The Wicked Witch of the West and the Scarlet Witch
- Lyss Ku
- Oct 31, 2022
- 13 min read
Updated: Oct 31, 2024
This is considered to be my Halloween-themed post since it talks about two different witches. Well one of them is an actual witch, and the other is called a witch because she was “forged, and that it is her destiny to destroy the world.” I am talking about Wanda Maximoff aka, the Scarlet Witch, and Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. After watching both WandaVision and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, I realized that Wanda shares a similar story arc with Elphaba’s in the Broadway musical, Wicked. Before I go any further, I did NOT steal this idea from Eric Voss from New Rockstars who also compared Wanda to the Wicked Witch of the West in his breakdown of Doctor Strange MOM. I delve deeper into both of these characters through past MCU films, Marvel comics, songs, a bootleg version of Wicked, The Wizard of Oz film, and the novel, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire (via Shmoop since I didn’t have the time or access to read the entire book). By the end of this post, you will realize that these two witches do not have evil personas, and will make audiences feel sympathy for them. There will be MAJOR SPOILERS ahead, so if you haven’t, go watch WandaVision, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Avengers Age of Ultron, Captain America Civil War, Avengers Infinity War and Endgame on Disney Plus. If you are able to get a ticket for the show, go watch the Broadway musical, Wicked or find a bootleg version on Youtube. You can also wait until 2024/2025 to see the two-part film version starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo.
Early Life
As Glinda says in “No one Mourns the Wicked,” the wicked life “couldn’t have been easy” for both Wanda and Elphaba especially in their early childhood as both of them suffered traumatic events. Before the Scarlet Witch, she was born as just Wanda Maximoff from the country of Sokovia. She was raised by her parents, Irena and Oleq Maximoff, and had a twin brother named Pietro. According to WandaVision episode 8, while watching classic American sitcoms with her family, a bomb struck her home killing both of her parents. At that time, there was political turmoil in Sokovia which was a result of many attacks from the US Air Force, leading to civil unrest and anti-American protests. After the bombing, Wanda and Pietro were under the rubble from their home in front of Stark missile that surprisingly did not go off. They went on be one of the many Sokovian protestors who also blamed the government for not protecting them before volunteering as experiments for HYRDA.
Elphaba’s early life was less traumatic compared to Wanda’s, but still felt the negative impacts of it for the rest of her life. She was born in Munchkinland to parents named Melena and Frex, who was also the governor of Munchkinland. It was revealed in “No one Mourns the Wicked” that her mother had an affair with a traveling salesman (who is later revealed to be the Wizard) that gave her a bottle of green elixir to consume. That causes Elphaba to be born with green skin, and become an outcast by pretty much everyone including her own father. She also had a sister named Nessarose who was also born with the inability to walk, but her father still gave all his attention to her by giving her a pair of shiny shoes. The musical doesn’t show any of Elphaba’s childhood, but according to the Wicked novel, her mother is an alcoholic and had an affair with another man who is a glassblower. Her first word is “horrors” and becomes friends with a monster that is a hybrid of tiger and dragon. She is given a mirror and sees that the Wizard is coming, and Oz is going into darkness. That meant that the Wizard was going to oppress various ethnic groups and Animals like a dictator. She also spent time with her father on his missionary work along with Nessa. Later on, she goes to Shiz to study sorcery in the novel, but in the musical, she is only there to take care of Nessa.
Origin of their Powers
Since Wanda and Elphaba are both witches, they come with lots of powers but the way they got them differ from each other. The origin of Elphaba’s powers is unknown in both the musical and the novel. We first see her use those powers to get Nessa back from Madame Morrible, and according to Nessa, it wasn’t the first time it happened before. It can be assumed that it came from the same green elixir her mother consumed that gave her green skin. She is offered by Madame Morrible to get private lessons in sorcery at Shiz. They do get stronger when she gets a hold of the Grimmerie spell book from the Wizard causing her to do all sorts of spells in the second act. The Wicked Witch of the West powers including flying, pyrokinesis (as seen in the Wizard of Oz), basic witchcraft, and spellcasting.
In WandaVision episode 8, at the HYDRA facility, we see that Wanda unlocks her powers via the mind stone which showed her a vision of her future as the Scarlet Witch. However, back to her childhood, the missile that did not go off wasn’t by luck, but by Wanda’s probability hex meaning she might carry a mutant gene. In the comics, her powers originated from Chton, the evil elder god who also created the Darkhold. He used the High Evolutionary (main villain of the upcoming GOTG Vol. 3 film) to experiment on Wanda as a baby who absorbed the chaos magic. Some of the lyrics from “The Wizard and I” actually reflect Wanda’s potential future. The lyrics, “Unlimited, my future is unlimited. And I’ve just had a vision almost like a prophecy. I know it sounds truly crazy. A true the vision’s hazy.” Wanda’s future was unlimited as her power allowed her to warp reality, have a fictional life with Vision and her two kids, almost destroying Thanos, destroy an Infinity Stone, take out the entire temple at Kamar-Taj, and nearly kill all members of the Illuminati. It was all because of that one vision she had when she unlocked the mind stone which was like a prophecy. The Scarlet Witch’s powers include telekinesis, energy manipulation, flying, mental manipulation, and red chaos magic which is similar to the Wicked Witch of the West’s pyrokinesis.
Siblings
Earlier I mentioned that both Wanda and Elphaba had siblings who were also mutants/born with birth defects. However, their relationships with their siblings contrasted each other. Wanda’s twin brother, Pietro was also an experiment for HYDRA and got powers of superspeed. In the comics, he went by the name Quicksilver, however due to Fox owing the rights to Marvel’s X-men at the time, the MCU was not able to use his name and stuck with Pietro. Both Wanda and Pietro were close to each other because they were all they had left after both of their parents were killed. In Avengers: Age of Ultron, Pietro was tragically killed by Ultron, which made Wanda unleash a lot of power and take revenge on killing Ultron by literally ripping his heart out. Pietro’s death made Wanda really devasted because he was the only other person that loved her until Vision came along.
Elphaba’s sister, Nessarose, was also born with birth defects after her mother consumed milk flowers during her pregnancy which caused her legs to be twisted and be born prematurely, which explains why she is in a wheelchair for most of the musical. (In the novel, she was born with no arms). Elphaba is jealous of her father’s love for Nessarose but stands by her father’s request to take care of her while she is studying at Shiz. She does fall in love with a munchkin named Boq at a party at the Ozdust Ballroom. She takes on the title of the governor of Munchkinland after her father’s passing, but she strips the rights of the munchkins so Boq never left her side. At one point, she regains the ability to walk due to a spell Elpahba cast using the Grimmerie. She also gives herself the name, Wicked Witch of the East. Unfortunately, Nessarose is killed by Dorothy’s house falling on her from a tornado due to Madame Morrible’s magic. That makes Elphaba devasted and motivates her to go after Dorothy, and get her sister’s shoes because that was the only thing left from her sister.
Love Interests
While these two witches were being wicked, they fell in love with someone at one point. However, the romance didn’t last too long as both of their love interests were tragically taken away from each other. For her entire life, Elphaba was an outcast because of how she looked. However, a prince named Fiyero arrives at Shiz, and we think he falls for Glinda, but Elphaba is the one that develops feelings for him as well. He helps her free the cub that was trapped in the cage from class, and that is where they share a moment together. However, in the song “I’m Not that Girl,” Elphaba says that they cannot be together because of the way she looks, and he is only the perfect fit for Glinda. Even though Fiyero gets engaged to Glinda and becomes the captain of the guard, he still has feelings for Elphaba. He even finds her and runs off with her where they share another intimate moment during the song, “As Long as You’re Mine.” He is almost killed by the guards when they hang him at the cornfield, but Elphaba saves him by turning him into a scarecrow. At the end of the musical, he comes back after her attempted death and they leave Oz.
For Wanda, there was nobody left to love her after her twin brother was killed. Then along came Vision who both met during Avengers: Age of Ultron. Vision was created by a combination of Ultron, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, and AI Jarvis. The pair started a relationship, and during the events of Captain America: Civil War (shown in WandaVision episode 8), they both talk about the loss of Pietro and grief in which Vision delivers the most emotional line in all of the MCU. After the events of Civil War, Wanda and Vision were on the run with the rest of team Captain America after violating the Sokovia Accords. In Avengers: Infinity War, they were trying to avoid Thanos and his henchman from getting the mind stone off of Vision. Unlike Elphaba, Wanda was unlucky and had to witness the death of Vision twice, one of which she took action for. It was also revealed that Vision got a deed of a house in Westview, New Jersey where they were going to live, but that never happened. The remains of Vision were obtained by SWORD and were used to create a White Vision, a version that had no memories or feelings, and was used as a weapon. However, the Hex Vision implanted his memories onto it and flew off. His current whereabouts are unknown, but there have been talks of White Vision having his own Disney Plus show called, VisionQuest.
Tragic Losses and Revenge
It is no denying that both of these characters suffered a lot of loss which motivated them to become their wicked selves. Wanda lost her parents, her twin brother, Vision twice, and was snapped by Thanos for five years. The loss of Vision especially hit her the hardest after she couldn’t get the body from SWORD facilities as they had dismembered it. That grief caused her to unleash her hex magic and create an alternate reality where Vision was alive, and had two kids of her own even though it trapped the entire town of WestView. Unfortunately, after she defeated Agatha Harkness and became the Scarlet Witch, she was forced to dismantle the hex at Westview, losing Vision (again), and her two kids. Just like Elphaba, this is when she ‘defied gravity,’ and took off as the Scarlet Witch while sesarching for her kids in the multiverse using the Darkhold. She also went after America Chavez to get her power of creating star-portals through dimensions. Along the way, she attacked anyone who was in her way including the people of Kamar-Taj, and the Illuminati.
Elphaba also took a lot of losses, but she was also getting oppressed for her rights. In the novel, her mother passed away, she was rejected by her father, her favorite professor, Dr. Dillamond was taken away and lost his ability to speak, her sister was killed, and Fiyero was almost killed but saved. She was also oppressed several times for fighting for the Animals’ rights. When she realized that the Wizard was the one in charge of the Animals’ oppression, Elphaba became a rebel against the Wizard by “Defying Gravity.” She also went after Dorothy to get her sister’s ruby slippers because that was the only thing left of her. In the novel version, she wanted the shoes to be loved and accepted since her father gifted them to Nessa, and to keep them away from the Wizard. In the Wizard of Oz film, she wanted them for power.
Powerful Spell Books
Like all witches, both the Scarlet Witch and Elphaba had a little help from a couple of spell books. Elphaba used the Grimmerie which was a book of power and destruction. The origins of the book are unknown, but it was passed down by the Wizard to her. She used this to try to help his monkey servant, Chistery, but unfortunately, he grew wings and became one of the infamous flying monkeys. That revealed the Wizard in being a fraud in charge of oppressing the Animals in Oz. Elphaba also used the Grimmerie to give her sister the ability to walk, turned Boq into a tinman after Nessa botched one of the spells that caused his heart to shrink, and turned Fiyero into a scarecrow to save him from almost getting killed. Unlike the Darkhold that corrupted Wanda as she was using it, Elphaba didn’t use the book for evil purposes, she was only trying to use it for good.
For the Scarlet Witch, the Darkhold was a book of dark spells that could be used to manipulate reality. It was crafted by the evil elder god, Chton, where he also wrote his devilish dealings on indestructible parchment paper. It first appeared in WandaVision used by Agatha Harkness as way to get Wanda’s chaos magic. It is when she reveals that the Scarlet Witch “is not born, she is forged, her power exceeds that of the Sorcerer Supreme” and that “it was her destiny to destroy the world.” Wanda then gets ahold of it and uses it in Doctor Strange MOM to find her kids in the vast multiverse. However, the Darkhold corrupts her, turning her into a villain for the majority of the movie. It gave her unlimited dark power to attack the people of Kamar-Taj, dream walk into her universe-838 variant, and kill almost every single member of the Illuminati. She also used it to go after America Chavez by sending monstrous creatures in an attempt to get her traveling-dimension powers.
Supposed “Death”
At the end of both Doctor Strange MOM and Wicked, we know this wasn’t the end for both Wanda and Elphaba. At the end of Doctor Strange MOM, Wanda realized that the Darkhold needed to be destroyed, so she used her magic to destroy all copies of it as well as her temple in Wundagore Mountain. Many thought she killed herself while doing this action, however, there was a flash of red light from the mountain. There is a possibility that she survived and could return in a future MCU project like a solo film. I mean if they could bring back Elphaba, and the Sanderson Sisters from Hocus Pocus, there is no reason to not bring back Wanda. As I mentioned in another blog post, Wanda deserves to have a happy ending after all she has been through. Therefore, I believe that Wanda is under a trapdoor underneath the rubble from the destroyed temple, just like Elphaba.
In the Wizard of Oz, we saw Dorothy throwing a bucket of water at the Wicked Witch of the West, causing her to melt. However, in Wicked, this turned out to be a faked death. In fact, someone mentioned earlier that the Wicked Witch of the West being destroyed by water was a rumor as Fiyero said, “People are so empty-headed, they’ll believe anything.” Fiyero then returns for Elphaba, and it is revealed she was under the trapdoor after her attempted death. After that, they both leave Oz forever without anyone knowing.
No One Mourns the Wicked
Even though these two characters are villainous on the outside, deep down they are misunderstood. During “No One Mourns the Wicked,” Glinda asks “are people born wicked? Or do they have wickedness thrust upon them” which is a common theme throughout both Wicked and Wanda’s story arc in the MCU. It turns out that the answer is that neither of these two were born wicked, but became wicked due to unfortunate events hence their "lives are lonely" and "left only on {their} own." Elphaba was given the title of “Wicked Witch of the West” because people considered her actions to be horrible. However, she was only being an activist fighting for the Animals’ rights only to be outcasted, and gaslighted throughout the musical. Plus, she was always an outcast from the moment she was born with her green skin. At one point, she admitted that she was wicked in “No Good Deed” because she lost of lot, and her actions were looked down upon. Beyond the second act of the musical, she was no longer referred to as “Elphaba”, but the “Wicked Witch of the West.” And during the finale, Glinda sings a line from “For Good,” but before she can finish the lyric with “good,” the ensemble interrupts with singing the word, “Wicked” symbolizing that Elphaba will forever be known as wicked.
Wanda did start off working for the antagonists in Avengers: Age of Ultron, but then she crossed over and became one of the Avengers. After the events of Avengers Endgame, and WandaVision, she became a villain herself. That was only because she went through a ton of grief, and was trying to cope by creating an alternate reality based on classic American sitcoms. If someone had actually checked on her, then none of this wouldn't have happened. Also, the DarkHold was the one that was corrupting her, which caused her to use dark magic to find her kids in another universe. Just like Elphaba, she no longer referred to herself as Wanda, but as the Scarlet Witch. She even said to Doctor Strange, and her kids in the 838 universe that she wasn’t a monster, but a mother and that she wouldn’t hurt anyone. In Captain America: Civil War, Tony Stark even referred her to a “weapon of mass destruction” when trying to convince Steve Rogers to sign the Sokovia Accords. At this point, the people of Westview, the government, Agatha Harkness, and even America Chavez still remember her as being cruel after everything she did to them.
That is my comparison the Scarlet Witch and the Wicked Witch of the West. As for who would win in a fight, I feel like the Scarlet Witch could destroy Elphaba instantly despite both of these witches being very powerful. This was a really interesting topic to do, and my first blog post where I did a bunch of research (I actually did a bit of research for my Billie Eilish post, but I did a lot more for this one). The last comparison I would like to make is that both Elphaba and the Scarlet Witch are played by two talented actresses: Indina Menzel, the original Elphaba, and Elizabeth Olsen, the one and only Scarlet Witch. I hope everyone has a Happy Halloween, and if you are not dressing up this year like me, watch some scary movies and eat some good candy!
Sources
Websites
Films and Series
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
Captain America: Civil War (2016)
Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Avengers: Endgame (2019)
WandaVision (2021)
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
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