Here be spoilers for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, so turn back lest ye be spoiled.
As a franchise more than happy to rely on the fake-out death a little too often, nobody’s buying for a second that Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff followed in Tony Stark’s footsteps by making the ultimate sacrifice play in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
Having realized that perhaps traveling through various realities to murder her way to the children that don’t exist in her own wasn’t the wisest course of action, the wielder of the Darkhold decides that the best way to keep everyone safe is to eliminate herself from the equation.
Given the way Olsen’s popularity has skyrocketed among the MCU faithful since WandaVision premiered, we’d feel extremely confident in saying the Scarlet Witch will definitely be back in the future. In an interview with ComicBook, Olsen even put forward one of her preferred methods with which to make it happen.
“I think fans usually have the best ideas and I genuinely don’t know where we go from here and what the limitations are of the MCU because I don’t follow what their plans are….I feel like the fans always know what the plans are, even when they’re not announced. And so I don’t. I do have this image… There are a few images in my head of, I think they’re from Witch’s Row, as she’s aging and decaying, while using her power and there’s something in that, this older woman, who’s aging from her power, that I’m interested in. And I don’t really know what that means, but I kind of would love to be old.”
That’s not quite what we were expecting her to say, but as Multiverse of Madness‘ final act proved, the MCU is hardly averse to decomposing its major heroes, either.