Will Wanda Return in VisionQuest? Why the Marketing Keeps Pointing to Her

The trailers for VisionQuest keep mentioning Wanda, and the tagline of the show is "her vision, his quest." The question is whether Wanda Maximoff will actually return, or whether she'll only be present as a memory inside Vision's head.

That question drove most of our conversation, from whether Elizabeth Olsen shot new material, to whether killing Wanda off in Multiverse of Madness was a mistake, to what the witchy imagery in the trailers might mean.

Wanda's memories mean she will be in VisionQuest in some form

Wanda is going to be in VisionQuest no matter what, because Wanda's memories are part of Vision. So we're going to see her in the house, all the time, as the show goes back to moments from the past. Whether it's going to be new clips with Wanda is the real question, along with whether that means a new version of Wanda or Wanda actually returning.

That same view held that Wanda probably wouldn't return in this, unfortunately, and would more likely return in Doomsday. Still, the expectation was that we're going to get a lot of Wanda. As the argument went, this is the Wanda trilogy, and it's strange to call it a Wanda arc when Wanda is only in one of the three projects. It's always been about Wanda across WandaVision, Agatha and now this.

I feel like we're going to see some form of Wanda beyond memories shown on screens, something Elizabeth Olsen actually shot for this show, because the marketing has made promises it has to deliver on.

Agatha already teased Wanda without ever showing her

The pushback was that Marvel did the same thing with Agatha and never delivered Wanda. That show gave us her initials, a toe, her hair, and eventually her corpse. Every part of Wanda appeared without Wanda herself, and that, in this view, is the degree to which we could see her in VisionQuest.

Even if Olsen did film a snippet as Wanda for this show, the argument continued, it still wouldn't be reality. It would be within White Vision's head. So even if a version of Wanda came alive and walked around the house, it would prove only that Elizabeth Olsen came back to record a scene. It's not proof that she's alive in the MCU, just proof that she's alive in White Vision's brain.

Killing Wanda in Multiverse of Madness may look like a mistake now

The question was put directly: was killing off Elizabeth Olsen's Wanda Maximoff in Multiverse of Madness one of Marvel Studios' biggest mistakes? One answer: "I think on paper it wasn't to them, but now it is." The reasoning was that Marvel now recognizes how many people really like Wanda and how much she could have given the MCU as it heads toward Doctor Doom and witches. Out of all the witches, in this view, she was the best one, and she was killed off in a ridiculous way that Marvel probably didn't think was a big deal at the time.

I don't think letting Sam Raimi finish that scene the way he did, with an almost ambiguous shot of the Darkhold temple collapsing on her with a blast of red light, was necessarily the mistake. I think the mistake was that in the years since, Kevin Feige has never just outwardly said Wanda is still alive. Why does that have to be a secret?

The response was that Marvel can bring her back in 15 or 20 years if it wants, though the assumption was it would be more like five years, or even one. The comparison offered, admittedly described as a horrible analogy, was a scene from The Witcher where a door was left open with no plan, and it later became the basis for an entire next season, with the explanation that if you'd waited five more seconds you'd have seen a man walk through. The point was that The Witcher can get away with that because, in this view, it's not a great show, but with Wanda you can't. The frustration was that Marvel keeps refusing to say whether characters are dead because it wants to bring them back eventually. That makes sense for marketing, but as a fan it's irritating.

A rogue White Vision is part of why VisionQuest feels exciting

I'm really surprised at how excited I am for VisionQuest. Coming out of WandaVision, I loved the Ship of Theseus scene but wasn't that eager to know where this version of Vision went, because what I loved was the Hex Vision, while this one felt Terminator style. Now there's a ruthless rogue Vision going around, which was the counterpoint raised: nothing is scarier than a rogue Vision. My response was that he's a Terminator who then downloaded all the consciousness, and I get that now.

Knowing that Terry Matalas is running it, and seeing every bit of marketing so far, has restored my faith that VisionQuest is going to be an all time great Marvel Disney Plus show. What I really wanted after WandaVision was what we got in Agatha, plus more Wanda, and more story for her than Multiverse of Madness delivered.

There's also some bias here: Vision is a favorite comic book Marvel character, while Wanda is a favorite Marvel Cinematic Universe character, so anything with these two, and then adding Kathryn Hahn, is an easy yes. VisionQuest was always something to be excited for, and a rogue White Vision is a great idea, one that feels like what we might have gotten from Ultron at his peak. "I want to see our vision be bad for a minute," a Vision who doesn't see that what he's doing is wrong.

Wanda's possible return is what to pin hopes on, but the marketing may just be using her name

Asked whether Wanda's return is the big hope for VisionQuest, one answer was "100%," with a plan to look for clues to Wanda's possible return in every episode. That's because it's the possibility the marketing has presented, and as was noted, Marvel always does this.

To play devil's advocate, Marvel has to put Wanda in the marketing just as it had to put Ryan Coogler in the marketing for Ironheart, where his name kept appearing even though, as described, it was his production company helping produce it rather than him personally. Putting Wanda in the marketing signals a connection to the greater MCU and draws people who love Wanda, much like putting Loki in things. Arguably, this Vision basically only exists because the Hex Vision gave him those memories, and all of those memories, that whole soul and personality, were the creation of Wanda.

The counterargument was that you could still have made VisionQuest without Wanda, not that you should have, because it's so much about Tony Stark's equipment. Having him figure out his dad and his mom at the same time feels a little like a hat on a hat, since Wanda and Tony are in two different brackets doing two different things. Wanda not being a big part of it wouldn't have been irritating, though it's understandable why she is.

Another point was that WandaVision's trailers teased creepy material, but the tagline never pointed at some big reveal involving Wanda. The view here was that Marvel is "abusing Wanda's name" for this marketing. Agatha immediately signals witches, the argument went, but Vision doesn't, so Marvel has to keep bringing Wanda up.

The witchy imagery and the television could tie Vision back to Wanda

One trailer shot shows Vision levitating with his eyes glowing red while Emily Hampshire sits cross legged in front of a TV, which looks like a witch ritual of some kind. The response was that Vision is still 50% technology and 50% magic, while everyone else around him is straight AI. That's where Ironheart comes in, since it crosses technology with the occult, raising the question of what happens when a robot has chaos magic running through it. You could imagine EDITH asking what's happening with this guy and why his eyes are turning red.

Could the television set in Vision's mind mansion be the source of that magic, given how important the TV was to Wanda in WandaVision? That idea got a positive response. In Agatha, there was TV in the sleepover episode, plus the album and music, so maybe arts is where the devil is hiding. Vision also has a cinema with a projector, and one idea floated was that the television medium itself, cathode ray tubes and all, could be a metaphor in Vision's mind for Wanda's presence.

That fed into thoughts about the release schedule. One first inclination was that maybe Marvel wants to release a lot of these in October as Disney's spooky representative. It's not that scary, in that view, but it's very poltergeisty, with Vision connected to that television. There could also be scariness from AI monsters, and a possible connection to Wanda coming out of the broken mirror in Multiverse of Madness, through glass, a mirror reflection or a frame.

Do you think Elizabeth Olsen will appear as Wanda in VisionQuest, or will she remain only a memory inside Vision's mind?