Elizabeth Olsen may—or may not—be done with the Marvel Cinematic Universe for now, but she certainly wasn't delighted with how Wanda Maximoff's story concluded, admitting that due to a lack of communication between two simultaneous projects, she had to personally try and make the distinction more "interesting for her, and the audience."
Olsen's performance in WandaVision was universally acclaimed as she brought Wanda's grief to the surface in a brilliantly written examination of loss and despair, but in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the character suddenly turned into an archetypal Marvel villain—and not even in a good way. In the aftermath, Olsen has admitted that she "doesn't miss" the character.
In a new video feature for Vanity Fair, Olsen sat down to rewatch key moments from her career, but it's her comments about Marvel that are sure to make all the headlines, as she comments on the lack of go-between involving the writers of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and WandaVision, which were filmed at similar times, and having to attempt to tie the two together—except one project was written for her, and the other simply had her in it. In the video, Olsen said:
"It's a similar arc that I had to play in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. There could be parallel stories being told there, of dealing with grief and loss. Well, I proposed that to the writers who wrote Multiverse of Madness. I said 'Do you know what we're doing in WandaVision? Have you seen it?' and no, they had not seen it, because it wasn't finished yet. So I had to try and, I don't know, play it differently, right? I had to attack the same themes in order for it to be interesting for me, I think, and potentially for the audience. I had to come at it from a different point of view so that it wasn't repetitive."
Marvel Studios Handled Wanda Badly
WandaVision was a brilliant piece of writing that took a two-dimensional character in Wanda and fully transformed her into a tragic figure, whose intentions we knew were pure enough but that she had to make people suffer in order to do it, all through her own grief and difficulties. Losing your twin, and the love of your life, while you remain, is always going to take its toll and while we, as the audience, knew Wanda's actions could be seen as reprehensible, we understood them.
All of this was completely underwritten in Multiverse of Madness. What was a subtle shift in Wanda's character gave way to full cartoonish villainy. Wanda had made peace with herself at the end of the series, but by the beginning of Multiverse of Madness, the writers had managed to turn her into something akin to 'what would Galadriel have been like if she'd had Sauron's ring of power?' and as a result, the impact of the character was lost. Additionally, the CGI-heavy ending where a mountain simply collapses on her was not, in any way, befitting of a character who was a key member of the Avengers team that overpowered Thanos in Avengers: Endgame. Wanda was a hero, and the film treated her like she was nothing. She deserved better.
Olsen is expected to return to the role of Wanda Maximoff in the upcoming Disney+ show, Agatha: Coven of Chaos. Given that show is being helmed by Jac Shaeffer, the mind behind WandaVision, hopefully, Wanda gets some redemption. You can check out the full interview with Elizabeth Olsen down below: