Vision and Scarlet Witch - the history of their rocky romance
Examining the history of Vision and Scarlet Witch as they return to the Avengers
The Scarlet Witch and Vision will be back among the core Avengers team when their ongoing title relaunches in June with the new creative team of Jed MacKay and CF Villa.
Not only is this the first time the Scarlet Witch will be on the core Avengers since she betrayed the team in the fateful story Avengers: Disassembled (more on that later), but it's also the first time she and Vision have been on the core team at the same time since he died due to Wanda's magic in that same story.
Now with both Wanda and Vision about to be back on the Avengers together for the first time in almost 20 years, the major question of how their past relationship will come into focus in the new volume of Avengers remains one of the biggest mysteries of the upcoming relaunch.
While we can't see the future (try as we might), we can examine the past that has led to Wanda and Vision's current fraught status quo as they return to Earth's Mightiest Heroes together in preparation for June's big relaunch.
Vision and Wanda sitting in a tree
Vision, who joined the Avengers in 1968's Avengers #58, was a core part of the team's roster and story by the time Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch and her brother Pietro Maximoff/Quicksilver joined the team for their second stint on its roster in 1970's Avengers #75.
The pair quickly hit it off as former villains-turned-Avengers, soon becoming the team's resident power couple (pun intended).
And as Vision and Scarlet Witch grew more and more in love, their relationship and extensive family tree of villains and heroes such as Wonder Man, Magneto, Quicksilver, Ultron, and Grim Reaper also grew into the foundational roots of the Avengers title through most of the '70s and early '80s.
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For better and for worse
After several years of romance and courtship, Vision and Scarlet Witch finally tied the knot in 1975's Giant-Size Avengers #4 after Wanda receives the blessing of her magical tutor Agatha Harkness. They were married by none other than Immortus, one of the most well-known Variants of Kang the Conqueror.
Their marriage paved the way for their two Vision and Scarlet Witch limited series which further cemented the mythos of Scarlet Witch's powers and Vision's origins, with the second of the two Vision and Scarlet Witch series introducing their twin children Billy and Tommy, as seen in WandaVision and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (and who are likely to be seen again in the MCU sooner rather than later).
But the unlikely birth of Wanda and Vision's children also set the stage for the end of their relationship, and Wanda's eventual downfall, as the stress of losing her children would be just the first of several deep wounds to Wanda's psyche.
Sadly, Wanda and Vision's marital bliss didn't last long, as their children were revealed to be manifestations of the power of the demonic villain Mephisto, and disappeared.
Wanda's personal grief was soon compounded in the story Avengers: VisionQuest in which the Vision himself is disassembled and rebuilt with no emotions - including none of the love he once had for Wanda.
Both of these plot points became major factors in the MCU in WandaVision, with the emotionless white Vision reportedly set to return in his own streaming series somewhere down the line.
In comics, they added to Wanda's emotional stress, eventually becoming a major factor in her turn against the Avengers.
Vision and Wanda disassembled
When the Avengers reformed after a year where the team's core members were missing in a pocket universe (the 'Heroes Reborn' era), both Wanda and Vision were among the team's first reassembled roster - as was Vision's ersatz brother Wonder Man, who had been resurrected through Wanda's magic.
Wanda and Vision made peace with the end of their relationship, and Wanda began dating Wonder Man. Things seemed fine between all three, with Wanda apparently moving on from the trauma of her past.
But under the surface, the villain Doctor Doom was using his own magic to subvert Wanda's reality remaking power for his own ends - the first of which involved destroying the Avengers.
In the 2004 story Avengers: Disassembled, Wanda reaches her breaking point (later revealed to be a result of Doom's influence in the story Avengers: The Children's Crusade), with her reality-altering power causing the deaths of Hawkeye, Scott Lang/Ant-Man, and even her own ex-husband, the Vision.
Wanda went on to alter reality to her own whims in the story House of M, which led to her infamous 'No more mutants" spell which wiped out the powers of all but a few of the mutants on Earth.
Needless to say, Wanda and Vision's time on the Avengers was done after that - and though there's a bit more to each of their stories at this point, since then their personal status quo has been unstable at best and murky at worst.
What's next for Vision and Wanda?
In the years since Avengers: Disassembled, Vision has been repaired and rebuilt, and Wanda was finally freed from Doom's secret influence in 2012's The Children's Crusade, though her relationship with the Avengers was not yet restored (and arguably still hasn't been fully revived).
Vision made another tragic attempt at starting a family in his 2018 limited series which ended with the deaths of his synthezoid wife and son, though his daughter, Viv Vision, has become a teen hero among the Champions.
As for Wanda, her recent history is a bit complicated. She recently died on the mutant island of Krakoa and was brought back through the power of mutant resurrection.
But since she's not technically a mutant anymore (it's hard to explain, but she's a genetically engineered being created by upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 villain the High Evolutionary) she was restored to an earlier point in her life before the baggage of her Avengers: Disassembled downfall, paving the way to her Avengers return.
She's also got her own just-launched ongoing Scarlet Witch title in which she's dating former Sorcerer Supreme Jericho Drumm/Brother Voodoo, so there may not be a romantic reunion ahead for Vision and Wanda.
That said, they did both appear in the 2019 limited series Avengers: No Road Home which ended with a hint at a romance reigniting between the two, so anything's possible, even if Wanda's recent personality reboot complicates her relationship with the team.
Wanda Maximoff and Vision have starred together in some of the best Avengers stories of all time.
I've been Newsarama's resident Marvel Comics expert and general comic book historian since 2011. I've also been the on-site reporter at most major comic conventions such as Comic-Con International: San Diego, New York Comic Con, and C2E2. Outside of comic journalism, I am the artist of many weird pictures, and the guitarist of many heavy riffs. (They/Them)