Captain America wouldn't have made that call.



If that's true, then the universe would be in the same position, except, you know, not having all the blipped people restored.  Thank goodness Cap isn't in charge of that call.


----------



## Eric V (Jul 5, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> While you can roll off anything with the blame-the-writers card on this sort of thing, I still think this assumes she's thinking straight in a way I don't believe she's depicted as until after the confrontation with Agatha.



Ok, so...what does she _think _is happening to the townsfolk?  Because there's a moral imperative to ask the question.


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## MarkB (Jul 5, 2022)

Eric V said:


> Ok, so...what does she _think _is happening to the townsfolk?  Because there's a moral imperative to ask the question.



I think she was under the impression that they were effectively 'asleep' in their bodies as their fictional personae played out her fantasy, that they were unaware of what was happening. She's shocked when she's told that they're completely aware, and that they're experiencing her own nightmares.


----------



## Eric V (Jul 5, 2022)

MarkB said:


> *I think she was under the impression that they were effectively 'asleep' in their bodies* as their fictional personae played out her fantasy, that they were unaware of what was happening. She's shocked when she's told that they're completely aware, and that they're experiencing her own nightmares.



I don't know...I never got the impression that she considered things and concluded that it's ok because they're asleep in their bodies...

...mind you, even if that's the case, it's still really messed up.


----------



## Paul Farquhar (Jul 5, 2022)

Eric V said:


> If that's true, then the universe would be in the same position, except, you know, not having all the blipped people restored.  Thank goodness Cap isn't in charge of that call.



That's one way to look at it - that it takes someone who is not a good guy to make the tough decisions.

Another way of looking at it is if Cap had been on the spot he would have found another way, even if another way did not exist, because the MCU is ruled by the laws of narrativium, not the laws of pragmatism.


----------



## Eric V (Jul 5, 2022)

Paul Farquhar said:


> That's one way to look at it - that it takes someone who is not a good guy to make the tough decisions.
> 
> Another way of looking at it is if Cap had been on the spot he would have found another way, even if another way did not exist, because the MCU is ruled by the laws of narrativium, not the laws of pragmatism.



Please.  Strange made sure people got back with their families.

Cap has NO knowledge on how to deal with things of this nature...but if you want to say they'd write it so that he somehow did, fine.  Of course, that also means there's no point in talking about whether or not Strange is a good guy or bad guy, how good Steve is, etc.  It's all just writing...and bad writing at that if Steve somehow has a solution that Strange doesn't.


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## BRayne (Jul 5, 2022)

Eric V said:


> Tony asked how many versions they won in, and Strange said "one."  So no, according the established narrative, Strange had no other option.



Technically there could be any number of futures where they win but Doctor Strange doesn't make it, but of course he can't be sure of that. See the Ancient One saying "I've spent so many years peering through time, looking at this exact moment. But I can't see past it." in the first Dr. Strange.


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## billd91 (Jul 5, 2022)

Hussar said:


> Ok.
> 
> What's the difference between Wanda and Thanos?  Other than scale?  If Wanda succeeds, doesn't she cause an incursion between two universes, meaning that even if she succeeds, she will murder trillions of beings?  In WandaVision, she is motivated by trauma to torture thousands of people.  Thanos is motivated by trauma to save the universe.
> 
> Is there a difference?  Does being "motivated by trauma" excuse anything?  It explains things, sure.  And I'll totally agree that Wanda is a sympathetic character.  Fair enough.  But, at the end of the day, doesn't she have any responsibility for her actions?  And, if she doesn't, why do we see Thanos as the villain?



In WandaVision, Wanda isn't motivated by trauma *to* torture thousands, she's motivated to make an idyllic cocoon that happens to torture people without her conscious knowledge. She doesn't get confronted with that clarity, which Agatha knows all along, until the final episode. And she releases the people when she finds out. That's clearly not someone motivated in any way to torture people and a far cry from Thanos who is actively and consciously seeking to extinguish half the life in the universe.
By the Multiverse of Madness, the Darkhold has corrupted her further and the situation is different and far more extreme.


Hussar said:


> Or, is it that the situation is a bit more nuanced that simply good guy/bad guy?  Which, honestly, is how I see it.  I can totally sympathise with Wanda while at the same time condemn her for her actions.



Nuance, yeah, that's why she's a *tragic* hero as opposed to a hero in WandaVision. Tragic heroes are wrapped in nuance because of the troubles they cause in response to the challenges they face. But worthy of *condemnation* in WandaVision? Not really. That's flatly too harsh.


----------



## Stalker0 (Jul 5, 2022)

Paul Farquhar said:


> Which is, in fact, nonsense. He is still holding the scalpel. America Chevez *IS* the scalpel. And he has been using other people as his scalpel for ages. His whole plan for defeating Thanos involved spending 5 years dusted whilst others did everything.
> 
> No, he engineers the deaths of half the people in the universe.



Sorry, when you consult the great oracle stone and it literally gives you one chance out of a million to save the multiverse from losing half its people…you take it.

There is “engineering” here, he just follows the other laid out to get the best outcome he can.

Remember there are also likely dozens of futures strange saw where he comes out really well, maybe has a great life…but the world still loses half their people. He doesn’t take any of those, he does what he needs to do to save as many people as he can


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## BrokenTwin (Jul 5, 2022)

Arguably, since The Ancient One established that you can't see past your own death, Strange was only telling Stark about the one timeline that he survived through to the happy ending. There's presumably multitudes of timelines he looked at where he didn't know if they could succeed at stopping/undoing Thanos's plan entirely because he died before that endpoint could be reached.


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## Paul Farquhar (Jul 5, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> Sorry, when you consult the great oracle stone and it literally gives you one chance out of a million to save the multiverse from losing half its people…you take it.



You do if you can live with yourself being responsible for untold billions of deaths.


Eric V said:


> Please. Strange made sure people got back with their families.



Only if they were dusted. If you were on a plane, and the pilot was dusted, and the plane crashed, then you are dead. No takebacks.


Eric V said:


> .but if you want to say they'd write it so that he somehow did, fine.



Of course they would, because that's the way narratives work. If the movie has Captain America in the title he will find a way to win by being Captain America-ish. Which means the only person you can choose to sacrifice is yourself.


----------



## Umbran (Jul 5, 2022)

Paul Farquhar said:


> Of course they would, because that's the way narratives work. If the movie has Captain America in the title he will find a way to win by being Captain America-ish. Which means the only person you can choose to sacrifice is yourself.




The issue is in the emotionally loaded word, "sacrifice," when applied to what is, essentially, the Trolley Problem.  The person at the trolley controls has limited choices.  It seems rather odd to place the moral weight of "sacrificing" on them when they have no option in which nobody dies.

Invoking Captain America is a false hypothetical.  In the same situation, he would not have the choice to only sacrifice himself - the option simply wasn't available.  Saying that the writers would have written it differently in that instance is a meta-argument, that has no bearing on the moral culpability of the character in-universe.

Doctor Strange did not create the situation.  He has the moral and ethical burden of finding the best solution he could.  He did that.  The lives of those that were beyond his power to save are not on his hands.


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## Paul Farquhar (Jul 5, 2022)

Umbran said:


> Invoking Captain America is a false hypothetical. In the same situation, he would not have the choice to only sacrifice himself - the option simply wasn't available.



Captain America has _faith_. He would refuse to accept that the future is set in stone, no matter how many times he had seen it.

He could be wrong about that, if you wanted a real downer movie, but he isn't going to make that call.


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## BRayne (Jul 5, 2022)

Captain America doesn't trade lives*

*Not trading lives only applies to named characters, trading the lives of thousands of Wakandans is fine actually.


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## billd91 (Jul 5, 2022)

BRayne said:


> Captain America doesn't trade lives*
> 
> *Not trading lives only applies to named characters, trading the lives of thousands of Wakandans is fine actually.



Yeah, yeah. Dig deep enough and with enough of cynicism and you'll find something to complain about. But it's pretty clear from Cap's behavior and general outlook is that nobody just has to commit suicide to stop Thanos when you can put up a fight. And, from what we've seen, a fight *could* have won if 1) Thor had reached Thanos before he took the mind stone and 2) Thor had managed to take Thanos's head with Stormbreaker. 
Of course, that wasn't going to happen because that wasn't the story the authors were telling - not that Cap knew that.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Jul 5, 2022)

billd91 said:


> Simple fact is - she wouldn’t. They had already poisoned any possible relationship they could have had with her.




Yeah, even if she was in her right mind they would have seemed untrustworthy sources.  Its one of the reasons it took her a while to trust Monica.


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## Thomas Shey (Jul 5, 2022)

Hussar said:


> Ok.
> 
> What's the difference between Wanda and Thanos?  Other than scale?  If Wanda succeeds, doesn't she cause an incursion between two universes, meaning that even if she succeeds, she will murder trillions of beings?




And what sign do you have that she knows anything about Incursions?  Strange didn't until the Illuminati talked to him about it.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Jul 5, 2022)

Eric V said:


> Ok, so...what does she _think _is happening to the townsfolk?  Because there's a moral imperative to ask the question.




I don't think until after the fight with Agatha she realizes they're anything what they seem to be in her dream world.  She's starting to see signs that are leading her to realize otherwise, but she hasn't gotten there yet.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Jul 5, 2022)

Eric V said:


> Please.  Strange made sure people got back with their families.
> 
> Cap has NO knowledge on how to deal with things of this nature...but if you want to say they'd write it so that he somehow did, fine.  Of course, that also means there's no point in talking about whether or not Strange is a good guy or bad guy, how good Steve is, etc.  It's all just writing...and bad writing at that if Steve somehow has a solution that Strange doesn't.



I don't think it gives Rogers enough credit, either.  He's at his heart the Good Soldier--the guy who fights so others can live in peace.  But that means he has the soldier's understanding that sometimes a situation doesn't permit everyone to have a happy ending.  He'll reach for the harder win rather than the easy win which considers people expendable, but if he had the information Strange had, I don't think he'd have made the decision any differently.  Its really not parallel to the situation with the Vision.


----------



## Gradine (Jul 5, 2022)

I especially liked the part where big eyeball monster went sploosh


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## trappedslider (Jul 5, 2022)

Gradine said:


> I especially liked the part where big eyeball monster went sploosh



I don't think there's a visine for that


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jul 5, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> And what sign do you have that she knows anything about Incursions?  Strange didn't until the Illuminati talked to him about it.




Unless they go back and reshoot WandaVision, she has no knowledge of that. Same with every other movie and show that came out before Loki. People need to remember that at the moment in that show where the multiverse is unleashed, it happens along the entire time line: past, present, and future. So multiple versions of the universe and incursions and so on all suddenly exist throughout all time, as if it had always been that way. Yes, that may make some plot holes in previous stuff, or makes you wonder why characters who should know about this stuff don't, but it is something the viewers just have to accept and live with.


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## Rabulias (Jul 5, 2022)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> So multiple versions of the universe and incursions and so on all suddenly exist throughout all time, as if it had always been that way. Yes, that may make some plot holes in previous stuff, or makes you wonder why characters who should know about this stuff don't, but it is something the viewers just have to accept and live with.



Well, it is a multiverse of madness...


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## pukunui (Jul 5, 2022)

I'm guessing that the big incursion that they're hinting at will be Kang the Conqueror?


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## Thomas Shey (Jul 5, 2022)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> Unless they go back and reshoot WandaVision, she has no knowledge of that. Same with every other movie and show that came out before Loki. People need to remember that at the moment in that show where the multiverse is unleashed, it happens along the entire time line: past, present, and future. So multiple versions of the universe and incursions and so on all suddenly exist throughout all time, as if it had always been that way. Yes, that may make some plot holes in previous stuff, or makes you wonder why characters who should know about this stuff don't, but it is something the viewers just have to accept and live with.




Frankly, at least on the "616" timeline, there's no reason they should anyway; its abundantly clear few people know about the Multiverse anyway (and I'm not sold that the TVA was actually preventing that from happening entirely anyway; I suspect alternates that didn't throw a Kang or time travel were of no real interest to them).


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jul 6, 2022)

pukunui said:


> I'm guessing that the big incursion that they're hinting at will be Kang the Conqueror?




Jonathan Majors' next major appearance is in Ant-man 3, though which version of Kang he will be is unknown. There are no rumors that Strange will show up in that one, so it is hard to say. Also, since Clea is probably from another timeline, the incursion may be back on Earth 838 or Earth 617, seeing as how the dead Strange 617 ended up on Earth 838 with America, where Strange 616 then animated the body and used it for the dreamwalk. Earth 617 seems more likely for the incursion because their Strange basically vanished. But it could involve Wanda 838 and all the damage that happened while Wanda 616 was controlling her.


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## Hussar (Jul 6, 2022)

Okay here’s a thought. 

What’s the difference between Wanda and Loki? Loki enslaves hundreds of people using the mind stone to build a space bridge to the Chitauri. An experience that is very damaging to the victims as we see Selvig on the brink of mental collapse in Thor Dark World. It’s not a nice thing. 

Wanda enslaves thousands of people, including hundreds of children so that she can play pantomime with her imaginary friends. 

When she learns that she has just mentally and physically abused hundreds of children for weeks, she shows zero remorse. She does nothing to fix what she’s done. She just walks away, and cuddles up with the Darkhold. 

And people are surprised that she’s the full on villain in MoM? Really? How much of a monster do you have to be before you’re a villain? If Loki was a villain in the Avengers, how is Wanda not in WandaVision?


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## pukunui (Jul 6, 2022)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> Jonathan Majors' next major appearance is in Ant-man 3, though which version of Kang he will be is unknown. There are no rumors that Strange will show up in that one, so it is hard to say. Also, since Clea is probably from another timeline, the incursion may be back on Earth 838 or Earth 617, seeing as how the dead Strange 617 ended up on Earth 838 with America, where Strange 616 then animated the body and used it for the dreamwalk. Earth 617 seems more likely for the incursion because their Strange basically vanished. But it could involve Wanda 838 and all the damage that happened while Wanda 616 was controlling her.



That credits scene involving Clea may be a lead-in to a future Dr Strange movie, in which case we won't know what it's all about for some time.

I'm just speculating that all the talk of multiversal incursions in general is building up to a big Endgame-style denouement with a major incursion by Kang the Conqueror.


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jul 6, 2022)

Hussar said:


> When she learns that she has just mentally and physically abused hundreds of children for weeks, she shows zero remorse. She does nothing to fix what she’s done. She just walks away, and cuddles up with the Darkhold.




Did we watch the same show? Because I clearly remember the scene where she found out/realized just what was going on in the town and she was horrified. Also, her control over Westview was just about 2 weeks, despite how time seemed to advance within the hex.


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## Eric V (Jul 6, 2022)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> Did we watch the same show? Because I clearly remember the scene where she found out/realized just what was going on in the town and she was horrified. *Also, her control over Westview was just about 2 weeks, despite how time seemed to advance within the hex.*



Why...does this matter?


----------



## MarkB (Jul 6, 2022)

BRayne said:


> Technically there could be any number of futures where they win but Doctor Strange doesn't make it, but of course he can't be sure of that. See the Ancient One saying "I've spent so many years peering through time, looking at this exact moment. But I can't see past it." in the first Dr. Strange.



But she also knew that Doctor Strange was predicted to be "the best of us", even though she didn't live to see that happen. And what she was doing - seeing visions of her personal future - may not be the same as what Strange did with the Time stone in Infinity War.


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## MarkB (Jul 6, 2022)

Paul Farquhar said:


> Only if they were dusted. If you were on a plane, and the pilot was dusted, and the plane crashed, then you are dead. No takebacks.



The one that always gives me shudders is the massive simultaneous pile-ups on every freeway or equivalent in the world, as half the vehicles become unpiloted.


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## Blue (Jul 6, 2022)

Hussar said:


> Except that Vision is actually not a person, and thus, has no next of kin, nor would his marriage even remotely be recognized in the United States (or any other country for that matter).
> 
> This whole argument is predicated on something that has never once been suggested in universe - that Vision was considered legally a person.
> 
> It might be icky.  We might not like it.  But, there is absolutely no suggestion that Vision was considered a person.



It was not just suggested but confirmed that he was considered a legal entity for the Sokovia Accords.  This is just incorrect.


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jul 6, 2022)

Eric V said:


> Why...does this matter?




Because some people either remember wrong or just don't know and inflate the amount of time way beyond what it actually was.


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## Blue (Jul 6, 2022)

Just curious, the description of "villain" going around as a synonym for one side of a conflict.

That seem to require that in Civil War either Cap and his team are villains, or Tony and his team are villains.  Now, one side is more lawful, does that mean that Cap & company were the villains of that movie?


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## Eric V (Jul 6, 2022)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> Because some people either remember wrong or just don't know and inflate the amount of time way beyond what it actually was.



But...is 2 weeks not long enough to make the point?


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jul 6, 2022)

Eric V said:


> But...is 2 weeks not long enough to make the point?




For the fictional setting, it would really depend on where in that time her control of things starts to break down and people start to suffer physically. We saw it in the Halloween episode, with the residents on the outskirts basically not moving at all and not able to communicate with Vision. But we don't know if that lasted just a few minutes or hours or worse because they do not show us that. Other than that short time at Halloween, we never actually see the people suffering physically. As for the mental stress, or worse, the people are suffering, Wanda has no clue her control is doing that, as shown in the show, until near the end. And let's not forget Agatha's meddling with the hex and making things worse. It was her who took control of some of the people and practically had them attacking Wanda, if I am remembering that part correctly.


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## Rabulias (Jul 6, 2022)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> Also, since Clea is probably from another timeline, the incursion may be back on Earth 838 or Earth 617, seeing as how the dead Strange 617 ended up on Earth 838 with America, where Strange 616 then animated the body and used it for the dreamwalk. Earth 617 seems more likely for the incursion because their Strange basically vanished.



Assuming the Dr. Strange in the opening scene is from 617, his body ends up in 616 and stays there. After Wanda captures America in 838, she activates America's power and sends America back to 616 to perform the ritual to remove her power. Strange 616 dreamwalks from the incursion-ravaged universe to the body of Strange 617 entombed in 616 and portals to Wundagore for the final confrontation.


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## Paul Farquhar (Jul 6, 2022)

MarkB said:


> The one that always gives me shudders is the massive simultaneous pile-ups on every freeway or equivalent in the world, as half the vehicles become unpiloted.



Not just this world, all the other inhabited worlds as well.


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## Hussar (Jul 6, 2022)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> Did we watch the same show? Because I clearly remember the scene where she found out/realized just what was going on in the town and she was horrified. Also, her control over Westview was just about 2 weeks, despite how time seemed to advance within the hex.



Actually, I was going by the three weeks suggested earlier in the thread, not my own number.  A quick Google search actually pins it down to "about a week"  WandaVision Filmmakers Clarify The Marvel Timeline, And The Span Of The Westview Anomaly May Surprise You - so, there's that.

Still doesn't really change my point though.  Sorry, she only kidnapped and physically and mentally abused hundreds of children for a week.  I guess that makes all the difference then?    Oh, right, she feels really bad about it and stops torturing children to death once it's rubbed in her face and her victims beg her to kill them rather than keep mind raping them.  But, yeah, she feels bad, so, I guess it's all okay.

The point is, she takes zero responsibility for her actions, makes no attempt to turn herself in or anything else.  She just walks away and snuggles up to the Darkhold in a nice little cabin in the woods somewhere.   

The whole point of this discussion was brought about by the idea that people were surprised that Wanda was the villain in MoM.  Sure, you can make the argument for Tragic Hero in WandaVision - I can certainly buy that.  But, it's not much of a step from WandaVision to full on villain IMO.


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## BrokenTwin (Jul 6, 2022)

I'm not SURPRISED they made Wanda the villain of MoM. I'm just disappointed. WandaVision explored a lot of complexity in Wanda's character that's completely ignored in Strange's movie, which isn't shocking when you consider the director didn't bother to watch the series centered around his villain. Tony Stark's actions definitely directly resulted in more deaths and suffering than Wanda's (before he became Iron Man he was an arms dealer, Ultron was directly his fault), but he was given a redemption/true hero arc despite negatively impacting the lives of SIGNIFICANTLY more people than Wanda did. Including Wanda!

MoM was a visually entertaining movie, but I can't help but be distracted by just how much Wanda's breakdown is a direct result of pretty much everybody in her life letting her down, INCLUDING STRANGE. He can risk destroying reality because Spider-Man doesn't like being a celebrity, but he can't bother checking in on the obviously magical, superpowered Avenger who caused a massive reality-rewriting incident and clearly needed help? Wong couldn't spare a single person from Kamar-Taj to investigate? None of the Avengers heard about what happened and cared enough to check in on her, or send someone to? But then, it seems none of them bothered to be there for her when/after Vision died, so I guess that's just par for the course.

Wanda is a tragic person that was let down by everyone at every stage in her life and became a monster in an attempt to seek some form of happiness. Her being a villain in MoM makes sense, but she only became a villain because literally every MCU hero and institution that knew her did nothing to help her before things got to that point.


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## Mannahnin (Jul 6, 2022)

All true, though to reiterate, the Wandavision incident happened over a pretty brief period of time, and almost immediately after the reversal of the snap.  The world's population had just doubled again, with all kinds of chaos and confusion, which makes for a reasonable circumstance under which said heroes and institutions could have missed it until it was over.  

Yes, ideally Wong or someone should have tracked her down to follow up on it, but it's not straining credibility too much for them not to have been able to, especially if she was using her powers consciously and deliberately to hide.


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## Thomas Shey (Jul 6, 2022)

Hussar said:


> When she learns that she has just mentally and physically abused hundreds of children for weeks, she shows zero remorse. She does nothing to fix what she’s done. She just walks away, and cuddles up with the Darkhold.




I will again note the locals made it abundantly clear they wanted _nothing more to do with her_.


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## Thomas Shey (Jul 6, 2022)

Mannahnin said:


> All true, though to reiterate, the Wandavision incident happened over a pretty brief period of time, and almost immediately after the reversal of the snap.  The world's population had just doubled again, with all kinds of chaos and confusion, which makes for a reasonable circumstance under which said heroes and institutions could have missed it until it was over.
> 
> Yes, ideally Wong or someone should have tracked her down to follow up on it, but it's not straining credibility too much for them not to have been able to, especially if she was using her powers consciously and deliberately to hide.




I might buy that they got thoroughly distracted, but as to the latter--Strange was certainly able to find her when he wanted to.


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## Mannahnin (Jul 6, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> I might buy that they got thoroughly distracted, but as to the latter--Strange was certainly able to find her when he wanted to.



I expect by that point she wasn't hiding anymore.


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## Stalker0 (Jul 6, 2022)

BrokenTwin said:


> MoM was a visually entertaining movie, but I can't help but be distracted by just how much Wanda's breakdown is a direct result of pretty much everybody in her life letting her down, INCLUDING STRANGE. He can risk destroying reality because Spider-Man doesn't like being a celebrity, but he can't bother checking in on the obviously magical, superpowered Avenger who caused a massive reality-rewriting incident and clearly needed help? Wong couldn't spare a single person from Kamar-Taj to investigate? None of the Avengers heard about what happened and cared enough to check in on her, or send someone to? But then, it seems none of them bothered to be there for her when/after Vision died, so I guess that's just par for the course.



Its a fair point, even Old Cap (who is still around, just retired) couldn't swing around?

This remains the main issue with hosting a connected universe....Marvel throws in the connection when its convenient, but ignores them even when they are narratively expected. Now its understandable that they can't have all the actors show up all the time, scheduling is hard enough as it is....but there are ways to do it.... body doubles, letters or texts instead of visits...there are ways to show the members still talk to each other beyond the world ending criseses.

One interesting way they could have done it, maybe before Strange finds Wanda he finds her phone, magically breaks into it (you can even have a little joke that instead of Strange casting some massive locator spell he just uses find a phone or some equivalent). There are tons of unread texts from all sorts of people, we get little cameos of Cap or Spiderman or XYZ people reaching out to her, seeing if she's ok. The fact that she hasn't read them shows us how that she has become incredibly isolated. This immediately tells us:

Yes these people are in fact human, and are trying to connect with Wanda and help her.
Wanda has cut herself off from people (a red flag that she is pulling into darker places, but not yet a guarrantee by any stretch).
The whole scene could take 5 minutes, and require 0 additional actors.


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## Rabulias (Jul 6, 2022)

Hawkeye would be the best one to look out for Wanda. Unfortunately, he is presumably dealing with his own trauma and reconnecting with his family during _WandaVision._


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## Rabulias (Jul 6, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> I might buy that they got thoroughly distracted, but as to the latter--Strange was certainly able to find her when he wanted to.



Yeah, as impressive as the reveal of the evil forest was, it was not clear to me _where _that was, and how Strange could miss such a massive corruption (or when he was there, how could he miss the illusion), but I guess it's the old "witchcraft vs sorcery" excuse.


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## Thomas Shey (Jul 6, 2022)

Rabulias said:


> Yeah, as impressive as the reveal of the evil forest was, it was not clear to me _where _that was, and how Strange could miss such a massive corruption (or when he was there, how could he miss the illusion), but I guess it's the old "witchcraft vs sorcery" excuse.




Well, by that point she was certainly powerful enough that you can at least have a premise where her illusions were good enough to fool him (from what we've seen sorcery doesn't seem big into illusions).

But it still comes down to the fact he located her location with its illusion when he wanted to, and I don't think we can play the "now she made herself findable" game because that alone would have made him suspicious when he showed up, which he didn't seem to be.


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jul 6, 2022)

Hussar said:


> The whole point of this discussion was brought about by the idea that people were surprised that Wanda was the villain in MoM.  Sure, you can make the argument for Tragic Hero in WandaVision - I can certainly buy that.  But, it's not much of a step from WandaVision to full on villain IMO.




The big problem with this is not an in-story thing, but rather that Raimi admitted that he never watched all of WandaVision and wrote the script without all the knowledge needed to make a better connection between the two. But then, only those of us who have watched the series even know this problem. For all other other millions and millions who only watch the movies, they know nothing of Westview or Agatha and were probably even more confused by the Darkhold and the children. They only know that Wanda somehow got hold of a book that turned her evil and she is having dreams of another universe where she had kids and now wants them for herself, with the evil from the book driving her to extremes.


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## Older Beholder (Jul 7, 2022)

I thought that in WandaVision her meltdown was caused by the Shield agent showing her Visions body, which is why I didn't consider her a villain in the series. If someone cuts the brakes on your car and you get into a crash, the person that cut the brakes is responsible, not the person driving.

I had no problem with her transition into the Scarlet Witch and thus being the villain in Multiverse of Madness, as she's being taken over by the Darkhold after being treated like a villain most of her life. I thought they did a good job of making the turn understandable and to a degree sympathetic.

Meanwhile, Loki invaded Earth, killed tens of thousands of people and escaped capture only to become a hero. But I've never seen the kind of demands of punishment that people seem to make towards Wanda.


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## Stalker0 (Jul 7, 2022)

The Lizard Wizard said:


> I thought that in WandaVision her meltdown was caused by the Shield agent showing her Visions body, which is why I didn't consider her a villain in the series. If someone cuts the brakes on your car and you get into a crash, the person that cut the brakes is responsible, not the person driving.



If someone cuts you off on the road and stops at a redlight, and then you pull up to them get out of the car, and kill them.....you are guilty of manslaughter. You don't get to kill people because someone made you mad, that's not how things work.


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## Stalker0 (Jul 7, 2022)

The Lizard Wizard said:


> Meanwhile, Loki invaded Earth, killed tens of thousands of people and escaped capture only to become a hero. But I've never seen the kind of demands of punishment that people seem to make towards Wanda.



Loki is in no way a hero to the people of earth. He might be considered a hero to his own people maybe, but at no point has he walked back to Earth and all the earth people are like, "hey Loki welcome back, good to see you."


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## Older Beholder (Jul 7, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> If someone cuts you off on the road and stops at a redlight, and then you pull up to them get out of the car, and kill them.....you are guilty of manslaughter. You don't get to kill people because someone made you mad, that's not how things work.



Killing someone at a traffic light because they cut you off is pretty much murder.
I think my example with the brakes being cut was closer to what happened to Wanda.

People will interpret art in different ways, that's the beauty of it.


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## Thomas Shey (Jul 7, 2022)

The Lizard Wizard said:


> Killing someone at a traffic light because they cut you off is pretty much murder.
> I think my example with the brakes being cut was closer to what happened to Wanda.
> 
> People will interpret art in different ways, that's the beauty of it.




Yeah.  As I said, if you find Wanda operating in anything resembling her right mind for most of Wandavision, we clearly saw different shows (in the sense that our perspective and interpretation is vastly different).


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## Older Beholder (Jul 7, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> Yeah.  As I said, if you find Wanda operating in anything resembling her right mind for most of Wandavision, we clearly saw different shows (in the sense that our perspective and interpretation is vastly different).




Yep, someone's interpretation of art often says as much about them as the art itself.


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## Stalker0 (Jul 7, 2022)

The Lizard Wizard said:


> Killing someone at a traffic light because they cut you off is pretty much murder.
> I think my example with the brakes being cut was closer to what happened to Wanda.



You are basically saying as long as someone makes you feel really really sad and angry, that it gives you license to do torturous things to people. Sorry...that's not how justice works.


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## Older Beholder (Jul 7, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> You are basically saying as long as someone makes you feel really really sad and angry, that it gives you license to do torturous things to people. Sorry...that's not how justice works.




Not at all. 
I'm saying we have different interpretations of what was happening in a TV show. 

For me, the show (WandaVision) was a metaphor for trauma and how it can hurt more than just the person suffering from trauma.


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## Mannahnin (Jul 7, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> You are basically saying as long as someone makes you feel really really sad and angry, that it gives you license to do torturous things to people. Sorry...that's not how justice works.



Not at all.  If someone does something to you that pushes you into a psychotic break, and you hurt other people without being aware of it while out of your rational mind, you bear reduced culpability.

You're still responsible for harm, but less so.

If we're going to talk about justice, mens rea (the intention or knowledge of wrongdoing that constitutes part of a crime, as opposed to the action or conduct of the accused) is an important factor in both ethical and legal judgements.

In the show, Wanda is shown to be unaware of the harm she's causing to the townsfolk until the very end.  She is first apparently unaware that she's doing anything to them at all, and when discordances in her idyllic TV world (reverting to the comforting tropes of her childhood) arise, she pushes them back down, suppressing her own awareness.  When she becomes aware of the full scope of what she's done, and that the victims are in fact aware and experiencing her control and the town as torturous, she expresses shock and horror.  And she does sacrifice her family, to the extent that she had them, to undo the ongoing harm.  A family that clearly has SOME real existence within the boundaries of the Hex, as Vision's independence of mind makes very clear.  They're not mere illusions and pure puppets of her will, though she does repeatedly pull Vision's strings and try to smooth over inconsistencies and breaks in his willingness to conform to her fantasy scenario.

This is in contrast to Agatha and Director Hayward, who are both consciously aware of the harm they cause. Agatha apparently also finding sadistic fun in it, and Hayward having some mix of selfish satisfaction and rationalization that his quest for power and abuse of Wanda are for the greater good.  Both being motivated primarily by the acquisition of power and undeterred by the harm they know they're causing.

Again getting back to justice, I think everyone defending Wanda has acknowledged that she still bears some responsibility for the harm, and to set things right if she can, but the townsfolk made clear that they didn't want anything to do with her.  If you've harmed someone, ethics demand that they get to say whether they accept any apology or act of restitution.  At the end, the actual heroes of the story, Monica, Vision, Jimmy and Darcy, are unable to enforce any kind of punitive consequence on her or force her to get therapy, though they still probably have an incomplete picture of all that's happened.  Monica acknowledges Wanda's sacrifice, probably hoping that Wanda will be able to overcome her trauma and be a hero again, but unable to do anything more to aid that.  And none of them are aware of the Darkhold or what it's going to do.


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## Eric V (Jul 7, 2022)

Mannahnin said:


> *At the end, the actual heroes of the story, Monica, Vision, Jimmy and Darcy, are unable to enforce any kind of punitive consequence on her or force her to get therapy, *though they still probably have an incomplete picture of all that's happened.  Monica acknowledges Wanda's sacrifice, probably hoping that Wanda will be able to overcome her trauma and be a hero again, but unable to do anything more to aid that.  And none of them are aware of the Darkhold or what it's going to do.



"Enforce?"  It's not even _mentioned_.  No one even says "Wanda, you clearly need help."  Nothing.  It's not even on the table.

This is why we hated the ending of Wandavision in our house*: It's all about the trauma, and no mention of a possible way to deal with it; it ends up just being a thing that's there, or "that's just who the character is" or whatever, and no one talks about mental health.  It's why we all rolled our eyes when Monica talks about Wanda's "sacrifice"; why are you framing the one moment Wanda saw reality as a "sacrifice?"

I hate how it seems taboo, even in 2022, to acknowledge that seeking help for mental health is positive.  I would totally watch a show that was about deep character breakthroughs (say, following Doc Samson's superhero-specific psychiatric practice), then more CGI-light festivals.

*Well, other than once again seeing the trope of "woman with awesome power can't control it because mother identity issues."


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## Mannahnin (Jul 7, 2022)

Eric V said:


> "Enforce?"  It's not even _mentioned_.  No one even says "Wanda, you clearly need help."  Nothing.  It's not even on the table.
> 
> This is why we hated the ending of Wandavision in our house*: It's all about the trauma, and no mention of a possible way to deal with it; it ends up just being a thing that's there, or "that's just who the character is" or whatever, and no one talks about mental health.  It's why we all rolled our eyes when Monica talks about Wanda's "sacrifice"; why are you framing the one moment Wanda saw reality as a "sacrifice?"
> 
> I hate how it seems taboo, even in 2022, to acknowledge that seeking help for mental health is positive.  I would totally watch a show that was about deep character breakthroughs (say, following Doc Samson's superhero-specific psychiatric practice), then more CGI-light festivals.



This is a good point.  Considering how central people's trauma issues (Tony's being core to most of the Avengers' stories) have been to the MCU, the fact that they haven't really touched on what heroes SHOULD be doing about them, as opposed to just having them drive drama, seems like a bit of a miss.


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## Stalker0 (Jul 7, 2022)

So we are going round and round at this point because I think we keep losing sight of the original argument that really started this massive debate.

In terms of Wanda's character from Wandavision to MoM, you can interpret it in one of two fundamental ways:

*Continuing the Villainous Trend*: Wanda at the end of Wandavision had already shown a lot of villainous behavior (hurting/torturing people, especially children), and little ultimate remorse. Her shift in MoM to full villain was a "natural" progression of where her character was already going, and the Darkhold just accelerated what was already happening.

OR

*Heel Turn*: Wanda at the of Wandavision was a tragic hero that did terrible things only because of circumstances and trauma. By the end she had recognized her mistakes and had made amends through her own sacrifice, and so was once again back on the heroic path. Her shift in MoM to full villain was "unnatural", and can only be explained as the Darkhold taking more direct control of Wanda.


So which side you choose informs how you see Wanda at the end of wandavision.


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## Blue (Jul 7, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> If someone cuts you off on the road and stops at a redlight, and then you pull up to them get out of the car, and kill them.....you are guilty of manslaughter. You don't get to kill people because someone made you mad, that's not how things work.



Hey, instead of using rhetoric designed to win points your argument can stand on it's own but is a lot more through provoking using what actually happened.

"If someone shows you that they have the body of your loved one and they are butchering it and trying to reanimate it (in a  universe where that is possible) which causes you to have a psychotic episode, you are still responsible for what you did but towards getting correct treatment and making sure you aren't a threat to others, not in a punitive punishment way."


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## Mannahnin (Jul 7, 2022)

I think I'm somewhere in the middle.

Wanda in Wandavision was a tragic/fallen hero, doing a lot of harm unwittingly, not through conscious choice.  When made aware of the problem she stopped harming others, at great cost to herself.  But she had neither the ability to reverse time/actually undo the harm already caused, nor the self-knowledge or resources to properly heal herself. 

I think at the end of Wandavision she had the capacity to either be redeemed fully or fall farther, but the tragedy is that no one was willing or able to step in and intervene to help the former happen.  Instead, the Darkhold was there to help the latter happen. 

She was able to step away from the harm she was causing, but merely removing oneself from a traumatic situation doesn't undo the trauma.  As we saw with Tony before her, it drives the traumatized person to act out in unhealthy ways, harmful to themself and others.  Tony's lack of trust in himself and others led to Ultron, and then to trying to wash his hands of it by handing responsibility over to the government, and projecting his own issues onto everyone else.

I generally think her fall into villainy makes perfect sense given the overall picture and viewer knowledge of what the Darkhold is and does. 

I do agree with the folks in this discussion who think the character arc as shown to the audience from Wanda's appearances in the MCU has a significant bobble between Wandavision and MoM.  I think Raimi's reported failure to finish Wandavision is likely a big part of that.  I would expect that if the ending of the TV show had been better integrated with the movie, it would have felt smoother.  But even just the larger narrative decision to put so much of the story of Wanda and her kids in a Disney+ TV show and expect the audience to be familiar with it feels like a bit of a misstep.

I appreciate that so much of the MCU has been rooted in quasi-realistic character motivations rooted in relatively thoughtful portrayals of characters responding to personal trauma.  I think it's led to some good drama and great melodrama, and is very true to the legacy of Marvel comics trying to ground their heroes a bit in having relatable personal issues and flaws.  I think Eric's got a good point that it would be nice if at some point more of these traumatized heroes actually got some help/counseling. 

Although reflecting on it a bit, the MCU hasn't been entirely devoid of this.  Now that I think about it, that's yet another reason why Captain America: The Winter Soldier was so damn good.  We actually see Cap in a support group, if not in individual counseling.  Falcon & Winter Soldier also has Bucky in therapy.  I'm trying to remember- is there some reference to or appearance of grief or other counseling in Endgame as well?


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## billd91 (Jul 7, 2022)

Mannahnin said:


> Although reflecting on it a bit, the MCU hasn't been entirely devoid of this.  Now that I think about it, that's yet another reason why Captain America: The Winter Soldier was so damn good.  We actually see Cap in a support group, if not in individual counseling.  Falcon & Winter Soldier also has Bucky in therapy.  I'm trying to remember- is there some reference to or appearance of grief or other counseling in Endgame as well?



In Endgame, Cap is leading sessions about people moving on with their lives 5 years after the blip. I think that's the support group you're thinking of with him. Otherwise, it was Falcon leading the group sessions in Winter Soldier.

So, yes, they do incorporate it. But I do also notice that they are more focused on the semi-mundane characters rather than the weirdly powered ones. So that's an interesting contrast, and maybe one worth pursuing further as a topic for Marvel to explore in the MCU. It would be a way to re-incorporate Doc Samson as a character, at the very least.


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## Stalker0 (Jul 7, 2022)

Mannahnin said:


> I think at the end of Wandavision she had the capacity to either be redeemed fully or fall farther, but the tragedy is that no one was willing or able to step in and intervene to help the former happen.  Instead, the Darkhold was there to help the latter happen.



So between the time Wanda has her full on break (aka Wandavision) and reading the darkhold, I don't know if there was really a chance to intervene. I mean Wanda beats up Sword, beats Agatha, takes the book and leaves. She really doesn't hang around as far as we can tell, she pretty much immediately goes into an isolated area and starts reading the evil book. This is one reason I'm not on board with the idea that "Wanda let everyone go and so is back on the heroic path". I mean the very last thing we see in Wandavision is Wanda has literally gone from torturing people to isolating herself and reading a dark book.... its hard to argue that she is trying to go down any redemptive path there.


Now an outstanding question is, was anyone helping her before the break? We certainly don't see anyone helping her which is not great, and is certainly a tragedy and a pretty damning criticism of her fellow avengers.


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## Mannahnin (Jul 7, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> So between the time Wanda has her full on break (aka Wandavision) and reading the darkhold, I don't know if there was really a chance to intervene. I mean Wanda beats up Sword, beats Agatha, takes the book and leaves. She really doesn't hang around as far as we can tell, she pretty much immediately goes into an isolated area and starts reading the evil book. This is one reason I'm not on board with the idea that "Wanda let everyone go and so is back on the heroic path". I mean the very last thing we see in Wandavision is Wanda has literally gone from torturing people to isolating herself and reading a dark book.... its hard to argue that she is trying to go down any redemptive path there.
> 
> 
> Now an outstanding question is, was anyone helping her before the break? We certainly don't see anyone helping her which is not great, and is certainly a tragedy and a pretty damning criticism of her fellow avengers.



Well, she'd shown that she didn't want to hurt any innocents, and was willing to sacrifice her own happiness to try to prevent that, which seems like a good demonstration that her heart's fundamentally in the right place.

But yeah, I agree that she never actually gets back on the heroes' path.  She takes the book and goes to study it with, it seems, the idea of learning to control her powers better, but the final scene of her with it indicates that it's already turning her to obsessing over her "lost" children. 

I think I'd want to review Endgame, at least, before deciding how damning her being left alone is to the other Avengers.  Circumstantially my recollection is that none of them may have been in a good spot either.  Especially since she was dust for 5 years and none of them seemed to have a really strong relationship with her.  To some extent she and Vision seemed to kind of isolate a bit.  Cap or Black Widow seem like the ones who'd be best equipped to help her, of the ones who survived the snap.  Maybe Hulk?


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## Stalker0 (Jul 7, 2022)

So if we look at Endgame after the snap is undone.... last we see of Wanda she is at Tony's funeral. In terms of those best positioned to help her.

*The Best*

Old Cap: Seems to have some time on his hands, has a pretty strong relationship with Wanda, is always looking after this teammates. Cap seems the most likely to be reaching out to Wanda, it would actually be exceptionally weird if he didn't (unless the last scene we have of him is basically shortly before his death, aka that was his last hurrah).
Falcon: Worked with Wanda pretty closely when they all worked for Shield, is in a pretty stable place after Endgame, also has a good heart and is used to helping people through tragegy and grief. Sam seems a very strong candidate for helping Wanda.
Hawkeye: Clearly going through some things, but at least has his family back so is in a much happier place. I could see that he wouldn't be the most available for Wanda, but I would imagine at least a phone call or something to check on her considering their connection.
*Decent*

Ukoye: Her and Wanda fought in the battle of Wakanda, and Wanda saved her life. Nothing like that to form a strong bond. Now I don't know Ukoye enough to know how "emotionally supportive" she is, but she at least would have a connection with Wanda.
Banner: Banner didn't necessarily know Wanda that well, but he did know Vision, and might at least feel partially responsible as his creator. So he might feel some responsibility to look in on Wanda. He at least is probably one of the best well off after Endgame, and would have the time.


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## Rabulias (Jul 7, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> So if we look at Endgame after the snap is undone.... last we see of Wanda she is at Tony's funeral. In terms of those best positioned to help her.



A good analysis. Some additional thoughts to excuse the other Avengers: Hulk had his injuries from undoing the snap to heal up, and he had to rebuild the time machine to uphold his promise to return the Infinity Stones to their rightful place in time. In preparing for that mission, Cap probably was doing some soul searching and coming up with his plan to stay in the past, so he may have been a bit distracted.

Sam is a strong candidate with his background in recognizing the need for and providing support for those recovering from mental/emotional/physical trauma, as well as serving with her in the Avengers and later on the run after _Captain America: Civil War_. I can't come up with a good reason why he would not look her up.


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## billd91 (Jul 7, 2022)

Rabulias said:


> Sam is a strong candidate with his background in recognizing the need for and providing support for those recovering from mental/emotional/physical trauma, as well as serving with her in the Avengers and later on the run after _Captain America: Civil War_. I can't come up with a good reason why he would not look her up.



You don't need to. The assumption in the genre is pretty much there's always something going on somewhere that gives heroes plenty to keep them busy (Captain Marvel even explicitly states it in Endgame when confronted). If they don't appear in a story, it's not because they were sitting on their butts and are unsympathetic. It's because there are other things going on that have their attention. And post blip restoration? There would have been *a lot* going on.


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## Rabulias (Jul 7, 2022)

billd91 said:


> You don't need to. The assumption in the genre is pretty much there's always something going on somewhere that gives heroes plenty to keep them busy (Captain Marvel even explicitly states it in Endgame when confronted). If they don't appear in a story, it's not because they were sitting on their butts and are unsympathetic. It's because there are other things going on that have their attention. And post blip restoration? There would have been *a lot* going on.



Oh yeah, I am down with the comic book logic, and the weeks after the Blip are likely filled to the brim with stuff to do.


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## Enevhar Aldarion (Jul 7, 2022)

While there is not a lot of evidence one way or the other, I have decided to treat the Scarlet Witch energy the same as the Phoenix Force, as there are times when it seems to be in control of Wanda, rather than Wanda controlling her powers. I also think we discussed this possibility some in the WandaVision thread, as at the time, it seemed Marvel would not get control of the X-Men back and they made Scarlet Witch into the MCU version of the Phoenix Force. The death of 616-Wanda in this movie may support that, as there was that flash of light at the moment Wanda would have been crushed to death and could have been the Scarlet Witch leaving her, to go find another person to inhabit and empower. Anyway, when the Phoenix Force is in full control of Jean Grey, or others, are they held responsible for what is done during those times? And if these were set up to be similar, why would Wanda be held responsible for acts committed when she is being controlled by the Scarlet Witch force? Because that is what it feels like happened in Westview. She had her emotional break and the Scarlet Witch took over and remade the town and residents without Wanda's conscious knowledge of it.


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## billd91 (Jul 7, 2022)

Rabulias said:


> Oh yeah, I am down with the comic book logic, and the weeks after the Blip are likely filled to the brim with stuff to do.



Plus, all the rumination about whether someone should have been closer or done something before all hell broke loose is something done *afterwards* to give other characters their suitably self-reflective drama moments in the comics. So now one dramatic story that will consume multiple pages of panels really generates two or more depending on how many other characters are beating themselves up over it later. 
Superhero comics aren't just modern mythology, they're also soap operas.


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## Staffan (Jul 7, 2022)

billd91 said:


> In Endgame, Cap is leading sessions about people moving on with their lives 5 years after the blip. I think that's the support group you're thinking of with him. Otherwise, it was Falcon leading the group sessions in Winter Soldier.
> 
> So, yes, they do incorporate it. But I do also notice that they are more focused on the semi-mundane characters rather than the weirdly powered ones. So that's an interesting contrast, and maybe one worth pursuing further as a topic for Marvel to explore in the MCU. It would be a way to re-incorporate Doc Samson as a character, at the very least.



There was also the framing device for Iron Man 3, which is Tony telling Bruce about his issues and Bruce first nodding off and then telling him that he's not that kind of doctor.


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## pukunui (Jul 7, 2022)

Let’s not forget about _Moon Knight_, which also shows a superhero dealing with trauma (and resolving at least some of it).


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## Thomas Shey (Jul 7, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> So we are going round and round at this point because I think we keep losing sight of the original argument that really started this massive debate.
> 
> In terms of Wanda's character from Wandavision to MoM, you can interpret it in one of two fundamental ways:
> 
> ...




I still maintain "active and ongoing corruption" rather than "active control" is the proper model for what we saw there.  That is to say, the Darkhold actively playing on Wanda's worse angels until we arrived where we did.  Its not the book telling her to do things she didn't want to do; its it convincing her that _things she wanted to do but were not okay _were justified, and reinforcing it magically.  Those are not identical things, because the latter compromises but does not eliminate her volition (which the end of the movie shows).


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## Thomas Shey (Jul 7, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> So between the time Wanda has her full on break (aka Wandavision) and reading the darkhold, I don't know if there was really a chance to intervene. I mean Wanda beats up Sword, beats Agatha, takes the book and leaves. She really doesn't hang around as far as we can tell, she pretty much immediately goes into an isolated area and starts reading the evil book. This is one reason I'm not on board with the idea that "Wanda let everyone go and so is back on the heroic path". I mean the very last thing we see in Wandavision is Wanda has literally gone from torturing people to isolating herself and reading a dark book.... its hard to argue that she is trying to go down any redemptive path there.




I think its a grey area.  Obviously, staying away from the dark magic book would be a better idea--but at that point she also knows ignoring the unknowns in her powers is not a great idea either, and to the best of her knowledge, the Darkhold may be the best source of information about how to manage them.

Keep in mind, again, while she knows its a book of dark magic, she does not know about the specifically corrupting elements of it; that's something I think people tend to project on her because we have a privileged frame of reference and know more about it than she does.  Even Strange doesn't know about that until Wong tells him about it.



Stalker0 said:


> Now an outstanding question is, was anyone helping her before the break? We certainly don't see anyone helping her which is not great, and is certainly a tragedy and a pretty damning criticism of her fellow avengers.




I think the weakest part of the movie, though one that can be rationalized, is that after the Return, everyone seems to have kind of gone their own way.


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## Thomas Shey (Jul 7, 2022)

Mannahnin said:


> I think I'd want to review Endgame, at least, before deciding how damning her being left alone is to the other Avengers.  Circumstantially my recollection is that none of them may have been in a good spot either.  Especially since she was dust for 5 years and none of them seemed to have a really strong relationship with her.  To some extent she and Vision seemed to kind of isolate a bit.  Cap or Black Widow seem like the ones who'd be best equipped to help her, of the ones who survived the snap.  Maybe Hulk?




That's largely the issue where you can rationalize it I think.  Nat's gone; Steve's effectively gone; and Clint's tied up with reconnecting with his family.  Its not even clear who's running the Avengers after the Return.  Like you said, Bruce maybe?  But as noted, Bruce isn't the best person to think in those terms either.  Sam would be a good candidate, but I think the whole shield thing through him completely off balance.  That leaves, who?
That's one of the ways you can work through this; the Avengers are in serious disarray after the Return, and its not clear how many are thinking in terms of the rest of the group instead of their own stuff at that point.


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## Thomas Shey (Jul 7, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> So if we look at Endgame after the snap is undone.... last we see of Wanda she is at Tony's funeral. In terms of those best positioned to help her.
> 
> *The Best*
> 
> Old Cap: Seems to have some time on his hands, has a pretty strong relationship with Wanda, is always looking after this teammates. Cap seems the most likely to be reaching out to Wanda, it would actually be exceptionally weird if he didn't (unless the last scene we have of him is basically shortly before his death, aka that was his last hurrah).




Or possibly him leaving the planet.  Notice you see know sign of interaction with him post that scene from Falcon and the Winter Soldier.  We don't know what happened with him, but he clearly seems out of play.



Stalker0 said:


> Falcon: Worked with Wanda pretty closely when they all worked for Shield, is in a pretty stable place after Endgame, also has a good heart and is used to helping people through tragegy and grief. Sam seems a very strong candidate for helping Wanda.




Except, of course, we see him thrown off kilter by the whole shield thing, and sometime after that immediately was being deployed to solve problems (though its unclear by whom).



Stalker0 said:


> Hawkeye: Clearly going through some things, but at least has his family back so is in a much happier place. I could see that he wouldn't be the most available for Wanda, but I would imagine at least a phone call or something to check on her considering their connection.




Assuming he had any way to reach her and she was responding.  Given her situation at that time, that seems a big if.



Stalker0 said:


> *Decent*
> 
> Ukoye: Her and Wanda fought in the battle of Wakanda, and Wanda saved her life. Nothing like that to form a strong bond. Now I don't know Ukoye enough to know how "emotionally supportive" she is, but she at least would have a connection with Wanda.




Probably waaaay too tied up with Wakandan problems at that point if I had to guess.



Stalker0 said:


> Banner: Banner didn't necessarily know Wanda that well, but he did know Vision, and might at least feel partially responsible as his creator. So he might feel some responsibility to look in on Wanda. He at least is probably one of the best well off after Endgame, and would have the time.




He's the best argument, but Bruce has tended to be a somewhat distant guy in many ways; and if anyone was trying to manage the remained of the Avengers in general, I can't think who if not him.


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## Thomas Shey (Jul 7, 2022)

Rabulias said:


> Sam is a strong candidate with his background in recognizing the need for and providing support for those recovering from mental/emotional/physical trauma, as well as serving with her in the Avengers and later on the run after _Captain America: Civil War_. I can't come up with a good reason why he would not look her up.




Its a point, but we don't have a good time frame, and she may well have indicated she wanted to be alone to process for a while.


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## Thomas Shey (Jul 7, 2022)

Staffan said:


> There was also the framing device for Iron Man 3, which is Tony telling Bruce about his issues and Bruce first nodding off and then telling him that he's not that kind of doctor.




And notably, this was with Tony who Bruce was probably closest with of all the Avengers other than Nat.


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## Staffan (Jul 7, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> He's the best argument, but Bruce has tended to be a somewhat distant guy in many ways; and if anyone was trying to manage the remained of the Avengers in general, I can't think who if not him.



MCU Bruce does not seem like a particularly forward-thinking guy. Put a problem in front of him, particularly a science problem, and he'll focus on it and Get It Done. But he doesn't look at the horizon and think "What's out there? What is happening now that may have ramifications later, and is there a way I can deal with that at the easy early stage instead of the late difficult one?"

I'm also not sure when in the timeline the She-Hulk TV series is going to be. I'm guessing it's going to be before Shang-Chi, as Emil Blonsky appears to be a free man in Shang Chi and defending him in court is one of the plot points in She-Hulk. But if Bruce is busy helping his cousin adjusting to her gamma-powered self, that provides a reason for him not checking in on Wanda.

Another thing: we don't know to what degree the events of Westview were public. I can definitely see the government trying to keep their botched operation hush-hush, and thus not tell anyone in a position to do anything for Wanda about it.


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## trappedslider (Jul 7, 2022)




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## Thomas Shey (Jul 7, 2022)

Staffan said:


> Another thing: we don't know to what degree the events of Westview were public. I can definitely see the government trying to keep their botched operation hush-hush, and thus not tell anyone in a position to do anything for Wanda about it.




Always an argument, especially since the people most plugged into Alternate Information Sources are either dead, retired or semi-retired.  Knowing how things go, _Zemo_ probably knows more about it than any of the current Avengers.


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## Rabulias (Jul 8, 2022)

Staffan said:


> I'm also not sure when in the timeline the She-Hulk TV series is going to be. I'm guessing it's going to be before Shang-Chi, as Emil Blonsky appears to be a free man in Shang Chi and defending him in court is one of the plot points in She-Hulk.



I think Wong returned Blonsky to his cell in The Raft after their fight. The Marvel films and Disney+ TV shows generally happen in order of release, except for notable exceptions like _Captain America: The First Avenger,_ _Captain Marvel_, and _Black Widow_.


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## Hussar (Jul 8, 2022)

The Lizard Wizard said:


> /snip
> 
> Meanwhile, Loki invaded Earth, killed tens of thousands of people and escaped capture only to become a hero. But I've never seen the kind of demands of punishment that people seem to make towards Wanda.



Umm, wasn't he imprisoned for life?  Had Thor Dark World not happened, Loki would still be in prison.


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## Older Beholder (Jul 8, 2022)

Hussar said:


> Umm, wasn't he imprisoned for life?  Had Thor Dark World not happened, Loki would still be in prison.




That's the thing, he escapes and is now in his own series saving the universe as a hero etc... and I've never seen anyone complain about him not getting punished the way they have with Wanda. But I guess it's still unclear what his actions at the end of Loki the TV show will result in, I recently saw that they're currently filming season 2 so hopefully it's not too long before we find out.

Either way I'm happy to withdraw the comment, it's getting a bit off topic at this point.


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## Paul Farquhar (Jul 8, 2022)

The Lizard Wizard said:


> That's the thing, he escapes and is now in his own series saving the universe as a hero etc... and I've never seen anyone complain about him not getting punished the way they have with Wanda. But I guess it's still unclear what his actions at the end of Loki the TV show will result in, I recently saw that they're currently filming season 2 so hopefully it's not too long before we find out.
> 
> Either way I'm happy to withdraw the comment, it's getting a bit off topic at this point.



Loki seems to feel that being forced into the role of villain is itself a form of karmic punishment.


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## Older Beholder (Jul 8, 2022)

Paul Farquhar said:


> Loki seems to feel that being forced into the role of villain is itself a form of karmic punishment.




He'd probably feel the same about being forced into the role of hero as well.


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## Hussar (Jul 8, 2022)

The Lizard Wizard said:


> That's the thing, he escapes and is now in his own series saving the universe as a hero etc... and I've never seen anyone complain about him not getting punished the way they have with Wanda. But I guess it's still unclear what his actions at the end of Loki the TV show will result in, I recently saw that they're currently filming season 2 so hopefully it's not too long before we find out.
> 
> Either way I'm happy to withdraw the comment, it's getting a bit off topic at this point.



Well, to be fair, Wanda's story is a straight up tragedy.  There is no redemption arc here because it is a tragedy.  That's the point of a tragedy really.  Everyone is right.  There were multiple points where Wanda could have been stopped or stopped herself.  But, because of her pain, she makes many bad decisions, and ultimately, these bad decisions result in her death.  

Not every story has to be a redemptive arc, IMO.  We got that in Tony Stark and in Black Widow/Natasha.  Loki is apparently going in a couple of directions, so, I'm not quite sure where they're going to end up there.  But, sometimes, a tragedy is a tragedy.  It's a cautionary tale.  Reach out to those in pain and you can stop the cycle of destructive behavior.  It's not a bad message at the end of the day, IMO.  

I guess that's why I don't really have an issue with Wanda going full on villain in MoM.  It's a pretty clear (at least I think it is) story arc - attempted redemption, but, eventually spiraling into self-destruction caused by pain and trauma.  Not every story has to have a happy ending does it?


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## Stalker0 (Jul 8, 2022)

One thing my friend pointed out, saying Wanda "sacrificed her happiness" is a bit like saying a bank robber "sacrificed their happiness" by giving up all the money they stole after they got caught.

Now in Wanda's case its a much more emotional scenario, but again it doesn't forgive the crime.

As for Loki, the reason no one is questioning it is....Loki did get punished. he was convicted and thrown in jail, and if he were to wind up on earth and earth officials had their way, he would get thrown right back in jail. Loki is only free because he escaped (aka he is an escaped convict). So we have seen society at least attempt to punish Loki for his crimes, but Wanda was not.

Now I think a much more fair comparison is Tony Stark. Realistically, Tony should have been MUCH more culpable for his creation of ultron, and realistically some form of prison time was likely in the cards. The fact that Tony not only escaped all real culpability, but ultimately was seen as a hero across the world.... could be seen as a slap in the face compared to how Wanda's being treated. To me though, that is just more how rich and famous people can get away with things the rest of us can't.... the fact that a rich and famous person was probably able to buy justice and then use PR to make themselves look good again in the eyes of the public....well that's all too realistic.

Also, when people die saving the world....a lot gets forgiven. I mean if Wanda had died saving the world instead of cleaning up her own mess, she might have gotten to go out as a hero as well.


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## Mannahnin (Jul 8, 2022)

I'm with you on basically all of that except the first paragraph.  However she did it, she somehow conjured a functionally real family, with apparent independence of mind and will.  Those are people she loved, one of whom she had previously already been forced to kill, not the proceeds of a robbery.


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## Eric V (Jul 8, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> Now I think a much more fair comparison is Tony Stark. Realistically, Tony should have been MUCH more culpable for his creation of ultron, and realistically some form of prison time was likely in the cards. The fact that Tony not only escaped all real culpability, but ultimately was seen as a hero across the world.... could be seen as a slap in the face compared to how Wanda's being treated.



Oh my GOSH, yes.  How Stark and Banner didn't end up in front of an international court I have no idea.  #Zemowasright


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## Thomas Shey (Jul 8, 2022)

Stalker0 said:


> Also, when people die saving the world....a lot gets forgiven. I mean if Wanda had died saving the world instead of cleaning up her own mess, she might have gotten to go out as a hero as well.




I think this understates what she did.  She got rid of that damned book _everywhere in the multiverse_.  While not in the weight class of what Stark did, that's well beyond "fixing her own mess".


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## Thomas Shey (Jul 8, 2022)

Eric V said:


> Oh my GOSH, yes.  How Stark and Banner didn't end up in front of an international court I have no idea.  #Zemowasright




It wouldn't have gone anywhere.  For all their contribution to that, at the point they last were involved they were doing what they had every reason to assume was an experiment in using the Mind Stone's code to see if it could be used to create an advanced AI.  And it was under supervision by Jarvis, and still theoretically contained.

I mean, you can make an argument that taking even more care would have been warranted given the origin of the code, but welcome to superhero universes; science projects by the well meaning getting out of hand is kind of part of the brand.


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## Blue (Jul 8, 2022)

Enevhar Aldarion said:


> While there is not a lot of evidence one way or the other, I have decided to treat the Scarlet Witch energy the same as the Phoenix Force, as there are times when it seems to be in control of Wanda, rather than Wanda controlling her powers. I also think we discussed this possibility some in the WandaVision thread, as at the time, it seemed Marvel would not get control of the X-Men back and they made Scarlet Witch into the MCU version of the Phoenix Force. The death of 616-Wanda in this movie may support that, as there was that flash of light at the moment Wanda would have been crushed to death and could have been the Scarlet Witch leaving her, to go find another person to inhabit and empower. Anyway, when the Phoenix Force is in full control of Jean Grey, or others, are they held responsible for what is done during those times? And if these were set up to be similar, why would Wanda be held responsible for acts committed when she is being controlled by the Scarlet Witch force? Because that is what it feels like happened in Westview. She had her emotional break and the Scarlet Witch took over and remade the town and residents without Wanda's conscious knowledge of it.



For me, this takes away from both WandaVision and MotM, while adding very little since I don't think it needs it.

In WandaVision, Wanda is raw with just having killed Vision, and then having it still be for naught.  Remember, that happened literally seconds before the blip.  She is emotional fragile, raw, angry - including at herself, irrational.  In this she is pushed by the intentional actions of SWORD with butchering and attempting to reanimate the body of her beloved.  She Gets out of there but when she sees the partial house they were to live together in, it becomes an anchor for her delusional retreat.  At this point there is no need for a Phoenix Force like control, and having it just diminishes the power of her grief.

At the end of WandaVision when she realizes what is happening she is able to put aside her family - kill Vision _again_ as well as her real-to-her children.  And remember what we learned in MotM - your dreams are things from other versions of you across the multiverse.  So those are analogs of her real children.  Yet she is able to put them aside and release the town.  It's not a struggle of her vs. a P.F., it a struggle against herself and also Agatha, who wants the power for her own.

In MotM, she has a disturbingly different bent.  She's attempting to be reasonable, which requires one person dies so she can be reuinted with her children.  But it still is intentional killing.  That's not the same Wanda as from WandaVision.  Trying to say the same force was on her in both weakens it as it very obviously is manifesting in different ways (conscious v.s subconscious) with different levels of intentional harm.  The change in behavior and the explained corruption influence fit hand in hand and don't need any additional explanation.  Considering what it has done to the various Doctors Strange with little or lots of exposure it makes perfect sense.


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## Blue (Jul 8, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> [Potential Avengers to talk to Wanda snipped]



Just one other person who watches over everybody.  Nick Fury.  He kept track of Banner when he was on the run before Avengers, including keeping others off him.  He's the type to follow up, that's his MO.  Though that doesn't mean it's going to be a friendly "how ya doin'?".


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## Blue (Jul 8, 2022)

The Lizard Wizard said:


> That's the thing, he escapes and is now in his own series saving the universe as a hero etc... and I've never seen anyone complain about him not getting punished the way they have with Wanda. But I guess it's still unclear what his actions at the end of Loki the TV show will result in, I recently saw that they're currently filming season 2 so hopefully it's not too long before we find out



Loki is being celebrated as a hero by the viewers in the TV show.  But really, he's just the protagonist (see the earlier confusion in this thread between antagonist and villain), and he's not stopping the pruning for some grand heroic gesture for the people.  He's doing it because it will save his life with the TSA coming after him, and also because it doesn't fit his mental picture of how the universe works so it's abhorrent to him.  Regardless if he is doing _good_ (or not), he's not doing anything _heroic_ which takes intent.


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## Thomas Shey (Jul 9, 2022)

Blue said:


> Just one other person who watches over everybody.  Nick Fury.  He kept track of Banner when he was on the run before Avengers, including keeping others off him.  He's the type to follow up, that's his MO.  Though that doesn't mean it's going to be a friendly "how ya doin'?".




Its entirely possible that pretty early on he was offworld.  We probably won't know until Secret Invasion.


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## Thomas Shey (Jul 9, 2022)

Blue said:


> Loki is being celebrated as a hero by the viewers in the TV show.  But really, he's just the protagonist (see the earlier confusion in this thread between antagonist and villain), and he's not stopping the pruning for some grand heroic gesture for the people.  He's doing it because it will save his life with the TSA coming after him, and also because it doesn't fit his mental picture of how the universe works so it's abhorrent to him.  Regardless if he is doing _good_ (or not), he's not doing anything _heroic_ which takes intent.




I dunno.  I think there's also elements of his deciding that annihilating whole timeslines full of people just because you think its The Greater Good started to bother him too.  Much as he's an arrogant nit, that's getting into Thanos levels of destroying the village to save it, and I think that's a bit much for him.


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## Paul Farquhar (Jul 9, 2022)

You could make a case for the Loki TV series as being about order V chaos rather than good V evil, with Loki batting for team chaos.


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## pukunui (Jul 9, 2022)

While I still think there are some underlying issues with this movie, I enjoyed it more on a second viewing.


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## Mannahnin (Jul 11, 2022)

Eric V said:


> Oh my GOSH, yes.  How Stark and Banner didn't end up in front of an international court I have no idea.  #Zemowasright



Well, that's what the Sokovia Accords represented, right?  The Avengers were operating at their own discretion, but brought together by SHIELD and Nick Fury, with _some _government oversight/monitoring from them.  And with SHIELD and Fury in turn reporting to the World Security Council. The Ultron/Sokovia incident led to an ultimatum to the Avengers, and to all superpowered beings generally, to register and operate only under direct government control.



Blue said:


> Just one other person who watches over everybody.  Nick Fury.  He kept track of Banner when he was on the run before Avengers, including keeping others off him.  He's the type to follow up, that's his MO.  Though that doesn't mean it's going to be a friendly "how ya doin'?".



I had been focusing on folks who hadn't been dusted, personally.  Although I guess it's hard to say whether folks who were or weren't dusted would be in a better position.  Natasha, for example, had five years to think about stuff, but also five years' distance from what happened.  Nick would have it fresh in his mind when he poofed back into existence, so it's as recent a memory for him as it is for Wanda.  But both would be dealing with the chaos of the world's population suddenly (re)doubling.


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