Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch finally gets the spotlight she deserves

In a day when movie audiences feel like they have seen it all, watched it all and heard it all, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness surprisingly gives us thunderbolts of emotions and meaningful context to its somewhat familiar and huge heroic action scenes.

It is also good to see Philippine cinemas packed once again since the film’s release last May 4, two days before the US premiere. I attended the red carpet premiere a day prior and the Disney-Marvel Philippines family was telling us how they had to split the event to a.m. and p.m. cinema screenings to accommodate the artists, partners, influencers and journalists, who wanted to be among the first few to see it in full.

No one was disappointed because director Sam Raimi’s signature, sardonic humor with a touch of horror was successfully infused in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) in a well-blended procedure. He was so successful in executing gore the Marvelesque way, thanks to Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff, a.k.a. Scarlet Witch.

Since Wandavision, Elizabeth proved why her character is a star in the MCU. Hello! She is said to be the strongest Avenger, even though there are fans of other characters who would like to contest, jokingly for Elizabeth. “I feel like the strongest character in the MCU and I like saying it to strike up a debate!”

Scarlet Witch’s scenes in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness will not just leave the audience baffled at her actions, they are also the most emotionally impactful. Doctor Strange was filmed at the onslaught of the pandemic, which gave the cast time to get more creative within the confines of their filming locations. “All those possibilities could happen so when we were filming this, it was COVID so we had to make all these worlds we had to but the exciting thing about opening this Multiverse is the endless storytelling,” she said.

With Elizabeth perfecting and enjoying her role, she said that it is the film, where Scarlet comes into fruition. “For the first time, she feels so clear on who she is and so confident and now she accepted her destiny as the Scarlet Witch and that was fun for me.”

After the Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness craze, expect Halloween season to be full of fans in Scarlet Witch costumes because the strength and mystique that Elizabeth’s character brought to the table in this installment clearly gained her so much more fans than what she already had.

Although for Elizabeth, “I never saw my character as a role model but if there’s anything to learn from the Scarlet Witch, it’s the allowance that even people with so much power make mistakes and we’ve watched Wanda cross so many generations and she recovered from those mistakes and grew from it.”

Elizabeth hoped that Wanda’s story so far could also make people reflect on this and make something sensible out of a difficult situation one might find themselves in. During the course of our exclusive chat, she left us with one last lesson. “We can be emotional and vulnerable but it is not always a weakness, sometimes it can be a strength.”

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness stars Benedict Cumberbatch with Chiwetel Ejiofor, Benedict Wong, Xochitl Gomez, with Michael Stühlbarg, and Rachel McAdams.

The film is directed by Sam, and Kevin Feige is the producer. Louis D’Esposito, Victoria Alonso, Eric Hauserman Carroll, Scott Derrickson and Jamie Christopher serve as executive producers. It is still showing in cinemas.