Many Avengers have stepped over to the dark side over their history, but one of the best-known instances of this is Scarlet Witch. While most of Wanda Maximoff’s time as a villain is complicated and tied to the many traumas in her life, due to her power levels, any loss of control has had extreme consequences. Those consequences sometimes include the death of a teammate or an innocent civilian.
While her kill count isn’t as high as other heroes-turned-villains, or even some heroes while they’re being heroes, it’s usually those closest to Wanda that are at a higher risk of losing their lives when she loses control. Many of these deaths are indirectly caused by Wanda, or through her actions, but there’s no denying that these characters wouldn’t have died if she hadn’t become a villain.
10 Antonio
A fire-bending mutant who was a vacation fling of Amara “Magma” Aquilla while she was visiting South America. The two were so close that she tried to convince him to join her at Xavier’s Academy, and he convinced her to spend an extra week with him.
He was a victim of the Decimation event, or M-Day, and lost his powers while inside a volcano. He burned alive in front of Magma, who had not been affected by Wanda Maximoff’s call for “no more mutants.”
9 Norm “Hydro” Crichton
Hydro was another victim of the M-Day depowering. He had the ability to breathe underwater and had taken to sleeping in the swimming pool of the Xavier Institute. Unfortunately, that was where he was when his powers disappeared, and he drowned in the pool.
While he wasn’t a high-profile student at the institute, he did have connections to Hellion. His death, along with other mutants who were depowered and died due to a lack of their powers, was particularly hard on the remaining mutants post-M-Day.
8 Jeannie Martin
Jeannie was an example of a mutant whose powers were necessary for their survival. She had an extraordinarily long neck and when Decimation happened, the strength in her neck fails, snapping her neck and killing her. It took her neighbors a full hour to call for help.
While Wanda did not directly kill Jeannie, if she was in her right mind, she would have been aware of mutants like Jeannie and what the loss of their powers would do to them.
7 Ned Ralston
Another Decimation victim and one of the showier deaths involved in that event, Ned’s body took on the shape of a dragon and his mutant abilities centered on giving him dragon-like abilities such as flight. When he lost his powers, he lost the ability to fly, crashing and dying on 5th avenue in New York City.
Every death during Decimation was due to Wanda’s actions and while she did what she could once she’d come back to help those who she depowered, the deaths that were caused by that action were not, generally, reversed.
6 Jack of Hearts
Jonathan Hart died as an Avenger, sacrificing his life to save the team and the world. His powers—powerful, uncontrollable blasts of energy that emanated from his body—made him a nuclear option for the Avengers during his time with the team. After his death, Wanda resurrected him, using his abilities to attack the Avengers Mansion during the Avengers: Disassembled event.
While she didn’t cause his original death, his resurrection and short undead time before blowing up and taking some of his closest friends with him is arguably worse, and a much darker prospect for Jack himself.
5 Scott Lang
During the Avengers: Disassembled event, Scott Lang was one of the first casualties. While trying to talk down the resurrected Jack of Hearts, he was caught in the blast from his friend and killed.
While Scott didn’t seem to pose any threat to Wanda or have anything to do with the erasing of her memories of her children, it’s unclear if he was a target, or killed because of his alliance with the Avengers in general. Either way, Scott was eventually saved from this fate by the Young Avengers and pulled into the present by his daughter, Cassie.
4 Clint Barton
Hawkeye and the Scarlet Witch have a long history as teammates and friends, but that did not save him during the events of Avengers: Disassembled. He was leading the West Coast Avengers when Wanda’s children were lost to Mephisto, so he had a target on his back when she lost control.
His death against the Kree fleet over Central Park was a pivotal moment in the event, with Marvel at the time promising that he was, in fact, dead. And while it became a running gag that Brian Michael Bendis would kill Hawkeye in every event, the first time was shocking.
3 Agatha Harkness
While the timeline is fuzzy on this, it was heavily implied that Wanda had a hand in Agatha’s death. Her body was discovered during the Avengers: Disassembled event and had obviously been there for a long time.
It’s all very vague and hard to tell if the ghost of Agatha that trained Wanda was actually Agatha or a projection of Wanda’s mind, but either way, Agatha’s death was suspicious at the very least. Given that she was the one that took Wanda’s memories of her children in the first place, it is easy to connect the dots back to the Scarlet Witch.
2 Clint Barton For A Second Time
Hawkeye was understandably upset during the House of M events. He learned that he’d been killed by the Scarlet Witch’s machinations once, and his feelings of betrayal made him confront her on her actions. That, unfortunately, led to what is visually, a much more dramatic demise.
Clint was blinked out of existence, pulled into pieces, and erased after confronting Wanda in the presence of her children. While he was resurrected again after the Decimation event and the restoration of the normal timeline, it was an experience that stayed with him for a long time.
1 Vision
Vision’s death during Avengers: Disassembled and the lead up to it, turned him into what he feared the most. As he crashed a quinjet into the Avengers Mansion, he spawned several Ultron drones that attacked the Avengers, living out the worst-case scenario of his creation. When the magically pumped-up She-Hulk, who was under Wanda’s control, ripped Vision in half, the reactions of the characters present mirrored the readers. It was horrifying.
While all the Avengers lived out a nightmare during Disassembled, Vision’s death frames how personal the attack was. Wanda knew how to hit him and how to use him to hurt their teammates, and in her grief, she turned him into his own worst nightmare.
0 Comments