Marvel has released a new book, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: The Art of the Movie, containing concept art for the 2022 film about Doctor Strange’s travels through a chaotic and dangerous multiverse. One bit of concept art in particular, showing an unused design idea for Wanda Maximoff, is making waves online.
In Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Wanda is a cold and ruthless villain. She doesn’t start off that way, though! In the Disney+ series WandaVision, Wanda is well-meaning but unstable, inadvertently roping the residents of an entire New Jersey town into the sitcom-influenced alternate reality she creates in the midst of her grief for her lover, Vision. In WandaVision, Wanda and Vision share a suburban life, even giving birth to twin boys.
By the time we catch up with her in Multiverse of Madness, Wanda has been corrupted by an artifact called the Darkhold, which she uses to try to catch the multiverse-traveling America Chavez. Wanda hopes to steal America’s power and use it to find a reality in which she can be with her children. Wanda is willing to kill anyone who stands in her way—including alternate versions of herself in other realities.
The unused character design from the film’s art book, created by concept artist Ian Joyner, shows the extent of Wanda’s corruption, taking the iconic Scarlet Witch crown she manifests in the WandaVision finale and fusing it to her head. “My idea was that her crown wasn’t just an adornment, but was actually infused with her flesh,” Joyner says in the book. “She’s becoming the Scarlet Witch in this horrific way.”
Terrifying! If that thing had come at Kamar-Taj, she wouldn’t have needed to influence the sorcerers’ minds to get them to run screaming.
This concept art is so fantastic, though, that it’s making me wish Multiverse of Madness had been a completely different movie.
Wanda Maximoff deserved better
Wanda’s character development between WandaVision and Multiverse of Madness was sloppy and rushed. At the end of WandaVision, she was ashamed of what she’d done, dealing with even more grief than before and trying to make things right despite the pain. By the time we saw her in Multiverse of Madness, though, she had become such a monster that her only chance of redemption was to sacrifice herself at the end. Wanda’s story arc is repeated almost verbatim in both stories, and even Elizabeth Olsen herself expressed dissatisfaction with how Marvel handled her character.
But what if Multiverse of Madness had taken more care with Wanda? What if the Darkhold didn’t complete its corruption of her until later in the movie? Better yet, what if she didn’t become a full-fledged villain until a later phase of the MCU? That would have been a more satisfying story arc—and, if the concept art above had eventually become a reality, her transformation would have been a very cool moment.
Maybe, in some other timeline out there in the multiverse, Scarlet Witch fans got the movie we deserved. In the meantime, though, we can cross our fingers and hope Wanda returns.
(featured image: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
