While growing up with her twin brother Pietro and her parents Oleg and Iryna in a small apartment during a war, she enjoyed watching American sitcoms, which her father sold DVD box sets of so their family could practice speaking English in the hopes of emigrating to America.

While a second Stark Industries missile flew in, it never went off as Wanda unknowingly cast a probability hex that turned it into a dud, though the twins lived in fear of it going off until they were rescued.

This left the twins with the fervent belief that Stark himself was ultimately responsible for their parents' deaths as it occurred via sales of his company's weapons which he had intentionally profited from.

Years later, as young adults, Wanda and Pietro participated in political protests in their city, before eventually volunteering for Hydra's enhancement program overseen by Baron Wolfgang von Strucker.

The organization exposed the twins and numerous other test subjects to the Mind Stone, with Wanda and Pietro being the only survivors and the former gaining psychic abilities while her magic was greatly amplified.

Upon learning of Tony Stark's plan to give the body life and fearing what he will do with it, Steve Rogers takes Wanda and Pietro to Avengers Tower to stop him.

In 2016, Wanda joins Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, and Sam Wilson in a mission to stop Brock Rumlow from stealing a biological weapon in a lab in Lagos.

Overcome with grief, Wanda accidentally unleashes waves of chaos magic that transforms Westview into a sitcom-themed false reality and isolates it from the outside world via a hexagonal barrier, later known as the "Hex".

While attempting to befriend her neighbors (painfully forced to role-play as sitcom stereotypes, and kept from their children) and concealing her and Vision's powers, Wanda becomes visibly pregnant.

As it progresses at an accelerated rate, she encounters Monica Rambeau, who had been absorbed into the Hex and took on the alias of "Geraldine", and receives her help in giving birth to twin boys Tommy and Billy.

As a result, Wanda collapses with grief, and on being assured by her 838-counterpart that "they will be loved", allows Chavez, Wong, and Strange to leave before using her powers to destroy Mount Wundagore along with all copies of the Darkhold across the multiverse, effectively killing herself in the process.

Sometime later, a group of survivors come to Vision for his cure, but Wanda breaks free and kills Kurt Goreshter and infects Okoye before engaging the Hulk in a fight.

However, he eventually altered the team roster, removing all but Captain America, and added villains from other comics: the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver from the X-Men, and Hawkeye from Iron Man's adventures in Tales of Suspense.

Some years later, Avengers writer Roy Thomas started a long-running romantic relationship between the Scarlet Witch and the Vision, considering that it would help with the series' character development.

[16][17] In May 2013, Joss Whedon considered Saoirse Ronan to be his "prototype" actress for the part, but by August of that year, Elizabeth Olsen had been cast for the role.

[25][26] In the films, her powers are telekinetic and telepathic abilities, which she gained by volunteering as a test subject in Hydra experiments to create supersoldiers, by exposing her to the Mind Stone.

By the finale, having fully embraced her identity as the Scarlet Witch, Wanda gains a new costume reflecting a modernized version of her comic counterpart.

Olsen expanded upon this, saying, "What I love about her is that, in so many superhero films, emotions are kind of negated a bit, but for her everything that someone else could feel—like their weakest moments—she physically goes through that same experience with them, which is pretty cool".

[42] In WandaVision, Olsen said the character is brought more in line with the comic book version, including depicting her mental illness,[43] while introducing the "Scarlet Witch" moniker that was not previously used in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) outside of promotional material.

[49] Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness continues Wanda's "ownership of what makes her unique and the accountability of her life experience" that began in the series WandaVision (2021),[50] with an example of this being a return to an accent that is more true to her Sokovian heritage after some of the previous MCU films had moved to an Americanized version.

Wanda is a naturally-born sorceress with the ability to harness chaos magic presenting in reality warping, conjuration, time and illusion manipulation, and even life creation.

[59] It emanates as an energy projection from her hands and body as a red vapor mist, which she can use her telekinetic abilities to manipulate her natural born chaos magic.

In Captain America: Civil War, Wanda's powers have advanced and her telekinesis is strong enough to let her hold up the debris of a falling building as well as fly for brief periods of time.

[55] Wanda later induces nightmarish-like images into the heads of four Avengers, inspiring nightmarish visions in Captain America, Thor and Black Widow, as well as provoking Bruce Banner to transform into a rampaging Hulk.

[61][62] According to Agatha, Wanda was born with chaos magic and is what she used unknowingly to hex the Stark missile to not explode in her apartment in Sokovia when she and Pietro were only ten years old.

[64] After being overwhelmed with grief after Vision's death, Wanda releases waves of chaos magic which accidentally creates a reinforced CMBR force-field (known as "The Hex") over the town of Westview, New Jersey.

It was later revealed that their biological father was Magneto and their mother was Magda Eisenhardt, a Romani woman he met in a concentration camp during World War II.

[71] Jen Chaney of Vulture reviewed WandaVision positively, stating that "Olsen and Bettany's characters were often treated like benchwarmers on an all-star team in the Avengers movies.

[73] IndieWire praised Elizabeth Olsen's performance as Wanda, stating, "her work on WandaVision which showcases her tremendous dramatic talent and, even more impressive, introduces her as a true comic delight".

[79] Rachel Leishman of The Mary Sue wrote that Olsen managed to understand and portray the pain felt by her character through the movie, calling her a "powerhouse".