How the Scarlet Witch will appear in Avengers: Doomsday

Full spoiler warning: this essay reveals the post-credits scene of the VisionQuest finale, the ending of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), and plot details from Doctor Doom and Scarlet Witch comics published between 1966 and 2025.

Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff in the classic comic book Scarlet Witch costume from WandaVision

Wanda Maximoff in the classic Scarlet Witch costume in WandaVision. The comic book version of that costume has stood in Doctor Doom's throne room more than once.

For four years the Marvel Cinematic Universe left Wanda Maximoff under a mountain. The last anyone saw of her, in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, she was pulling Mount Wundagore down on her own head to destroy the Darkhold in every universe at once. No body, no funeral, no follow-up.

The VisionQuest finale, which landed on Disney+ on 10 November 2026, finally went back for her. It was not Vision who dug her out, and it was not her sons. It was Victor von Doom.

The scene runs for seconds, but it rests on sixty years of comics in which Doom and the Scarlet Witch keep finding each other, and it almost never ends well for her. This is what the scene shows, what it could mean for Avengers: Doomsday on 18 December 2026, and the specific issues Marvel Studios appears to be reaching for.

What happens in the VisionQuest post-credits scene

The finale itself belongs to Vision. Paul Bettany's synthezoid ends the series reunited with both of his sons: Tommy Maximoff (Ruaridh Mollica), who has been central to the show, and Billy Maximoff (Joe Locke), who arrives late to complete the family. When Tommy asks whether they will ever see their mother again, Vision allows that they "might say hello again."

Then the post-credits scene replays Wanda's last moments on Wundagore and keeps going. Robert Downey Jr.'s Doctor Doom stands in the wreckage, lifts the rock away, and speaks over her as green energy flares.

"Scarlet Witch, awaken. Your power will be mine."

Wanda gasps and opens her eyes. Cut to black.

Three things are worth being precise about. The scene does not say whether Wanda was dead and resurrected or simply dormant under the rubble. It does not show Doom taking anything from her yet. And it does not show her agreeing to help him. It is a threat, delivered to a woman who has not had the chance to answer.

The scene was also held back from advance press screeners, which tells you how much weight Marvel Studios put on it.

Doom the collector: why Wanda, and why now

This is the third time Doom has walked into somebody else's story to take inventory. The mid-credits scene of The Fantastic Four: First Steps put him beside Franklin Richards, a thread followed in The Astromech's breakdown of how First Steps sets up Avengers: Doomsday. The scene added to the Avengers: Endgame re-release showed him taking the Hulk. Now he has the Scarlet Witch.

A child who can create universes, the strongest body on Earth, and the one Avenger who has already rewritten reality on screen. That is not a team. It is a parts list.

In the 2015 Secret Wars comic, Doom becomes God Emperor by channelling stolen power through the Molecule Man. The films have no Molecule Man, and The Astromech's Secret Wars essay argued that Franklin was simply the next battery in line. Wanda complicates that reading. A man who trusts nothing he has not engineered himself would want more than one power source.

Three ways Wanda could figure in Avengers: Doomsday

1. The battery

Wanda as the engine of Doom's ascension: the conduit he uses to reshape the Multiverse, in the role the Molecule Man plays in the comics. The audience has already watched her bend a whole town to her will in WandaVision, so the film would need almost no explanation.

2. The thrall

Wanda as Doom's servant, with her memory wiped or her will overridden. The marketing for Doomsday has shown masked Latverian witches, and some fans think she is hiding among them. Others point out that the witches' magic matches Doom's green rather than Wanda's red, and that three other actresses were cast. It remains a theory.

3. The captive teacher

Wanda as a prisoner Doom studies. He wants chaos magic for himself, and she is the only living person who wields it. This version keeps Wanda's hard-won clarity from the end of Multiverse of Madness intact, and it makes a reunion with Vision, Billy and Tommy a rescue rather than a fight.

One caution. Elizabeth Olsen appearing in VisionQuest is not the same as a cast announcement for Doomsday. Her part in December's film could be brief, with the real payoff saved for Avengers: Secret Wars in 2027.

The comic book history of Doctor Doom and the Scarlet Witch

None of this was invented for the screen. The Astromech's history of Victor von Doom covers the man himself, and the Latverian reading order covers his eleven essential comics. What follows is the narrower file: the issues where Doom's story and Wanda's cross.

1. Avengers #25, "Enter... Dr. Doom!"

Cover date: February 1966
Writer: Stan Lee
Art: Don Heck, pencils; Dick Ayers, inks

The first meeting. Doom lures the Avengers to Latveria to prove a point to the Fantastic Four, and the team he traps is "Cap's Kooky Quartet": Captain America, Hawkeye, Quicksilver and a young Scarlet Witch. Wanda is one hostage among four here, not yet a prize in her own right.

On screen: Latveria as a cage built for Avengers is exactly where the VisionQuest scene seems to be sending Wanda.

2. Avengers #185-187, "Nights of Wundagore"

Cover dates: July to September 1979
Writers: Mark Gruenwald and Steven Grant, plot; David Michelinie, script
Art: John Byrne, pencils; Dan Green, inks

Doom is absent, but this is the story that makes the location matter. Wanda returns to Wundagore Mountain, learns the truth of her birth there, and is possessed by the elder god Chthon, author of the Darkhold. Chaos magic, the mountain and the book are tied together from this point on.

On screen: the MCU's Wanda destroyed the Darkhold on Wundagore. Doom chose to do his digging at the most magically loaded address in Marvel.

3. Avengers Disassembled and House of M

Issues: Avengers #500-503 (2004) and House of M #1-8 (2005)
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Art: David Finch (Disassembled); Olivier Coipel (House of M)

Wanda remembers the children she lost, breaks, and takes the Avengers apart. She then rewrites the world into one ruled by Magneto, and ends it with three words that erase most of mutantkind. Afterwards she vanishes for five years of publishing time.

On screen: WandaVision and Multiverse of Madness are the MCU's version of these two stories. In both tellings, what comes next is Doom.

4. Avengers: The Children's Crusade #1-9

Cover dates: September 2010 to May 2012
Writer: Allan Heinberg
Art: Jim Cheung, pencils; Mark Morales, inks; Justin Ponsor, colours

The key text. Wiccan and Speed, the Young Avengers who are Wanda's reincarnated sons, go looking for their missing mother and find her in Latveria. She has no memory of her life as an Avenger, and she is engaged to marry Victor von Doom.

Doom's explanation is that Wanda came to him years earlier for help bringing her children back. Together they summoned the Life Force, it overwhelmed her, and everything in Disassembled and House of M followed. When her memory returns, Doom takes the Life Force for himself. His face heals, his green cloak turns white, and for a few pages he is a god. He kills Cassie Lang, the hero Stature, before Wanda and the others strip the power from him.

Whether Doom ever cared for her is left open. He takes the blame for her crimes in front of the Avengers, which is either a gift or one last way of owning her story.

On screen: a missing mother, two sons searching, and Doom standing over her with designs on her power. The VisionQuest finale lines up all three within ten minutes of screen time.

5. Avengers & X-Men: AXIS #1-9

Cover dates: December 2014 to February 2015
Writer: Rick Remender
Art: Adam Kubert, Leinil Francis Yu, Terry Dodson and Jim Cheung

A spell inverts the morality of heroes and villains, and the roles swap. A cruel, unrestrained Wanda storms Latveria to kill Doom for what he did to her. A repentant Doom tries to stop her and to make amends, and before the spell fades he uses his borrowed conscience to bring Cassie Lang back to life.

On screen: proof that this pairing works in both directions. If Doom wakes a weapon in Doomsday, the comics say it can turn in his hand.

6. Darkhold Alpha #1

On sale: 2021
Writer: Steve Orlando
Art: Cian Tormey

Doom gets his hands on the Darkhold and means to use it. Wanda steps in, takes charge of the crisis and gathers a group of heroes to face Chthon. Doom reaches for forbidden power, and the Scarlet Witch is the one who understands what it costs.

On screen: the MCU's Darkhold is gone. The woman who destroyed it is the nearest thing left to the book itself.

7. Blood Hunt, One World Under Doom #1-9 and Sorcerer Supreme #1

Published: 2024 to 2025
Writers: Jed MacKay (Blood Hunt); Ryan North (One World Under Doom); Steve Orlando (Sorcerer Supreme)
Art: Pepe Larraz; R.B. Silva; Bernard Chang

The most recent chapter. Doom takes the title of Sorcerer Supreme during Blood Hunt and uses it to seize the entire planet in One World Under Doom. When he falls at the end of that series, the Cloak of Levitation and the Eye of Agamotto need a new bearer. Wanda Maximoff claims them, and Sorcerer Supreme #1 launched in December 2025 with the Scarlet Witch holding the office Doom stole.

On screen: in the current comics, Wanda is the one who inherits Doom's power. That is a tidy map for how Secret Wars could end.

Two further stories sit just outside the pairing but explain it. Avengers: Emperor Doom (1987, David Michelinie and Bob Hall) shows Doom ruling a mind-controlled world, which is the precedent for any brainwashing plot. Doctor Strange & Doctor Doom: Triumph and Torment (1989, Roger Stern and Mike Mignola) is about his mother Cynthia, a witch whose soul was lost to Mephisto. And the show's own title comes from John Byrne's "Vision Quest" in West Coast Avengers #42-45 (1989), the story that dismantled Wanda's family in the first place.

Doom never wants Wanda. He wants what she can reach.

Put those issues in a row and a pattern shows. In The Children's Crusade Doom wants the Life Force. In Darkhold he wants the book. In Blood Hunt he wants the Sorcerer Supreme's mantle. Wanda is the door to each of them, and Doom has always treated doors as things to be opened.

That is why the line in VisionQuest sounds so much like the comics. "Your power will be mine" is not a proposal, and it is not recruitment. It is a claim of ownership.

The two characters also mirror each other more than either would admit. In the comics both were raised among the Romani of Eastern Europe, both turned to magic, and both were broken by losing family. Doom's oldest wound is a witch he could not save. He has now dug another one out of a mountain.

The difference is what each did with the grief. Wanda's last act in Multiverse of Madness was to destroy the thing that corrupted her, at the cost of her own life. Doom has never once given up power he had already taken. If Doomsday puts them in the same room for long, that difference is the story.

What it means for Billy, Tommy and Vision

The finale reunites father and sons minutes before revealing who has their mother. That ordering is deliberate. In The Children's Crusade it is Wiccan and Speed who refuse to accept that Wanda is gone, and their search is what drags the Avengers and the X-Men to Latveria.

With the Doomsday cast already crowded, the boys' search may wait for Secret Wars. Either way, the MCU now has every piece of that comic on the board: the amnesiac or captive mother, the twins, and the tyrant between them. As The Astromech's chronology of the Avengers films argues, these films carry the weight of everything around them, and a Maximoff family reunion is a great deal of weight to carry.

Frequently asked questions

Is Wanda Maximoff alive after the VisionQuest finale?

Yes. The post-credits scene shows Doctor Doom uncovering her beneath Mount Wundagore, and she opens her eyes. The scene does not explain whether she survived the collapse or was brought back.

Is Elizabeth Olsen in Avengers: Doomsday?

She has not been formally announced as part of the cast. The VisionQuest scene strongly suggests Wanda has a role in Doom's plans, but the size of that role in Doomsday, as opposed to Secret Wars, is unknown.

Were Doctor Doom and Scarlet Witch a couple in the comics?

They were engaged in Avengers: The Children's Crusade (2010 to 2012), while Wanda had no memory of her past. The wedding never happened. Doom used her to obtain the Life Force, and she helped strip it from him once her memory returned.

Which comic should I read before Avengers: Doomsday?

Avengers: The Children's Crusade #1-9 by Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung. It is the story the VisionQuest scene most closely resembles, and it is collected in a single volume.

When is Avengers: Doomsday released?

Avengers: Doomsday opens in cinemas on 18 December 2026. Avengers: Secret Wars follows in 2027.