Scarlet Witch in the MC2

 

Now that WandaVision has begun streaming on Disney+ it feels like a good time to take a look at the MC2 incarnations of the show’s protagonists. For this entry, we’ll be taking a look at the Avengers resident chaos witch, Wanda Maximoff aka The Scarlet Witch.

 

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The Scarlet Witch made her first appearance in the MC2 in the A-Next #7 in a flashback to the last days of the original Avengers team. We learn that not only did Scarlet Witch join the team on their final mission, she was among the few to return alive. After mourning their fallen comrades, Iron Man and the Scarlet Witch worked tirelessly for months to seal the portal permanently against future attacks. Unfortunately, to achieve this the Scarlet Witch was sealed within a stasis pod, holding the aperture shut (A-Next #7-8). 

 

It’s worth pointing out Wanda’s appearance was foreshadowed as early as A-Next #4, when Crimson Curse began to sense her presence and became more pronounced in A-Next #6. This culminated in Wanda being discovered within her stasis pod by Crimson Curse, American Dream and Thunderstrike. Notably, the unconscious Wanda (dubbing herself ‘Guardian of the Great Beyond, Protector of the Dark Barrier’) utilized various physical manifestations of the Avenger known as Wonder Man to protect herself and the portal (A-Next #8).

 

By freeing Wanda from her stasis pod, the new Avengers team inadvertently sever her connection to the portal, leaving the world vulnerable to the threat on the other side (A-Next #9). Wanda remains in her comatose state, having been moved to a hospital where she is watched over by Edwin Jarvis and later Tony Stark (A-Next #10).

 

It seems Wanda remained in this coma until kidnapped and magically restored by the villainous Asgardian Loki as part of his plot to end the Age of Heroes. Wanda along with many other heroes is corrupted by Loki’s spell until later freed. What’s most fascinating to me about the Scarlet Witch’s awakening are the reactions of Wanda’s former team mates such as Tony Stark and especially Vision. Sadly, it appears Wanda didn’t get the chance to speak to Captain America before he died (Last Hero Standing #1-5).

With so many members off with injuries or otherwise absent, the Scarlet Witch is recruited by Stark to fill out the Avengers roster. The Scarlet Witch, Ant-Man and Hawkeye are joined by Stark's 'personal bodyguard’ James Rhodes on a mission to investigate and apprehend Normie Osborn. Things go awry when Rhodes (now more machine than man) is inadvertently hit by Wanda’s hex bolt, triggering a violent rampage. After Rhodes is subdued, Wanda and the others conclude they would be better use as teachers and mentors to the new Avengers team (Spider-Girl #93-#95). 

 

Despite this, Wanda continues serves as an active member of the depleted Avengers team during the events of Last Planet Standing. During a conflict with the villainous Revengers team, Wanda is offended when she encounters Magneta, who modelled herself after Magneto, the Scarlet Witch’s father (Last Planet Standing #1). Upon learning of the coming threat, Wanda opposes Vision and objects to playing second fiddle to the Fantastic Five (Last Planet Standing #3) and, alongside the Silver Surfer, later proves instrumental in breaking through Galactus’ force field. While it’s not confirmed, the combination of the Scarlet Witch’s reality manipulation powers and the Silver Surfer’s power cosmic may have played a part in birthing the entity that forms in the wake of Galactus’ failed attempt at universal destruction (Last Planet Standing #5).

 

Not an active member of the Avengers this time around, the Scarlet Witch only appears briefly this time, as a magical energy duplicate created when Sylene attempts to recreate Asgard on Earth in Avengers Next #4-#5.

 

I think there’s a lot left unexplored with Wanda Maximoff in the MC2, with her strained relationship with the Vision, her connections to Tony Stark and her re-adjustment to life after awakening from her coma. That said, the Scarlet Witch remains one of the most powerful, present and willing members of the original Avengers. Maybe someday we’ll see more from Wanda in the future.

 

Until I cast a little hex to alter the very fabric of reality, I remain

 

frogoat

 

The Nanite Agenda

It’s time for one of those short, sweet, little posts where I pull at a strand of continuity until I find something that probably wasn’t intentional. This time, it’s a piece of info I found while researching my post A-Next Ages: Mainframe: The Nanite Agenda.

 

So, what the heck is The Nanite Agenda anyway? Well, as I’ve discussed briefly in both my Iron Man in the MC2 and History of the MC2:The Avengers, Iron Man (Tony Stark) and the Scarlet Witch (Wanda Maximoff) closed the portal to the alternate world which had claimed so many of their teammates and friends. The portal required Wanda to remain in stasis, holding the breach closed with her powers.

 

In an attempt to help Wanda, Tony designed and built a Nanite Agenda intended to super-charge the human body. Stark’s friend Jim Rhodes tests the Agenda on himself before Tony despite the risk. The process at first seemed to be a success, mutating Rhodey and gifting him with steel-hard skin, concussive energy blasts. However, with the Nanites continuing to multiply, this made Rhodey less and less human over time (Spider-Girl #95).

 

This information is all conveyed via flashbacks which further explain why the nanite-driven Rhodey goes on a rampage after accidentally being hit with a hex bolt cast by the recently-revived Scarlet Witch. Stinger notes that Rhodey was familiar enough with Starktech to disable Mainframe’s Lazarus Protocol, preventing the summoning of replacement armoured bodies. Tony responds that Rhodey is in many ways Starktech. Poor Rhodey. But the Nanite Agenda would seem to run deeper than just within James Rhodes.

 

That’s right, there are Nanites running about within Mainframe’s various mechanical bodies. We first learned this in A-Next #8, when Stinger (Cassie Lang) and Ant-Man (Scott Lang) journeyed inside Mainframe’s body in attempt to save the armoured Avenger following a system-wide shut down. It’s there that Stinger and Ant-Man encounter Nanites designed to repel foreign invaders within Mainframe’s robot shell. Fortunately, Scott is able to hold off the Nanite’s long enough for the heroes to save Mainframe.

 

This small detail about Mainframe’s Nanites, separated by several years of publication, actually makes some sense of the timeline for several smaller moments in the History of the MC2: Mainframe’s creation, the last mission of the Avengers, the team’s later official disbanding and the transformation of the James Rhodes. As mentioned, Spider-Girl #95 shows the creation of the Nanite Agenda after Mainframe’s own creation, so we can safely assume the Nanites within Mainframe are more rudimentary versions or precursors.

It’s also stated by Tony Stark himself that he built the Mainframe robot after retiring from super heroics (Spider-Girl #95). While Tony claims he retired ‘when the Avengers officially disbanded,’ we actually see the moment in A-Next #7, and Tony hangs up his armour and leaves the Avengers Mansion permanently shortly after sealing the portal with the Scarlet Witch. According to Edwin Jarvis, the interim team of Avengers that filled out the roster at that time continued on afterwards until finally the group fell apart and no one answered the call to assemble. Presumably, as Tony never joined this interim team following the loss of so many of his comrades, he isn’t speaking literally but instead poetically or emotionally.

Still further, we see that Tony apparently had plans in place to ensure ‘that whenever the need arises there will always be Avengers’ before embarking on the team’s fateful mission. I’ve always believed this to be a reference to Mainframe but with the Mainframe robot apparently only built after this mission, it raised further question.  Here’s what I propose: Tony had already at least begun designing the Mainframe program, perhaps even produced the encephalograms of himself and linked the Mainframe program to the Avengers distress call systems. I further suggest that it’s only after returning from his final mission and sealing the portal with the Scarlet Witch that Tony actually builds Mainframe a physical body in the form of the robot shells we know today. And, just to really stray into the realm of speculation, perhaps while developing the armoured robot bodies defensive Nanites, Tony hit upon the Nanite Agenda as a solution to help liberate Wanda from her comatose confinement.

The fact that the Nanites within James Rhodes went haywire after being struck by Wanda’s hex bolt is ironic considering they were intended to help the Scarlet Witch. But the fact that Mainframe was so easily defeated by the Nanite Agenda is due to being comprised of an earlier version of the Nanites.

 

Until I manage to devise a technology advanced enough to beat up its little brother, I remain

 

frogoat