MCU keeps making its women dirty

“You break the rules and become a hero,” Wanda Maximoff told Stephen Strange in a strongly memed moment early in Doctor Strange in the multiverse of madness. “I do, I become the enemy … It does not seem fair.”

The self-serving quote from the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe movie does not hold true if you think about it for more than two seconds. It is a false equivalence between two characters who are inherently on equal footing. Wanda selfishly enslaved an entire city, while Stephen Strange sacrificed half the universe in a gambit to save it. Within the framework of the film, her logic does not make sense. But her complaint points to a real trend in the way female characters are treated across the MCU. As a micro-observation it does not work, but at the macro level the connotations point to a problem. While Doctor Strange breaks in a lot of new rules Multiverse of madness and still rising as a hero, Wanda becomes a simplistic villain with one tone – and becomes the latest MCU woman to fall.

[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and MCU movies in general.]

It comes out early Multiverse of madness that Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) is the main villain of the story. In a quest to find a universe in which the children she imagined herself in WandaVision actually exists, she is keen to capture multiverse teenager America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) and steal her powers. Like the villain Scarlet Witch, Wanda has some really scary scenes and more specific motivations than some previous MCU villains. The fact that she’s turning into a villain is not necessarily the problem. But her full leap into evil speaks of an unfortunate trend in how MCUs treat female characters: They are rarely allowed to be the same type of heroic as their male counterparts.

That is slowly changing as new heroes are added to the ever-growing MCU list. But Wanda is the last of Marvel’s Phase 1 and 2 heroines, all of whom met a similarly tragic, disgraceful end. It does not provide a good track record going forward, especially considering how the male heroes from the same era have held up.

I think I’ve seen this movie before

The upcoming MCU lineup has more female heroes than ever before, with HawkeyeKate Bishop, Captain Marvel 2‘s Carol Danvers, and Ms. Marvel‘s Kamala Khan is ready to save the world. But the MCU was not always so spacious. In all two MCU phases, there were only three women suitable for superheroes, non-civilian love interests or other side characters: Natasha Romanoff, Gamora and Wanda Maximoff.

They all have a shady past. All three joined groups that consisted primarily of men. (Natasha was already part of the group when Wanda arrived, but she’s still the one woman among five men.) And while all three had a chance to grow as heroes and become as important to their respective teams as their male counterparts, all three are now dead. (At least the Gamora who underwent character growth died Avengers: Infinity War. Her villainous, still loyal to Thanos, who travels past in time, is still running around. Similarly, it is possible that Wanda only appears to be dead or will be brought back through multiverse magic.)

Yes, Tony Stark also died during his duty, but MCU has a whole legion of white men ready to step in when one of them falls into battle. Even disregarding the sheer census difference, the respective way deaths are treated in the universe is also jarring. When Tony Stark dies, he gets a sacrificial hero sacrifice that saves the world. He gets a big funeral packed with deep-cut Marvel cameos, and the entire MCU feels the effects of his death. Peter Parker spends his next film unpacking Tony’s legacy, being reminded of him every time.

When Natasha Romanoff dies, only Clint and Wanda comment on it along the way Avengers: Endgame. She is largely forgotten by everyone else. Disney Plus’ Hawkeye eventually, Clint gave more room to process that grief, but the only person who shares his feelings is Natasha’s long-lost sister Yelena – a character first introduced after Natasha’s death in her delayed solo film. Granted, it’s not like many of the other heroes who were trapped in battle were given a giant funeral attended by each character on screen, as MCU seems more focused on planning the next thing than on giving characters space to emotional catharsis. But still – only a handful of people mourn one of the original Avengers?

We still do not know the major consequences of Wanda’s and Gamora’s deaths – or whether they are deaths at all. (Although Scarlett Johansson’s messy breakup with Marvel makes her less likely to be resurrected in any way.) But no matter what, they never got the chance to become the same type of heroes as their male counterparts. There is no heroic journey for them, only a tragic ending, often as footnotes in someone else’s story.

WandaVision of it all

This is especially frustrating in Wanda’s case, given how much screen time and attention she has gained compared to MCU’s other female characters. Before Doctor Strange in the multiverse of madnessDisney Plus’ first original series, WandaVision, centered on Wanda, who has taken control of a city and thrown it into an escapist sitcom fantasy. The show ended without Wanda having any consequences for her actions, which some viewers found frustrating.

But in retrospect, the reason Wanda did not deal with the consequences or rectify it WandaVision due to the fact that the series was apparently a villain origin story – although it was unclear at the time because the eternally curving MCU machine relies on it never quite showing its next move. Although Wanda did not give up on her grief during the show, at least it felt as if she had learned not to let it eat away at her and the innocent victims around her. What was the line that love endures, if not the hope that Wanda could recognize that her grief is just love that has nowhere to go?

Because Wanda was the center of the show, and because it focuses so clearly on her pain, she became a sympathetic character – and also the female MCU character with the most dedicated, central screen time. She became a fan favorite. Part of it was the fact that the audience got to know her in a way they never got to know Gamora or Natasha, in a way they have not yet known Carol Danvers or Thor‘s Jane Foster. But part of it is also her feelings of alienation and grief, which appealed to fans who saw themselves in her matches. By the time WandaVision ended, Wanda had become one of the very few female characters in MCU with her own story.

The way she became a villain is not the problem. (Although the fact that she apparently forgets her lost love, Vision, and focuses solely on finding her children, speaks to a stereotype of female characters who only become meaningful and heroic when they act as mothers.) The frustrating part is the fact that she became the only one of the three original MCU female heroes who got a chance to become a worthy hero with a full character arc – and instead she turned into a villain who was to be thwarted. All lessons fans thought they saw her learn at the end of WandaVision turned out to be red herring.

“It does not seem fair,” Wanda tells Doctor Strange, and she’s right. It is not fair that Wanda, Natasha and Gamora all die (or “die”) so that the men around them can get up and soldiers move on. It is not fair that the only one of them has her own story – the story of a lonely woman who tries to understand forces she has never asked for and deals with the grief of losing everything she has ever loved without having any to rely on. – becomes a bad guy, so Doctor Strange may have a reason to jump around in the multiverse.

Future plans for MCU have so far promised to rectify this. Kate Bishop is likely to pick up the Hawkeye cape, while Jane Foster will be the new Thor in Thor: Love and Thunder. Yelena can become a hero yet, and Black Panther‘s Shuri will reportedly be put in focus in the sequel. Carol Danvers is joined by Monica Rambeau and Kamala Khan. Likewise, Ant-Man and the Wasp‘s Hope van Dyne, Thor: Ragnarok‘s Valkyrie, Sort Panther’s Okoye and Nakia, Guardians of the Galaxy‘s Mantis and Nebula, and Eternal“Thena, Sersi and Makkari can eventually get the chance to develop into dynamic heroes. It’s just a shame that the original heroines had to fall for that to happen.