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Someday, in the future, after Spider-Man: Homecoming is a success and Fox sees all the money Sony makes by playing nice with Disney, they'll want a piece of that action and will try to get the Fantastic Four and X-Men integrated into the MCU. Hopefully, when that happens, we get a scene of someone asking Scarlet Witch if these new heroes coming out of the woodwork were created by Hydra, like she was. Her response?
"No: more mutants."
Wanda Maximoff casts hexes on her enemies
as the mystical super-being Scarlet Witch!
One of the great things about Civil War is that it's almost entirely character-driven. Just like in the comics, the inciting event is an explosion - a rather thin plot, to be sure - but the actual fallout of it is focused on Wanda and her reaction to what happened (or, more accurately, what she made/allowed to happen). No, she doesn't dress up in a spiky pain-suit, but throughout the entire film you can tell that she's trying to work through her emotions: she blames herself, she worries other people will blame her, she bristles at being confined to the Avengers compound, she's hesitant to even leave... why, it's almost like you can have a superhero movie that's about more than punching!
Scarlet Witch is played by Elizabeth Olsen, and between this figure and Balderdash ClippityClop, Hasbro must have switched to a new factory for their movie likenesses. T'Challa, Falcon and Bucky were only so-so, but this one is great! Lovely sculpt, perfect paint, everything. I had to buy this one online (she's the first to sell out), but she looks great.
At the end of Avengers 2: Cruise Control, Wanda got something resembling a costume. Yes, it was just a red jacket and black pants, but it was a costumey jacket, not something you could buy off the rack. By the time of Civil War, she's given that up for something that's easier to cosplay. She wears a knee-length jacket over a red corset and black leather pants. Her necklace is molded against her chest, and her hands are done in weird hexing gestures.
At a glance, the figure's proportions seem off: her legs too long, or her torso too short. She, Tacit Ronin and Skarr can all be friends. But if you look at actual images from the film, it's not that far off the mark - Olsen must be one leggy dame! It may just be an optical illusion, caused by the black pants disappearing into shadow as they near the waist. Or maybe it's actually wrong. Her corset and coat are two different shades of red, to keep the figure from looking dull, and they even remembered to paint her silver rings. And as mentioned above, the paint on the face is just the best.
Wanda's articulation is just as you'd expect: a balljointed head; hinged neck; swivel/hinge shoulders, elbows and wrists; balljointed torso; balljointed hips; swivel thighs; double-hinged knees; and swivel/hinge ankles. Her hair keeps the head from moving much at all, though it and her coat are both molded from PVC so they're at least somewhat flexible. The hinge in her right hand runs front-to-back, while the one in her left goes side-to-side. This adds more diversity to her hex-casting poses, which is a fun choice. The ankles would be considered "rocker" style, except that she wears high heels, so the peg ends up at an angle that keeps them from working that way.
The figure includes two
translucent red energy effects, clearly meant to simulate her powers. But her fingers are in such extreme poses, they don't want to fit into the pieces very well. That's okay, she looks perfectly fine without them, and her effects are never this large in the movie anyway.
She also comes with the head of this series' Build-A-Figure, Abomination. Why is a Hulk villain in a Captain America line? Uh, we'll get back to you on that.
With the release of Scarlet Witch, we're only one Hawkeye away from completing Team Cap. And while she may be hard to get, it's just because she's popular, not because she's an exclusive.
-- 10/31/16
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