Did you catch that unscripted Scarlet Witch moment in "Doctor Strange in the
Multiverse of Madness"? Keep watching to find out what went down on set,
and why Elizabeth Olsen said she "did not enjoy [it] at all."
Olsen's Scarlet Witch has entered a bit of a dark phase in her MCU character arc.
After losing Vision to the Infinity War-capping struggle against Thanos
and the grueling meditation on grief that was "WandaVision,"
she has achieved full villain status in "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness."
In some sense, this iteration is a return to form for the Sokovian witch. As longtime
fans will surely remember, she began her MCU journey as a dangerous Hydra experiment in the
mid-credits scene in "Captain America: The Winter Soldier." That version of Wanda had completed a
full redemption arc by the time "Infinity War" rolled around, but after the collapse
of her idyllic Hex around Westview, New Jersey, she's arguably more dangerous than ever before.
So it's perhaps unsurprising that the actress behind Scarlet Witch had
trouble filming some of her darker scenes in horror maestro Sam Raimi's
"Doctor Strange" sequel. For Olsen, the issue was organic to the script,
and things got the darkest when she was working with two of her youngest costars.
As the old saying goes, every villain thinks they're the hero of their own story.
The same is true for Wanda as she goes down her dark path in the film.
With her Scarlet Witch powers waxing, she becomes obsessed with seeing her
family again. But once she crosses over into Earth-838, reunites with them,
and gets pelted in the face for her trouble, she starts screaming in "angry mom voice" at her boys.
According to a recent interview with Variety, Olsen admits that while filming,
she got smacked in the face really hard with a prop that the child actors opposite her in
the scene were throwing. It wasn't planned, but the ensuing reaction that injury drew
out of Olsen made the scene all the more intense. Olsen told Variety,
"One of the people that I love — the little people that I love — they were
throwing things at me in the scene, and accidentally smacked my face
really hard. And that was the best reaction. And I felt so bad that I used it as the actor and
let it inform how I responded to these people that I love. Because they were terrified after.
It really was something I did not enjoy at all, but I knew it'd be good for the scene."
For any actor, playing a character like Wanda Maximoff is a major challenge,
because of all the twists and turns in her story.
Before "Doctor Strange 2," Olsen had already taken Wanda through one entire redemption arc.
Coming on the heels of "WandaVision," Wanda is back in full-blown villain mode. For Olsen,
some of Wanda's actions in "Doctor Strange 2" are disturbing, and she
had a difficult time reconciling them with the character she thought she knew.
In the film, Wanda is determined to create a universe where her two boys exist, but
this comes at the cost of having to destroy America Chavez,
a teenage girl with the ability to travel through the multiverses.
"We found a girl who can somehow travel across it, but she's being pursued."
"Pursued by who?"
"Some kind of demon. One that covets her power for itself."
Not only is Wanda willing to send demons after a teenager,
but when Doctor Strange and his fellow wizards try to stop her, things get violent. Wanda wipes out
several of Doctor Strange's fellow wizards, plus an entire superhero team called the Illuminati,
which includes alternate Earth-versions of Dr. Charles Xavier and Captain Carter.
Olsen was troubled when she found out her character was willing to eliminate
anyone who got in her way. In order to deliver her performance,
she had to get into the right mindset. Olsen explained to Variety,
"I just had to buckle down and think, 'All these people are in her way, and
she's warned Doctor Strange not to get in her way.'
And he did. He didn't listen. And so I just had to go from that point of view."
Wanda's heel turn might be familiar to comics readers,
but it's still unsettling — especially for Olsen.
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