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The Scarlet Witch is a fictional comic book superhero, owned by Marvel Comics. Originally, her mutant ability was to project "hex-spheres" which could change the probability of almost anything happening. Her powers would enhance and grow throughout her career, until they would destroy her.
Wanda Maximoff began as a reluctant X-Men villain, an early member of Magneto’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. She and her twin brother Pietro (the super-fast Quicksilver) disliked Magneto’s ways, staying with him only out of a sense of obligation and fear. When they left the group, the mutant siblings became part of the first “new” lineup of The Avengers, along with Hawkeye, and Captain America. Wanda became a mainstay of the Avengers, part of their various line-ups throughout the decades. Her mutant power would eventually be enhanced by magical training from the Fantastic Four’s personal witch and babysitter, Agatha Harkness.
Agatha Harkness discovered that Wanda's mutant power was actually to access something called "Chaos Magic". Chaos Magic was part of the energies she had absorbed from the demon Cthon, who had been imprisoned under Wundagore mountain. Wundagore Mountain was the place where Wanda and Pietro had been born. Wanda was also able to use this magic to ressurrect Wonder Man when the form housing his ionic energy was destroyed. She had a strong emotional connection to him because the Vision's brain had been programed using Wonder Man's brain patterns.
Wanda became part of the Avenger’s most enduring sub-plot, when she came to love and marry the Vision, the artificial android Avenger whose brain patterns were taken from Wonder Man when he was believed to be deceased. It was an improbable relationship, but the second wedding in the Avenger’s history, the first being Hank Pym (Ant-Man) and Janet Van Dyne (the Wasp). Later, it was discovered that the Maximoff siblings were the actual children of Magneto and his late wife, Magna. Magneto is, of course, is their former “Brotherhood” team leader, and arch nemesis of the X-Men.
Unfortunately, it turned out that Wanda was much more powerful than anyone, including she herself, ever suspected. Because of this, she became manipulated by evil forces, eventually growing dangerously mad. As a result of those circumstances, outlined in the giant crossover events, Avengers Disassembled and House of M, Wanda is now reduced to a seemingly powerless amnesiac, and lives peacefully in her native Transia.
Character Origin and History
When Magda, wife of Magnus, who would later be known as Magneto, observes her husband's extraordinary powers explode in grief and rage, she runs from him in terror. She never tells him she is pregnant. In 1958, while in labor, she is taken in by Bova, the human-like cow evolved by the High Evolutionary on Wundagore Mountain in Transia. In seclusion on Wudagore Mountain, Magda gives birth to twins, later called Wanda and Pietro.
During the birth of the twins, a great battle is taking place against the elder dark god Chthon. As Chthon is defeated, he reaches out and touches the infant Wanda at the moment of her birth.
Soon after giving birth, still afraid that her husband will find her, Magda leaves a note for Bova to never reveal her relation to the twins, and then wanders off into the frozen Balkan mountains, presumably to perish.
After trying to place the baby twins with the World War II-era hero Whizzer, who has just lost his own wife and newborn baby, the High Evolutionary places the twins in stasis until suitable foster parents can be found. Eventually, the siblings are placed by the High Evolutionary into the care of a gypsy couple named Django and Marya Maximoff, who raise the children as their own. When they reach their teens, the two come into their own mutant powers. Around this time, Django is forced to steal food to feed his family. When this leads to a group of angry villagers attacking the camp, Pietro uses his incredible mutant speed to wisk his sister away. Later, they are attacked by a superstitious mob when one of Wanda's hex spheres misfires causing a house to go up in flame. They are saved by the mutant terrorist Magneto, who is actually their father Eric Magnus, but is unaware of who the siblings are. Magneto recruits them for his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. He costumes them and names them the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, and the twins, along with the rest of the Brotherhood, combat the X-Men.
The two clearly dislike Magneto’s terrorist activities, but they remain with him for months out of obligation and fear of his reprisal. When Magneto is transferred off Earth by a powerful extraterrestrial called the Stranger, the two take the opportunity to leave and join the Avengers. As an Avenger, Wanda became more and more adept at her power, and soon begins tapping into magical forces. Eventually, the twins learn of their true parentage, but still reject Magneto.
The married couple star in their own limited series.
Meanwhile, in another dimension, the powerful being Immortus is watching Wanda carefully. Immortus knows what no one else does, that Wanda was a “nexus being”, and that her children would have the power to “shake the universe”. To insure she would never have those children, Immortus manipulates events to create the Vision, and then Wanda's emotions to fall in love with the synthetic man. Months after the Vision joins the Avengers, Wanda and he eventually conclude that they are in love and marry.
Immortus' plan does not work quite as he expected. Wanda uses the magical forces that she channels during a battle with the Salem Seven to unconsciously conjure herself pregnant, and to give birth to twins. She believes that the Vision somehow fathered them, something which should've been impossible since the Vision was a "synthazoid", an artificial being. It turns out the magical energy was drawn from the demon Mephisto. When Mephisto draws his energy back, the twins go with it. The pain of the loss of her children is quite real, so with the help of her magic tutor, Agatha Harkness, Wanda casts a spell to make her forget that the twins ever existed. Slowly, the memories of what she had lost returns, but Wanda is able to suppress them.
The dynamic of suppressing the painful memories coupled with her powers of a “nexus being”, eventually leads to her madness. In the Avengers Disassembled storyline, she suffers a nervous breakdown and launches a savage attack on the Avengers, destroying the mansion and killing several of her teammates. Believing that she has been brought under control by Doctor Strange, Wanda, now in a coma, is brought to the country of Genosha under her father Magneto’s care. Later, she creates an alternate reality, where mutants rule the world, and her twins are returned to life. Dealing with this new reality was the plot of the limited crossover series, House of M. Eventually, reality is returned to the status quo, except for the de-powering of 90% of the world’s mutants (thanks to Wanda's reality-altering power and her wish for "no more mutants") and the resurrection of deceased Avenger Clint Barton, now the new Ronin. Wanda is rendered a seemingly powerless amnesiac, living in a small village near her birthplace, Wundagore Mountain.
2008, SCI FI. All rights reserved.
