Can someone clarify what happened with Wanda? I know that she went to Doctor Doom, and that he did- something to or with her, but what exactly was it? Obviously there was a retcon, but was she still in control of her actions? Did she just go insane, or was Doom just manipulating and or controlling her? Does Wanda just get off the hook? Did they pull a Hal Jordan with her? And was that whole thing with Agatha Harkness ever explained (Ie: Was that the real Agatha all along, or did she remain dead and then Wanda re-created her?)?

But anyhow, the BIGGEST head scratcher, and if you ask me, this was a big plot hole, was why Cap just handed Wanda over to Magneto. The Avengers didn't know that the Magneto from Planet X was an imposter (Uy yoah yoah!),or at least I don't THINK that they did, so surely they were aware that he went on a terror spree (Did they know about Jean's death and that Wolverine beheaded him after he killed Jean?)in New York. So why would they just give her to him and not do anything? Did they just think that Wanda recreated this Magneto,and that the old one was dead? I understand that everybody was exhausted,and it's understandable that they didn't want to pick a fight with Magneto,but it felt very-odd that he would just pop in and nobody says or does anything. Especially with Nick Fury there. He would have been all like "That's Magneto. Shoot him!". Even discounting the Planet X storyline, Mags was still a wanted terrorist (He stopped being a good guy and went back to villian status during the X-Men Fatal Attractions storyarc wayyyyyy back in the early 90s.). It seems weird that Cap wouldn't at least try to talk with him or try to figure things out. I don't know. It was a dramatic scene, but it didn't make any sense when you think about it. And you don't have to think HARD about it.

Oh, this gets annoying REAL fast, so bear with me.

Wanda went to Doom to get his assistance in bringing back her children from Mephisto. His attempts to aid her (and, of course, gain cosmic power for himself... he is Dr. Doom, after all.) caused her to bond to a strange cosmic entity, which for simplicity's sake is referred to as the Life Entity, although it's begging for a retcon. That entity has manipulated many of Wanda's decisions and actions during Disassembled. Doom has also taken credit for manipulating Wanda as well to destroy the Avengers. So, yeah, Hal Jordan/Jean Grey at BEST, with some mind control on top of that! We're still unsure as to whether or not Agatha was ever returned to life or not, same as Wonder Man, actually.

The Magneto/Cap thing... we've had multiple interpretations of that, actually. For one, it's worth mentioning that the UN gave Magneto a country well and truly after Fatal Attractions, so he wasn't wanted again until Planet X, surprisingly. And then things get way worse. We've heard from an alternate reality Dr. Strange that Cap was actually actively collaborating with Wanda as well and it was his knowledge of strategy that helped her to really see how to destroy the Avengers, only snapping out of it when he was challenged to rebuild the Avengers. Whether this is because of Wanda's mental manipulations as seen in Captain America and the Falcon at the time or because Cap lost his mind is open to interpretation... as is whether or not Strange's vision is as true of our reality as well as his own. So, ultimately, who knows?


TJB

When you sum it all up like that, though... Wow. It makes Onslaught and the Clone Saga look straight-forward by comparison. It just isn't as obvious to readers because it's been spread out over the better part of a decade.

Everybody was out of their gourd because of Wanda. Not just Wanda, but most of the Avengers were acting crazy because of her: Tony was drunk without drinking any alcohol, Shulkie was rampaging, Cap was pretty much in a daze, etc.

Though I really suspect they knew Planet X wasn't the real Magneto.

This sounds AWFUL, even for an Alternate Reality/What If version. Also, as a surplus, Magneto BLACKMAILED the UN into giving him the country. The UN just agreed because they didn't want Magneto to do anything else. He was still a wanted terrorist, so even discounting the UN thing, it doesn't make sense that they would just hand her over without any reservations.

This was the What If? Disassembled issue... and it was actually really good, honestly. At the end of the issue, Dr. Strange does his due dilligence, and discovers that if the Avengers hadn't caught on to Wanda not having the skills to destroy the team so efficiently, things played out exactly as they did in the normal reality. When you add in Bendis showing Cap as having weird blackouts during Civil War and him doing some genuinely ruthless stuff for him during that scenario, I'm convinced that he was, in fact, helping Wanda subconsciously due to a growing mental instability that, ironically, got fixed when the Skull decided to break him the way he did.


TJB

In terms of timeline relating to the return of Wonder Man - when did Wanda go to Doom and become bonded with the life entity? Was it before or after Wonder Man's return in the Morgan Le Fay confrontation in Avengers Vol. 3 issues 1 - 3?

Based on the "classic" costume she's wearing in that flashback, it would have to have taken place before the Avengers West Coast were disbanded, since after then, she doesn't go back to it until last year, so it's somewhen around 1990-1993 (possibly after the AWC encountered Doom in Excalibur #37-39?).

On the one hand, this means that the changes and boosts in her powers, along with all of the "why aren't more readers noticing and complaining about how out-of-character this is?" behaviour from 1998 onwards can be written off as part of the descent into madness, on the other hand it means there was a period before that where she just contained the "Life Force" with no effects. Maybe what Morgan did to her was the catalyst in it starting it's effects.

Thanks. I didn't read Children's Crusade so I didn't realize the encounter with Doom etc. had happened so early.

But Bendis didn't do anything new to Wanda. She became crazy before when she lost her children and she became evil. This time with Bendis, instead of castrating/ BJing Simon she disassembled the avengers.
I feel bad for Wanda as she is among my favorites.

To be fair, the Wanda-goes-crazy storyline (Darker Than Scarlet) was a three-or-four issue plot line in the mid-80's, arising from discovering that the government lobotomized and disassembled her husband (who had previously been written to be artificial flesh and blood, but that's another rant). Following her recovery from that breakdown, she had DECADES of being portrayed as highly stable, capable, and even as a leader of the Avengers. It seemed to me that Bendis ignored those decades in order to use her as a blunt instrument to disassemble the team.

Thanks to Children's Crusade we can now say it wasn't her fault, but still there's a stigma.

For whatever it's worth, they may not have intended it to be so far back, but at the time Disassembled happened, Doom was "dead", and the costume that they showed the Scarlet Witch as wearing is one she stopped wearing in late 1993, which sets a limit on when it could have been.