VisionQuest post-credit scene: Doom revives Wanda in Doomsday

A new Disney Plus post-credit scene in the VisionQuest finale shows Doctor Doom reviving Elizabeth Olsen's Scarlet Witch, which confirms Wanda Maximoff for Avengers: Doomsday. Marvel surprised everyone by adding the scene, in which Doom resurrects and collects Wanda after her supposed death in 2022's Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. My theory is that Doom is collecting everyone who disrupted the multiverse, and I think he wants the power of the Scarlet Witch as part of a kind of magical spell or ritual he needs to complete to create Battleworld.

Is Wanda dead? What VisionQuest said before the finale

At first, the VisionQuest finale seemed to dash our hopes that Wanda would come back for the end of this WandaVision trilogy. In every interview, the creator and head writer of VisionQuest confirmed that in their writers' room, Wanda was dead for the purposes of the eight episodes they were writing. In episode one, Vision says it's complicated and that she was crushed under the weight of a mountain.

That refers to Multiverse of Madness, where, after the harm she caused to the Earth-838 universe and feeling forgiven by her Earth-838 variant, Wanda let the Darkhold burn in every reality and brought a Darkhold temple down on herself atop Mount Wundagore.

In the finale, Tommy asks Vision whether, with the three of them still around, they might ever see his mother again. Vision answers: "Well, we have said goodbye before, so I suppose it stands to reason we might say hello again." For a few minutes, it seemed like that was all we were going to get, and we all made peace with it. Then a post-credit scene revealed Ultron alive in the form of Virgil Horton, Phineas Horton's grandson. In the press screeners Disney sent out in October, ahead of the finale's release, that was the end of the episode.

The surprise Wanda scene Marvel added to the VisionQuest finale on Disney Plus

For the first time ever, Marvel Studios added something new to the Disney Plus version of an episode so that the entire world would be caught by surprise at the same time. The scene opens by revisiting Sam Raimi's Multiverse of Madness, with Wanda alone in the temple after Doctor Strange, Wong and America Chavez have fled. The temple collapses around her and she uses her sorcery to levitate it off its foundation.

The statue of the Scarlet Witch that the demonic figure Chthon carved into the wall, flanked by statues of Wiccan and Speed to form the prophecy drawn into the pages of the Darkhold, crumbles so its face implodes. Wanda lets the whole building collapse on herself. In a wide shot, a red glow appears in the rubble, a glow fans have obsessed over since the 2022 film.

In every available interview, Kevin Feige has indicated that the glow is meant to be open to interpretation, and Elizabeth Olsen has insisted her character is dead and never coming back, but this scene finally answers the question. It fades to black on the temple, completing the reused material from the 2022 film. Then, in a new scene shot for Avengers: Doomsday, the rubble on Mount Wundagore rises, levitated by the hand of Doctor Doom. His green sorcery flows over the stones as he says, "Scarlet Witch, awaken. Your power will be mine."

Elizabeth Olsen's Wanda Maximoff is confirmed for Avengers: Doomsday

Elizabeth Olsen's Wanda Maximoff is returning in Avengers: Doomsday, after years of denials from Olsen and non-answers from Marvel Studios about her status. Olsen had a baby in early August, which might be why they filmed her in such a tight close-up.

Going frame by frame, I noticed that in the exact frame Wanda opens her eyes, she's looking directly into the lens, at us, before adjusting her eyeline a split second later to look upward past us. That is easy to do when an actor's eyes are closed in a tight close-up and they don't know exactly where the lens is.

Whether it was planned or not, the moment works. In Multiverse of Madness, after dreamwalking into her Earth-838 variant, Wanda showed her mastery of the multiverse and her meta powers by breaking the fourth wall and looking directly at us. This micro expression, intentional or not, does indicate the type of thing that Doom needs.

My theory: Doctor Doom is collecting everyone who disrupted the multiverse

Wanda is Doctor Doom's latest collection, along with Bruce Banner, as we saw in the scene attached to Avengers: Endgame Encore. Also part of these collections could be Peter Parker, Doctor Strange, Clea and Loki, and maybe Steve Rogers. My theory has been that Doom is specifically collecting everyone who caused incursions or some kind of disruption to the multiverse.

Wanda's dreamwalking in Multiverse of Madness caused incursions. Doctor Strange also dreamwalked there and made an awful bargain with the souls of the damned. Clea seemed to have her own history with incursions and had no problem slicing through reality. Bruce Banner used the Infinity Stones to undo Thanos's snap. Peter Parker disrupted the runes of Doctor Strange's spell that brought the multiverse villains into Earth-616 in No Way Home. Loki left Earth-616 as a rogue variant and is now the god of stories, with unchecked control over the multiverse. And Steve Rogers decided to stay in the past.

Is Wanda one of the masked Latverian witches in the Doomsday trailers?

It now looks like Wanda is one of the masked Latverian witches we've been seeing throughout the Doomsday marketing. Based on the green lighting of the shot, perhaps she is the green-robed witch. The speculation has been that Charlize Theron's Clea could be the purple-robed one, which leaves the orange-brown one.

Some have speculated that this could be a variant of Sue Storm or of Peggy Carter. But if we're sticking with the sorceress theme, maybe the third could be Doom's resurrected wife, who could be a sorceress. Another suggestion is that she could be a resurrected form or variant of Tilda Swinton's Ancient One, since her robes were an orange-gold color.

Can Doctor Doom resurrect the dead?

Does Doom even have the power to resurrect the dead? If he did, why wouldn't he resurrect his wife and child? Maybe he can, but only as zombie vessels whose bodies can handle the magic he's going to course through them.

That's similar to the creepy way Wanda did this with Vision's corpse, when she had those pangs of reality and would see him as a corpse. That's the magic Doom is after now.

What Doom means by "Your power will be mine"

Doom says power, even though the captions say powers. If Wanda is dead, would she still have her power for Doom to steal and exploit? He calls her Scarlet Witch, not Wanda Maximoff, showing he respects her far more than Bruce, whom he called Mr. Banner, not even Professor Banner. It indicates he knows what it means to be the Scarlet Witch.

He knows that even after her death, her hex could persist on Agatha Harkness, leaving Agatha driving what she thought was a car but was a bunch of household objects and cereal boxes. Wanda has a wide array of powers to manifest and manipulate reality. Her Westview hex was her conjuring an entire pocket reality out of grief. Her son Billy inherited that power and made the Witches' Road real.

In Multiverse of Madness, Wanda broke through magical barriers and overwhelmed the multiverse's most powerful sorcerers, and through her Earth-838 variant she wiped out the Illuminati. It's clear Doom wants that power to do to his Reed Richards what Wanda did to that one. I think he wants the Scarlet Witch's power, along with the powers of the other multiversal figures he's collecting, as part of a magical spell or ritual he needs to complete to create Battleworld.

How Doom found Wanda on Mount Wundagore: the TVA or pure magic

Based on how Wanda looks when Doom lifts the rubble, she hasn't decomposed much, which suggests she's either alive or Doom lifted it not long after the collapse. She might not have died at all; she could have been knocked out by the rubble. But I'm guessing from the red glow that some kind of life event did occur, probably her death, and that not long after, Doom arrived on Earth-616, lifted the rubble and used his magic to resurrect her.

The timing raises questions. Multiverse of Madness took place in November 2024 in the MCU timeline, while Doomsday seems set in late 2028 or early 2029. So has Doom been sitting with her enchanted form for four years, during the events of Agatha All Along, which seemed to suggest Wanda was a corpse somewhere? Was Doom possessing her then?

I see a few possibilities. First, this Doom could have already conquered the TVA, giving him its TemPads and time doors to reach various points in history in any universe, and maybe a newfound omniscience from Loki over who the key collectible figures are. In the Jeep commercial, Doom is already controlling TVA Minutemen to ferry Sentinel parts to him as he attacks the X-Mansion, which suggests to me that he has full control over the TVA.

In Deadpool and Wolverine, the Scarlet Witch statue appears in the Void, on the ceiling of the hideout of Gambit, Blade, Elektra and Laura. The Earth-616 version crumbled but that one did not, which suggests the TVA registered the temple as significant and pruned it from another universe, probably to stop someone collecting what was buried there. The TVA might have had Wanda's death in their archives. Maybe the Wanda waking up now is the anchor being of Earth-616.

The second possibility is that it's all magic. Doom's spell book, seen in the visual dictionary, might hold a spell that lets him reach important targets from any universe at any point in its history and collect them when they're most vulnerable. Multiverse of Madness stated that every Darkhold in every reality was destroyed, yet Doom still has this book, suggesting his own spell book is even more powerful. Maybe one page lists where the original Darkhold was destroyed.

Is that Robert Downey Jr.'s voice as Doctor Doom?

Many have observed, and I agree to a degree, that this voice doesn't sound much like Robert Downey Jr.'s Doctor Doom in other trailers. It sounds like a soundalike they might have used. Marvel has often used voice actors skilled at impressions, like Ross Marquand, to voice characters like Red Skull and Ultron.

I'm wondering if Downey's contract only covers scenes released theatrically. The Bruce Banner scene first played in theaters in September with Avengers: Endgame Encore, while this one might only ever stream, which could have required an addendum Marvel didn't want to spend time or money on. Olsen's contract probably covers both theatrical and streaming.

Paul Bettany's Vision and a possible Wanda and Magneto scene in Doomsday

Wanda isn't the only WandaVision alum confirmed for Doomsday. Anthony Mackie confirmed that Paul Bettany would be in it as well: "I got to hang out with Paul Bettany, who I love." So as Vision walks away seemingly complete at the end of VisionQuest, headed to East View, New Jersey, to have dinner with Billy and Tommy, it looks like he may also end up with the original Avengers in Avengers Tower, and the trailers may have framed him out. Now that it seems like one of those masked witches is going to have the face of Billy and Tommy's mother, Vision is probably set to appear for the heartbroken reaction he'll have upon seeing her.

Wanda might also share a scene with Ian McKellen's Magneto. Earth-616 Wanda's father was Oleg Maximoff, but if Olsen and McKellen share a scene, something's going to get referenced. I think the Russo brothers love Wanda and hold her on a higher tier of relevance than it would seem. Having the most powerful sorceress weaponized by Doom, the same way he's weaponizing Sentinels, is a huge part of how he's going to demonstrate the mastery of all magic he'll need in Avengers: Doomsday.