Scarlet Witch is one of Marvel’s most complex characters. Wanda Maximoff first debuted as a member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants before joining the Avengers and becoming a member of the most beloved incarnation of the team. She’s had several changes to her parentage — from Golden Age Marvel characters the Whizzer and Miss America to Magneto to Natalya Maximoff — and has also vacillated back and forth between heroism and villainy. Scarlet Witch has fought her friends in the Avengers numerous times, but the most famous battle against them is her attack on the team in “Avengers Disassembled: Chaos”, a story that saw her attacking the team after learning the truth about her children.
“Avengers Disassembled: Chaos” led to one of the most popular eras of Marvel ever. Scarlet Witch was an extremely important character in the ’00s, and would have been just for her destruction of the old Avengers. However, Scarlet Witch became one of the most hated characters in the Marvel Universe as well, by the X-Men at least, with the ’05 Marvel event comic House of M. Scarlet Witch, at the behest of her brother Quicksilver, created a world where mutants were ascendant while also giving all of her friends and family their heart’s desire. However, it all went pear-shaped at the end and Scarlet Witch decided to depower the entire mutant race with three words, “No more mutants.” This moment changed the tenor of Marvel for years, and many have called out how terrible Scarlet Witch’s actions were. However, looking at the history of the character, it’s pretty easy to see that from her perspective, she was right to do this.
Scarlet Witch Only Wanted the Best for Everyone
To understand why Scarlet Witch made the decision she did, you have to understand the reason behind everything she did. After “Avengers Disassembled: Chaos”, Scarlet Witch was a mess. She had learned her friends had mindwiped her of her children’s existence, and had killed people that she had worked with. She was broken, and this was compounded when Quicksilver learned that the Avengers and the X-Men were considering killing her. He raced to his sister and told her what was happening and then he asked her to fix everything. To make a world where everyone, including the man they thought was their father Magneto, was happy. Scarlet Witch did this.
One of the things that a lot of people forget about House of M is that almost everyone was happy in their lives before they learned the truth. Scarlet Witch created world where the people she cared about the most had a better life than before. Magneto got to rule a world where mutants were not only not in danger, but in charge. Her fellow Avengers and members of the X-Men had their best lives. It wasn’t a perfect world, but Scarlet Witch had done her best to make a world where the people who meant the most to her could be happy. If it wasn’t for Wolverine and Layla Miller, it would have worked too. Scarlet Witch wasn’t being a monster when she made the House of M Earth; she was trying to make the world a better place and bring her family together.
Scarlet Witch has always been a broken person. She didn’t know who her true parents were for ages, and spent years with Magneto as a father figure. She was immensely powerful, and that power broke her mind. By the time of House of M, she was at her lowest ebb, so her solution was to create a world where all of the damage done to her wouldn’t have been done. A world where her father could have been happy, and raised his children in a world that he wanted.
All of that was destroyed by the heroes, and she realized that the thing that had her destroyed her, her family, and the lives of so many was mutation. She did her best to make a better world for mutants and it got thrown in her face. At the place where she was mentally, the only thing for her to do was just throw it all away. In her mind, she tried to make a great world for everyone and no one wanted it. So, she was going to take away the thing that gave her family the most pain. In her admittedly broken mind, mutants were the cause of all of her problems. If she couldn’t make the world better, she was going to stop caring about her friends, and take away the thing that had made her the most miserable. So, she made a fateful decision and committed genocide.
Scarlet Witch Did What She Thought Was Right
I’m not going to mince words — morally, what Scarlet Witch did was not only wrong, but also monstrous. Her solution was akin to wishing there was no more people of any particular ethnicity to fix the immigration system. Mutants definitely died because of her actions, both directly and indirectly. However, looking at where Scarlet Witch was mentally, this was the only solution she could see. She had already tried to give everyone what they wanted. Instead of taking it, they threw it in her face. She was angry, and she blamed the existence of mutants for all of her problems. There’s a lot of truth to this, so she destroyed it all. She took away the thing that made her life harder.
Now, obviously, Scarlet Witch needed therapy more than being a superhero, and she did something that was morally wrong. However, if you look at it through the prisms of her actions, this was the right thing to do. Scarlet Witch built the House of M world to make her family and friends happy. When that failed, she decided to take away the thing that made her unhappy. She cared about herself more than world, which is honestly something she probably should have done years before, albeit in a not so destructive way. Scarlet Witch was right, from a certain point of view, she just went much, much too far.
What do you think of Scarlet Witch’s actions in House of M? Sound off in the comments below.
The post Maybe Wanda Was Right When She Said “No More Mutants” appeared first on ComicBook.com.
