Wanda Maximoff has long been a fan favourite in the Marvel Universe.
Debuting in The X-Men issue 4 back in 1964, Scarlet Witch was inducted as a part of the
Brotherhood of Evil Mutants alongside her twin Quicksilver, but later would become part
of the second incarnation of the Avengers team alongside Quicksilver, Hawkeye and Captain
America himself.
Since, she’s become a character with a very long history, especially in the X-Men and
Avengers narratives, having some of the most traumatic and emotionally straining story
arcs, often pertaining to her control over her powers or her turbulent relationship with
her sometimes-father Magneto.
So today, just like we have with many other comic icons on our channel, we’re taking
a look beyond her Earth 616 self with the top 10 alternate versions of Scarlet Witch!
Let’s jump in!
10 Age of Apocalypse This Earth 295 version of Wanda is a part
of the Age of Apocalypse story arc, where big bad Apocalypse stirs up some trouble,
and there’s a bunch of time travel reality altering.
Scarlet Witch pops into the story in X-Men Chronicles issue 1, which takes place early
on in the war against Apocalypse, where she is a member of the X-Men; a team led by her
father, Magneto.
She dies in battle, but her final request is to ask Rogue to stay close to her father.
Later on, since the story event was quite popular, more stories within that reality
were written, including one that appeared in an issue of Uncanny X-Force, where Jean
Grey decides to clone the deceased Scarlet Witch in an attempt to replicate her powers
and depower mutants on a mass scale, like what happened in House of M. Luckily, that
plan backfires and ends up depowering Jean Grey in the process.
9 Marvel Noir Earth 90214, also known as Marvel Noir, features
a Wanda that doesn’t have powers.
Rather, she’s a wealthy socialite and the daughter of Eric Magnus, the Chief of Detectives,
who is also a powerful leader of a secret criminal society called the Brotherhood.
He also doesn’t have powers.
Anywho, Wanda was fully aware of her father’s interactions with the Brotherhood, and never
looked down upon it, actually calling it wonderful at one point.
Aside from this, she doesn’t do a whole lot much aside from becoming infatuated with
Thomas Halloway, aka Angel in this universe, a great acrobat and detective.
Marvel Noir explores a world in which the regular Earth 616 heroes all debuted back
in the 1920s and 30s, and in present day, many of those heroes are unknown, although
there are some exceptions, including Spider-Man, Daredevil and Luke Cage.
8 Mangaverse – Earth 2301 This version of Wanda belongs to the manga
verse; a reality in the Marvel universe where all the characters are manga-ized, meaning
they look the part, and also have a bunch of characteristics that are more fitting of
that genre.
This Wanda uses a variety of spells that are based in the elements; fire, water, wind and
metal.
In the storylines she appears in, she’s a member of the Avengers who encounters the
Horsemen of Apocalypse, and eventually defeats the villain.
Later, when Doctor Doom crashes a UN meeting, several Avengers members are killed by him,
prompting Wanda to swear vengeance against the villain.
7 MC2 (Earth 982) This version of Scarlet Witch is an older
Wanda, appearing in the A-Next comic.
She had long been in a coma after fighting alongside the Avengers on this Earth to eliminate
a portal to an alternate fascist universe that was ruled by a Doctor Doom who just so
happened to be a nazi.
Her coma was linked to keeping the portal cut off from their own universe.
Loki had captured her, revived her and then proceeded to brain wash her, all in an attempt
to corrupt various heroes in the universe as a means of punishing the Avengers.
Luckily, Wanda broke free of Loki’s brainwashing, and would continue to appear in the Mc2 universe,
although only ,made brief appearances.
6 1602 The 1602 universe takes place in, well, 1602.
Self explanatory, really.
Our present day heroes in this world are in the 17th century.
Wanda is a witchbreed, this universes’ version of a mutant, which were hunted and feared
during the Spanish Inquisition and the Grand Inquisitor, who is this reality’s Magneto.
Wanda is known as Sister Wanda, and works with the Grand Inquisitor alongside her brother
Petro, and is convinced their powers came from god.
Witchbreeds were burned at the stake, and when Sister Wanda is exposed, her brother,
the Grand Inquisitor and her all leave the country, boarding a ship to the new world.
But on the way, their ship is detained by the Inquistor’s long time rival, Carlos
Javier, aka Charles Xavier, and in exchange for the Inquisitor’s help, Javier promises
to train both Wanda and Petro.
5 Marvel Zombies – Earth 2149 Marvel Zombies!
Just like all of the other Marvel characters, Wanda makes an appearance in this universe,
where she’s hunted down and infected by the zombie virus thanks to the Punisher.
In Marvel Zombies 3, she appears as her zombified self, working for Kingpin by manipulating
and using Vision, who at the time was still in love with her.
She comes to an untimely end when she’s decapitated by Machine Man’s chainsaw limb
– yup – and then ripped apart and tossed into a zombie pile.
4 Scarlet Warlock (Earth 127) Scarlet Warlock is, you guessed it, the male
version of Scarlet Witch!
Hailing from Earth 127, where several of the genders of characters have been switched,
Scarlet Warlock was combined with Earth 127’s Wolverine, Magneto, Quicksilver and Mesmero
in order to become a character called Brother Mutant.
This happened when Scarlet Warlock attempted to imbue Magneto with Wolverine’s adamantium
skeleton, inadvertently merging them all into a single being which has all of the abilities
of those five characters.
3 Ultimate Marvel The Ultimate Marvel Wanda is one of the weirder
ones on our list.
This is because she gets it on in an incestuous relationship with none other than her twin
brother.
Her and Quicksilver start off as members of Magneto’s Brotherhood of Mutant Supremacy
but then switch sides, joining up with the Ultimates as a trade off to release Brotherhood
members who have been imprisoned by them.
The two would be a part of the black ops section of the Ultimates.
Later on down the road, an Ultron unit would become obsessed with her, and saw Pietro as
a rival because of this.
This Ultron eventually realized that Wanda would never love him, so he killed her with
a special bullet altered to directly attack her DNA, and afterwards, created android duplicates
of the Ultimates, including one of Wanda, with the intention of being a ‘hero’ to
the android to feel better about itself.
Weird.
Anywho, she eventually returned to the Ultimates universe, first as a figment of Pietro’s
imagination, and then a second time as an illusion once more, which also yet again,
messed with Pietro’s mind big time.
2 Gypsy Witch (Earth 398) Earth 398 was a reality created by Morgan
le Fay, a warped reality set in medieval times in which all of the Avengers believed they
were part of the Queen’s elite guard, the Queen’s Vengeance.
Scarlet Witch’s alternate was known as Gypsy Witch, but unlike all of the other Avengers
who were not privy to the altered clothing, speed patterns and thought processes this
reality distortion caused, her powers allowed her to keep her memories of how reality was
prior to this change.
Because of this, she was imprisoned, but managed to reach out to her Avengers teammates and
unlock their memories, which eventually helped them all shift reality back to normal and
defeat Morgan Le Fay. 1 MCU
The MCU version of Scarlet Witch is played by Elizabeth Olsen.
How is she different than her comic book Earth 616 self?
Well, for starters, thanks to Disney not owning certain rights at the time, Scarlet Witch
isn’t a ‘mutant’.
Rather, she’s depicted as gaining her powers from experimentation on the mind stone, giving
her and her brother Pietro, aka Quicksilver, their powers.
She’s a telepath and telekinetic rather than a sorceress.
The MCU in its early days approached the magic and mystical in a much more ‘scientific
way’; as Thor explains, “your ancestors called it magic, and you call it science.
Well, I come from a place where they’re one and the same thing.”
Much of what the MCU Scarlet Witch does is pull energies from other dimensions in and
organized and purposeful fashion, focusing them to use it in a precise way.
That being said, fans have high hopes for how Wanda will be integrated with the inevitable
introduction of the X-Men into the MCU now that Disney and Marvel Studios have those
sweet, sweet rights to do so.
There we have it friends!
Which of these was your favourite alternate version of Wanda?
Which ones did we not mention that you think should’ve made our list?
Give us a shout in those comments below and let us know!
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