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Which Avenger Originally Survived the Snap in ‘Avengers: Infinity War’?

Exactly right!

Wait, you still don’t know the answer? Boy, will your face be red when you realize:

The Scarlet Witch, aka Wanda Maximoff, as played by Elizabeth Olsen, was originally set to survive the snap.

“There was an iteration where Wanda was alive, she hadn’t been blipped,” explained Avengers: Infinity War co-writer Christopher Markus at July’s San Diego Comic-Con.

Markus expounded on that topic recently in an interview with CinemaBlend:

We had a moment where [Scarlet Witch] looked at his [Vision’s] body in a drawer, and it was mainly just maudlin. It was also frankly from a draft where she hadn’t been blipped. Because we had a draft where she survived and was a character in Endgame. The problem was she’d gotten so much mileage and story in the first movie that she didn’t really have anything that equaled that in the second. So it was a step down.

Yes, our red-garbed witch of an Avenger was one of the heroes which the screenwriters originally had survive. They eventually changed this for the sake of the story in Avengers: Endgame, going predominantly with the “original Avengers,” i.e. the characters the audience had known the longest, plus Rocket and Nebula, who had lost the most, as the surviving faction.

But what better subject to talk about this Halloween week than The Scarlet Witch?

The Scarlet Witch was co-created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and appeared alongside her brother, Quicksilver, in Uncanny X-Men #4 as a member of the villainous Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.  She had the unusual ability to cast “hexes” which altered reality. It was later revealed that she was Magneto’s daughter, but that fact, and the fact that she was a mutant, has been completely dropped from the Marvel Cinematic Universe version of the character.

Also note that Wanda wasn’t quite Scarlet yet in those days, at least not on her debut cover.

What did make the transition from comicbooks to films was her relationship with the Vision. It began when The Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver began their rocky path to redemption as members of the Avengers led by Captain America, starting with issue #16, written by Stan Lee, although the full roster of reformed villains, including Hawkeye, wasn’t revealed until the cover of Avengers #18.

A couple years later, Roy Thomas co-created the robotic Vision with artist John Buscema and introduced him into the Avengers comicbook story line. Thomas established that Vision was given the brain patterns of the deceased Simon Williams (who debuted in Avengers #21, known at that time as Power Man and then later as Wonder Man, when Luke Cage took the Power Man moniker for himself).

Simon had strong feelings for Wanda and Vision followed suit. After years of angst, Vision and Scarlet Witch finally fell in love and married, even having twin children, which was later revealed to be the tragic result of altered reality because Wanda wished so deeply to have children.

That was only the beginning of the troubles Wanda’s reality altering abilities would have on the comicbook Marvel Universe, such as the House of M Marvel event, etc.

No doubt a fresh take on some of these stories will be explored in Marvel’s upcoming TV series WandaVision. One of the big questions will be that without the Mind Gem, how can Vision be revived, and whose mind patterns will he have? Will it be another download of the Jarvis entity Tony Stark created in homage to his family’s beloved butler or something entirely different? And will Vision’s love for Wanda be revived? It should be interesting to see how it all plays out.

Neither Markus nor co-writer Stephen McFeely are listed as being writers for the new series, but Jac Schaeffer, who wrote the screenplay for the upcoming Black Widow movie, has been credited with the premiere episode script. What, if any, plans the Avengers screenwriting pair had in mind for Wanda in Endgame might finally manifest in the ongoing television series, or might be dropped entirely.

In addition to appearing in the upcoming Disney+ series WandaVision, the Scarlet Witch will also be seen in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness in 2021.

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