‘WandaVision’: Either Elizabeth Olsen Gave the Show Away Years Ago or She’s a Really Good Guesser
WandaVision is long over by now, but its impact is still not forgotten on fans. The show took Elizabeth Olsen’s character, Wanda Maximoff, and gave her so much more screentime and character development than what she’s had so far. It really touched on how she’s grieving (or not really dealing with) all the loss she’s faced in the last few years since joining the Avengers. And it did it in such an innovative way, through distinct decades of American sitcoms.
But a couple of years before the show even premiered, Olsen gave an interview where she gave a scarily accurate description of the show, and it hadn’t even been announced yet. [Spoiler alert: Spoilers ahead for WandaVision].
Elizabeth Olsen shared her never-gonna-happen wishes for a Wanda and Vision show in 2018
While appearing on the podcast Everything Iconic with Danny Pellegrino on April 3, 2018, Olsen shared that there were absolutely no plans for a Scarlet Witch solo movie at that point.
“We are at Ground Zero,” Olsen said about that route. “It’s definitely not something I’m pushing. And I don’t know if that’s something that they’re gonna push either.”
But then she went into an inside joke she had with co-star Paul Bettany, who plays Vision. And this is where the joke gets very close to WandaVision territory.
“I just think— Paul Bettany and I think about having a domestic television show on Netflix or something,” she said.
Even more intriguing is the fact that she goes into what that domestic bliss could entail as well.
“Yeah and it would just be like, ‘House of M,’ where Scarlet Witch goes bananas,” Olsen continued. “That’s just what we joke about. But I don’t think any of those things are happening. But I’m happy that I’m still around. That they still use me well and that’s fun.”
At this point, in April of 2018, nothing had been announced regarding Disney+ or original content coming to that streaming service. Avengers: Infinity War hadn’t even premiered yet. However, just six months later in September 2018 Scarlet Witch and Vision’s series was announced as a part of the Dinsey+ launch announcement, according to Deadline.
So while it’s of course possible that those WandaVision conversations happened in those six months, the fact that Olsen hit the concept of the show so on the head is immensely impressive.
Olsen has been saying she wanted a ‘House of M’ storyline since she started as Scarlet Witch
Now, it makes sense that Olsen brought up “House of M,” and connected it to a domestic, suburban life with Vision, since that’s also an arc in the comics. She’s been vocal since her Avengers: Age of Ultron days about wanting to dig into that “House of M” arc and knows her stuff regarding Wanda’s backstory and comic book origins. So Olsen being a good guesser is also completely possible.
On Feb. 4, the Twitter account Marvel Facts (@MarveIFacts) shared a press junket interview that Olsen and co-star Aaron Taylor-Johnson did for Avengers: Age of Ultron where she shared one of her favorite storylines.
“My favorite is ‘House of M,’ but that would never happen,” Olsen said, talking about things she’d want to do with her character. “But if she could have two fake babies and everyone tell her that they don’t really exist and then her just go nuts, that would be unbelievable, but I don’t think they’re gonna do that.”
At the time, she thought it would be “too dark” for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but her “favorite thing in the comics” was when Wanda lost her mind. While WandaVision didn’t go full “House of M,” it took a lot of inspiration from that run of comics.
‘WandaVision’ renewed Olsen’s love for Wanda Maximoff and
Olsen shared with Vanity Fair’s Still Watching podcast in January that she doesn’t have multi-movie contracts like other Marvel actors, and so she really comes back for the stories they give Wanda. And with WandaVision, she fell back in love with her character and the story they were telling with her.
“[WandaVision] just became something that I absolutely adored and loved. And because of this show, it made me love this character more than I ever had,” Olsen said. “And it makes me feel like I have such a new ownership of her because of the time I’d got to spend creating this show and now I’m excited for the next thing.”
Of course, after Wanda’s big finale and the fact that she had to give up her versions of Vision and their children, she’s now studying the Darkhold profusely. Olsen’s filming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness as well, and that Darkhold might hold some really bad (or good?) consequences for her. But whatever happens, Olsen said that this all made it feel “so earned’ for her character.
