Why Scarlet Witch Is Marvel’s Most Destructive Superhero

The Scarlet Witch might nominally be a superhero, but she’s caused serious damage to the X-Men, Avengers and the Marvel Universe.

Scarlet Witch is the Nexus Being of Earth-616, a powerful sorcerer whose ingrained connection to Chaos Magic makes her one of the Earth’s most potentially dangerous and powerful beings. After debuting as a villain in Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s X-Men #4 in 1963, she’s been crucial to plenty of victories over the years, especially in her capacity as an Avenger.

But the Scarlet Witch also has something of a history of almost dooming the world, with plenty of her attempts to help others only making matters worse. In fact, the Scarlet Witch might be the single most accidentally destructive hero in the Marvel Universe.

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Scarlet Witch Disassembles the Avengers

In Brian Michael Bendis and David Finch’s Avengers Disassembled, the Scarlet Witch regains the memories of her children — who, due to the machinations of her teammates and Agatha Harkness, had been removed from her mind after they were seemingly destroyed. Furious and briefly driven over the edge by the revelation, Scarlet Witch lashed out at her allies and did more damage to the Avengers than perhaps anyone else ever had. She displayed her sheer power throughout the event, creating constructs and altering reality around the heroes. She killed heroes like Scott Lang’s Ant-Man and Hawkeye before being subdued by an army of heroes, Doctor Strange and even Magneto, who quickly relocated her to Genosha in an attempt to help her restore her sanity.

Wanda Makes No More Mutants After Hosue of M

Those events led directly to House of M by Bendis and Olivier Coipel. While the Avengers and X-Men debated the final fate of the Scarlet Witch, Magneto and Charles Xavier tried — and failed — to restore her sanity. Fearful of the heroes finally deciding to kill her, Quicksilver approached her and convinced her to radically alter all of reality, creating a “heaven” timeline where everyone’s happy ending had been achieved. Realizing what had happened, the heroes tried to restore reality. When Magneto learned the truth and came close to murdering Quicksilver in his rage, Scarlet Witch lashed out and caused “Decimation,” which depowered roughly 98% of all mutants in an event that still reverberates through the Marvel Universe and still gives much of the mutant population cause to celebrate her apparent death.

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Scarlet Witch Creates a Nation of Marvel Zombies

Wanda’s lingering guilt over these events spilled over in 2020’s Empyre: X-Men by Jonathan Hickman, Tini Howard and Matteo Buffagni. Deciding to make up for her mistakes, Scarlet Witch tried crafting a spell that could restore the dead population of Genosha. But the spell backfired and instead resurrected them as zombies. Scarlet Witch was forced to turn to an exhausted Doctor Strange for assistance, who proceeded to create a spell to contain the undead. The undead came close to breaching the rest of the world, but the events of Empyre and a battle with the Cotati armies, the forces of Krakoa and the X-Men’s newfound enemies Hordeculture were able to hold the zombie hordes at bay, unaware how close Scarlet Witch had come to destroying the world.

Wanda’s Darkhold Transforms Marvel’s Heroes

Darkhold: Alpha by Steve Orlando and Cian Tormey featured Scarlet Witch experiencing a terrifying vision of Chthon, the source of her power, finally breaching the material world. After realizing this is because Doctor Doom had located and unwittingly unlocked the power of the true Darkhold, Scarlet Witch attempted to contend with the crisis by rallying a team of heroes. Spider-Man, Iron Man, Wasp, Blade, and Black Bolt were summoned, with the promise to be briefly exposed to the Darkhold. However, Scarlet Witch allowed them to witness too much of the energies, f0rcibily corrupting the five and converting them into fearsome new demonic forms that quickly head out to spread chaos across New York City.

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