How Did Wanda Maximoff Get Her Powers As Scarlet Witch?

Wanda Maximoff or the Scarlet Witch is a character that only recently entered into the Marvel Cinematic Universe but already she has become even more popular than she was previously. Thanks to the WandaVision series, Wanda has reached new heights of popularity.

So, you and many others might be wondering – how exactly did Wanda Maximoff get her powers as the Scarlet Witch?

This article will break down exactly how Wanda got her powers, the extent of them and how powerful she is in comparison to other superheroes. So read on to discover where the Scarlet Witch got her magical abilities from.

How Did Wanda Maximoff Get Her Powers As The Scarlet Witch?

So, let’s start with the simplest and most direct question – how exactly did Wanda get her amazing powers from?

Well, there are some differences based on which version of Scarlet Witch we are talking about. So let’s tackle the comics first because there is an easier and more direct answer there. 

In the comic books, Wanda and her brother Pietro aka Quicksilver are the children of the leader of the Brotherhood of Mutants, Magneto so their powers are a result of being the children of one of the world’s most powerful mutants and are entirely down to the mutations in their genetics. 

Rather than fight alongside their villainous father, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver take a different path and are two of Earth’s mightiest heroes through their membership of the Avengers. 

The answer to where Wanda got her powers in the MCU is somewhat more complicated, not because of bad storytelling but because of licensing rights. When Marvel and Disney decided they wanted to bring Wanda and Pietro into the Marvel Cinematic Universe they hit a problem.

Disney and Marvel Studios didn’t have the right to bring the X Men or make any reference to the X Men on screen because they didn’t own the cinematic rights to them. 

This was because during the late 90s when Marvel Comics was on the verge of bankruptcy – a somewhat ironic situation given how profitable Marvel films are now – they decided to sell of the unlimited film rights to certain characters like Spider Man, the Fantastic Four and the X Men to film companies so that Marvel could make some money from the films. 

This meant though that in order to use the characters of Wanda and Pietro in the MCU they had to explicitly make clear that they were not Magneto’s children because the X Men films had their own version of Quicksilver who was explicitly Magneto’s son and the two companies did not want to get into a too complicated legal battle over it. 

So in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Wanda gets her powers from a natural link to Chaos Magic, as shown in the eighth episode of WandaVision. Whilst this isn’t distinctly linked to mutants or mutations there is certainly room for it to be retconned so that it can be an instance of her natural mutations coming out. 

However, as is shown in Age of Ultron, the majority of Scarlet Witch’s powers derive from her being experimented on by HYDRA using the Mind Stone, the reason that Wanda was able to destroy the Mind Stone in Infinity War.

Wanda’s powers thus derive in the Marvel Universe from two sources – her natural link to Chaos Magic and the experiments HYDRA did on her and Pietro suing the Mind Stone. 

Now that the origin of Wanda’s powers has been explained, let’s move on to discussing how powerful Wanda actually is in comparison to other heroes in the Marvel Universe. 

How PowerfulIs Wanda Maximoff?

The truth is that Wanda is incredibly powerful. As mentioned above, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe she is powerful enough to destroy the Mind Stone and as the finale of WandaVision showed, she was powerful enough to cause all the events of the series and manipulate reality to her will. 

This is the same in the comics where Wanda’s powers are so strong that she completely rewrites reality during the events of the Marvel crossover event House of M in which all of reality is transformed by Wanda.

Even when the events of House of M are attempted to be repaired they also results in incredible damage as Wanda inadvertently removes the powers of millions of mutants around the world. 

Wanda’s powers are such that she is, according to SHIELD, ranked on the Comparative Mutagenic Power’s scale, the means by which SHIELD monitors the powers of mutants at 9.3 which puts her at the highest end of mutants, above even the likes of Jean Grey and Professor X, considered to be two of the most powerful mutants to have existed. 

Whilst Wanda has immense power, she hasn’t always known how to direct it meaning that whilst her power is great it doesn’t mean she can’t be beaten. 

Why It Is Important To Know The Extent Of Wanda Maximoff’s Powers

Wanda Maximoff or the Scarlet Witch, is one of the most powerful mutants to have ever lived and it is important to know the extent of her powers because it demonstrates something crucial about true super heroes – despite their great powers they always use them to benefit others and not themselves. 

This truly is the case for Wanda who always uses her powers for good and only accidentally causes issues with them because she is trying to get her way through life.

Wanda is not a bad person and this is shown in how she rejects, in the comics at least, the ways of her father and concentrates on being a better person – a true superhero.

This is why knowing about the extent of Wanda’s powers is so important because they reveal to us what kind of person she is; a true hero that does all she can to ensure that her world is protected from threats whether they be human or alien and that she never crosses over to the dark side, no matter how tempting it might be to use her powers for herself rather than for others.