No one is allowed to complain about Wanda accidentally enslaving an entire town if they also think that Strange intentionally making a man beat himself for 3 weeks, just for shits and giggles, was a totally okay thing to do
Hmm yes enslaving and torturing an entire town is on the same level as a silly cameo by Ash from the Evil Dead movies
Also he didn’t even do it for three weeks? There’s nothing to suggest that
If I had a nickel for every time Patrick Stewart’s Professor X has been murdered on screen by a red-headed woman who used to be a hero who could read minds a little and had some telekinesis but then gained godlike powers to alter reality at will making her nearly unstoppable and eventually evil, I would have two nickels which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it’s happened twice.
Allow me to write more meta about Stephen being a softie. This is about his and Wanda’s first encounter in the garden. I love how soft he is throughout the whole thing and the fact that he only raises his voice once. But, step by step.
Wanda: “I knew you’d show up sooner or later wanting to discuss what happened at Westview. I made mistakes and people were hurt”
Stephen: “But you put things right in the end and that was never in doubt”
This right there is one of the reasons I love Stephen. He knows what she did and he knows it was wrong, but he doesn’t judge her for her terrible mistake, he waits until she starts explaining herself and while he doesn’t excuse her actions, he puts the focus on her decision in the end, which defines her just as much as her mistakes.
He sees the whole and not just her flaws, and I think that’s beautiful. And so after that he calls her both “an avenger” and “one of the most powerful magic wielders in the planet”.
But of course, she’s lying. The very first thing Stephen says upon seeing the Darkhold is:
“I know the Darkhold corrupts everything and everyone that it touches. I wonder what it’s done to you”.
Still keeping his faith in her. He’s giving her a chance to either explain herself or give enough information so he can make a judgement of the situation. But it’s his reluctance to come to conclusions that I find so alluring. It reminds me of how intently he listened to The Ancient One in DS1 whereas Mordo turned against her pretty much immediately. There’s that side in Stephen where he doesn’t condemn people, not even when they make bad mistakes. He gives them room to talk, explain themselves, and then he acts accordingly.
Wanda: “I’m going to leave this reality and go to one where I can be with my children”
Stephen: “Wanda, your children weren’t real, you created them using magic”.
He says that almost in a whisper, head tilt + looking her straight in the eye. He’s so careful when saying that just so he won’t hurt her. It’s his compassion shining through that I love about that.
But he doesn’t forget that there’s a kid in danger because Wanda is hellbent on killing her, this is the only time during their conversation that Stephen raises his voice at her:
Stephen: “What you’re doing is a flagrant violation of every natural law. If you take that child’s power, she won’t survive”
Wanda: “Her sacrifice would be for the greater good”
Stephen: “Well you can kiss the lunchbox goodbye because that’s the kind of justification our enemies use”.
I like that he says “our” there. It’s clear he still sees her as one of them, one of the good guys, despite her mistakes at Westview, despite her sending a demon after America. He still sees Wanda when he looks at her, even with the suit and the tiara and all that devastation around them.
After the garden he returns to Kamar-Taj and tells the other sorcerers: “Wanda is gone, she has the Darkhold and the Darkhold has her”, but once she reaches the compound he still tries to reason with her: “Wanda you’re justified to be angry, you had to make tough sacrifices”. (It is quite something that this is Stephen saying that, he knows what making sacrifices really means, how much it hurts… and he knows better than anyone else that most of the time no one notices nor acknowledges the sacrifices you make).
The easiest thing would have been to disregard her as being no more than a villain now but he tries again and again and again to reach out to her, he shows kindness and compassion, he tries to be understanding and break through the delusion. It doesn’t work out but he tries… and I love that about him.
I think that’s one of Stephen’s greatest traits (among all other amazing traits because perhaps I’m slightly biased, LOL) is he doesn’t judge people. He even listened to Kaecillius before saying what he did wouldn’t work in the long run. Even when he was annoyed with Tony after getting insulted a few times in Infinity War, he still listened to what he said.
Wong’s little digs at Stephen throughout the whole of Multiverse of Madness about him being the sorcerer supreme and not Stephen are iconic BUT when Stephen bowed to him at the end of the film don’t pretend you didn’t shed even a little bit of a tear
Wanda trying to justify her actions by saying “I’m not a monster, I’m a mother” she’s not even a good mom. honestly. In WandaVision, the twins were babies for at most a few days (unclear with WV time) maybe just a night before she’s trying to use magic to make them stop crying instead of actually figuring out what they need to get them to stop. It’s not clear to me whether the twins aged themselves up the first time or if it was the effect of the Hex, but I think there’s a case to be made that it’s the latter and they became kids so she would have an easier time taking care of them instead of actually putting in the effort to raise them. After Vision tried to leave the Hex, she completely ignored her kids all day, passed them off on Agatha at the first chance, and didn’t do anything or even seem to care at all when Billy tried to tell her about his powers and how they were hurting him.She’d had them for a week at most.
In Multiverse of Madness, yes she is corrupted by the Darkhold. That is a narrative fact and frankly, I don’t think you need to make things up or change the story to make Wanda look bad (she does that on her own). But trying to kill another version of herself to steal children that aren’t hers, and being willing to kill America to do it, is the dark but logical conclusion of the selfish behavior that MCU!Wanda has always had. The Darkhold took that and exaggerated it, but those are the worst traits Wanda’s always had just blown up - she’s selfish, she does whatever she wants to get what she wants, other people pay the consequences, and she’s not even a good mother to make up for it.
