Scarlet Witch

"While I live... and until I die... I am an Avenger!"

- Scarlet Witch

Wanda Marya Maximoff, code named Scarlet Witch is a character of Marvel Comics and has been a regular member of The X-Men and The Avengers. Wanda is the daughter of the mutant super villain Magneto and originally put her powers to use helping the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Eventually Wanda realized her father could not live up to his own standards and quit the team, trying to make up for her time as his pawn. Wanda would join Charles Xavier's X-Men and later The Avengers. Wanda is a mutant witch he power to manipulate probability, however even she is not always fully in control of the out come of her powers. Wanda was trained by the witch Agatha Harkness in the art of Witchcraft as her developing powers were easily governed by the same disciplines. As a result of her training Wanda is not only a powerful mutant but also a practicing witch.

Background
The story of Wanda begins with the woman, Magda, lover of the mutant Magneto. Magneto and Magda were quite in love but when Magneto used his powers in-front of Magda and demonstrated he was a mutant Magda decided to leave Magneto and ran-away, terrified of mutants. When Magda found out she was pregnant by Magneto she became even more terrified that Magneto would find out and come for her child. As it turned out Magda was pregnant with twins one boy and one girl. Magneto found Magda just shortly after she gave birth to her twins, Wanda and Pietro. Magda still quite terrified of Magneto's powers ran off into a blizzard rather than face Magneto, it is presumed she died in the blizzard as she was is an extremely weakened state already from the birth. Magneto did not claim the children initially and left with his heart broken. The children had numerous foster families including a cow-like mutant named Bova, the Super hero The Whizzer and a couple named Django and Marya Maximoff. Dhjango and Marya were gypsies and traveled Europe with Wanda and Pietro as their adoptive children, teaching them the way of their clan. When their foster parents died, the two believed they were the only family either had and became very protective of each-other.

Magneto would eventually find his children alive and well while searching for recruits for his Brotherhood of Mutants and revealed to them he was in truth their true father. With a few well placed words Magneto was able to convince Wanda and Pietro to be completely loyal to him and the two took on the code names "Scarlet Witch" and "Quicksilver" as part of The Brotherhood. Though the full scope of Magneto's involvement would become known to them eventually and Pietro was deeply resentful of his father, Wanda decided to stay on trying to be the good influence in her father's life and continuing to hold him to the messianic standard he built himself up to be to his followers. When Magneto was abducted by the alien known as The Stranger, The Brotherhood became effectively disbanded, leaving Wanda and Pietro on their own again. With no more reason to stay on their father's evil path the two took other paths. Wanda left with Namor the Sub-Mariner and joined the Avengers, Pietro went to work for The X-Men trying to make-up for his time with Magneto. Though heroism became an ill fit for Pietro Wanda felt right at home and frequently lent a hand to the X-Men as well. Wanda would eventually become intimately in-love with her team-mate The Vision and the two became a couple.

As part of the Avengers, The Scarlet Witch has fought numerous evils, from aliens, to sorcerers to robots, to mutants. When Magneto eventually returned Wanda faced a conflicting wish to continue to be the good influence in her father's life but knew it would bring her into confrontations with her team-mates. Pietro joined Magneto on Wanda's behalf and Scarlet Witch remained a covert contact for the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.

After the events of House of M, where Wanda created a tear in reality and saw her father was unwilling to live peacefully with humanity even after all his desires were handed to him, Wanda gave up on trying to pacify Magneto's hatred of humanity and restored reality, fully withdrawing from any loyalties she had to Magneto.

Chaos Magic Reality Warping: Wanda's main power is the superhuman ability to manipulate Chaos Magic, granted to her by the High Evolutionary's experimentations and further amplified by the demon Chthon (imprisoned within Wundagore Mountain) when she was born. Her hexes were, by extension, simple, indirect manifestations of this magic, destabilizing probabilities by affecting energy fields and matter, ultimately inducing chaos. When she acted as a conduit for the planet's life force, her powers were further amplified and not always under her conscious control, and their effects persisted even after Dr. Strange's Eye of Agamotto shut down her mind. Even the combined efforts of the Sorcerer Supreme and Earth's most formidable psychic mind were unable to fully inhibit such effects for long.

While Wanda is stable and healthy, she wields her powers with proficiency and is capable of triggering and controlling multiple occurrences at once; one of her most famous feats was reviving Wonder Man seemingly from another plane of existence. While she served as a conduit for the Earth's life force, her power was so great that she was able to generate armies from nowhere and has also altered the entire Earth-616 reality at will, and permanently shifted the nature of all possible futures without realizing what she had done (although some of her victims have claimed to be able to discern the difference between reality and her spells). Wanda was also shown to easily wipe any in her own illusory reality from existence with but a thought. In the HoM reality that she created, her chaos wave was so powerful that even Meggan, who absorbed the power of beyonders, only could stop it for a few seconds. Wanda even casted one spell that caused the loss of most of the mutant population (around three hundred powered mutants left) through the deletion of the Mutant Genome created by the near-omnipotent Celestials on a multiversal scale. It was revealed by Doctor Strange to Beast that this lasting spell was of such complexity and strength that it had woven itself into reality and the world of magic itself, and that if he were to even to try to reverse it, all of reality would implode. Wanda was even able of heal the severely damaged legs of Charles Xavier while all his Earth and alien friends, allies and colleagues' efforts (including even giving Xavier a new body) apparently failed for countless years.

She is actually considered the very "nexus-being" of the central universe of Earth-616, serving as the entity that personifies the realm's character and serves as the focal point or anchor of that reality. (Uatu described a nexus-being as one of the "rare individual entities with the power to affect probabilities-and thus the future"), making her along the scales of class and power as the other known nexus-beings, such as Merlin, Sise-Neg, Kang the Conqueror and Leonard Tippit; Franklin Richards, Vision, Jean Grey/Phoenix, Odin (those last four from alternate Earths), and Eleyn.

The nature of Wanda's ability to channel and wield magical energy has been altered many times by different writers. It was initially brought about by the demonic sorcerer Chthon. On the day that Wanda was born, the ghostly specter of Chthon visited the newborn Wanda and "blessed" Wanda so that Wanda could channel the dangerous Chaos Magic that was the basis for Chthon's unholy might. Chthon's intentions were to create a vessel that he could possess one day, when Wanda was a full-grown adult, though his schemes to do so were foiled by the Avengers.

As such, due to Chthon's "blessing", Wanda is also vulnerable to having all of her powers disabled if Chthon is ever disrupted. During the period in which pages from Chthon's sacred tome, the Darkhold, were scattered across the globe, Wanda's powers were periodically disabled—with her being left powerless in several dangerous battles against various super-villains—until several of the missing pages were restored to the book. Although this particular plot thread was stated by Agatha Harkness who was reanimated by Wanda. How much of it is true and how much of it is more unconscious manifestations of the Scarlet Witch's reality manipulation is debatable.

Wanda's power to alter reality itself was spawned from the combination of her abilities to affect probability and Chaos Magic. It must also be noted that the Scarlet Witch is responsible for the resurrection of Mad Jim Jaspers which happened when her powers altered reality. As such, she may possibly be on par with the White Phoenix of the Crown. Because of her ability to warp reality, Wanda is one of the most powerful Marvel beings.


 * Hex Bolts: Initially, Wanda had the ability to manipulate probability via her "hexes" (often manifesting physically as "hex spheres" or "hex bolts") which manipulated energy fields and matter to varying degrees. These hexes were initially short range, and are limited to her line of sight. Casting a hex would initially require a gesture and concentration on her part, though the gestures are largely a focus for the concentration. Early in her career, her hexes were unconscious, and would be automatically triggered whenever she made a particular gesture, regardless of her intent. These hexes would only manifest as "bad luck", triggering negative effects. She later gained enough control over her powers that they only work when she wants them to, and they are not limited to negative effects. Wanda can use her hexes to cause a wide variety of phenomena such as spontaneous combustion, rapid decay, molecular destabilization, energy transference/disruption/amplification/transmutation as well as inertia redirection/amplification/disruption/transference. These effects have lit flammable objects, contained and removed air from a particular volume, deflected objects, stopped the momentum of projectiles, opened doors, exploded objects, created force fields, deflected magical attacks, negated or distorted physical laws, altered the molecular composition and physical state of physical objects, and caused various forms of energy to spontaneously appear or disappear to list only a few feats. Her powers, while beginning to unveil a higher potential appeared capable of prevailing against the mastered mystical ones of Dormammu in his own Dark Dimension when she and the Avengers fought against him for Avalon's Evil Eye power-object, albeit indirectly by disrupting the energies of Dormammu and the Eye. She has an affinity with natural elements and phenomena, stemming largely from her magical training under Agatha Harkness, and has trained often at using her hexes to deflect projectiles or to cause enemies to stumble or otherwise suffer the effects of "bad luck". This makes her one of the few Avengers that Ultron fears; his adamantium shell cannot repel magic. She has also displayed the ability to cancel Longshot and Domino's powers of probability and has also once turned Longshot into a cat.
 * Teleportation:Wanda has portrayed the ability to teleport her and others over long distances. The full extent to this ability is unknown.
 * Telekinesis: Wanda has portrayed the ability to manipulate and levitate things using her mind. The full extent to this ability is unknown.
 * Force Fields: Wanda showed the ability to create magical force fields that deflect incoming projectiles or energy blasts.
 * Hex Blasts: Wanda can project very powerful blasts, orbs, waves and beams of hex energy. This can destroy or hit objects or people with a great force.
 * Flight: Wanda has recently portrayed the ability to fly, though even prior to her mental collapse she has inexplicably demonstrated such an ability. The full extent to this ability is unknown.