Scarlet Witch

Scarlet Witch (Wanda Django Maximoff) is a character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby, the character first appeared in The X-Men #4 (March 1964), in the Silver Age of Comic Books. Initially depicted as a mutant with the ability to manipulate probability, the character was later expanded as a powerful sorceress capable of wielding chaos magic and altering the fabric of reality. She is frequently cited as one of the most powerful and influential figures within the Marvel Universe.

Scarlet Witch was originally introduced as an antagonist alongside her twin brother, Quicksilver, as members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Although initially portrayed as an adversary to the X-Men, the character later became a superhero and long-time member of the Avengers, the West Coast Avengers and Force Works. Wanda eventually married the android Vision, and storylines involving their relationship and the magical birth and later loss of their twin sons became major elements of later crossovers such as Avengers: Disassembled and House of M. Her sons, Wiccan and Speed, would later return as teenage heroes.

Throughout Marvel continuity she has also been portrayed as the twin sister of Quicksilver and was long described as the mutant daughter of Magneto and a Romani woman, Magda. Later stories introduced a retcon clarifying that she and her brother were subjects of genetic experimentation by the High Evolutionary, meaning she was never truly a mutant despite earlier “X-gene” tests indicating otherwise. Wanda’s parentage has shifted in different accounts: she was at times said to be the child of the Golden Age heroes Whizzer and Miss America, before later stories established her as the daughter of the Roma sorceress Natalya Maximoff, a previous Scarlet Witch, and the niece of Django Maximoff and Marya Maximoff.

Elizabeth Olsen portrays Wanda Maximoff in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, making the character's live-action debut in Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). She went on to play key roles in Captain America: Civil War (2016), Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019), with her most prominent appearances in WandaVision (Disney+ series; 2021) and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022). The character has also been noted by commentators as one of the most prominent Romani characters in mainstream superhero comics.