The Scarlet Witch Question

Since her return to the Marvel Universe, after her lengthy disappearance following House of M, Wanda has posed something of a problem for the Avengers and the X-Men. Despite losing her connection to the Lifeforce and being unable to repower mutants who lost their powers on M-Day, Wanda has demonstrated that she can once again cause M-Day to happen, which is what she says to Red Skull in Uncanny Avengers #2. This poses the question of whether Wanda should be allowed to keep her powers or if she should have safeguards to prevent her from re-creating M-Day. The way I see it, there are two option for dealing with Wanda. Option A is permenant and would therefore be the safest course of action, but would involve the removal of Wanda's powers. Option B is not quite as safe, but would allow Wanda to keep her powers and use them to atone for her actions.

The first choice (A) would be to have either Rogue remove Wanda's powers, as she threatened to do to Hellion in X-Men Legacy #243, or else have her take Dr. Rao's cure. In either case, Wanda loses her powers permanently as well as her ability to effect another mutant genocide since, at there core, her powers stem from her X-gene. This is the safer course of action because, without her powers, Wanda becomes a normal human. This doesn't mean that she cannot still be a hero it would simply mean that she would have to adjust how she goes about being a hero.

The second choice (B) would be to have telepaths and spellcasters place checks and mental blocks that would keep Wanda from being able to effect universe-wide spells. While this option is worse from a safety standpoint, because it only takes time and effort to get around these safeguards, it is also the more ethically sound option because it allows Wanda to keep the powers she has had all her life. The slippery-slope dilemma also comes into play because her son, Wiccan, has shown that he has a similar powerset which could potentially affect the same outcome.

Personally, I'd choose Option A because, at the end of the day, one person's happiness should not be more important than the happiness of hundreds of thousands of others. Besides, depowering Wanda doesn't mean she has to give up being a hero, it just means she has to change how she goes about it. Saving the world is like fighting a war, you can be just as effective on the front lines as you are behind the scene. Given her time spent as a villain, she could go work for S.H.I.E.L.D. or S.W.O.R.D. and help them to anticipate how a villain would act. She could volunteer at the Future Foundation or Jean Grey School to teach the next generation of kids about the amazing things she's seen. If she really had her heart set on staying on the front lines, she could have Iron Man build her a combat suit like he did with War Machine. There are plenty of options for her to choose from that allow her to atone for her crimes without risking causing another mutant genocide.

So what do you all think? Should Wanda be allowed to keep her powers, even if she could cause another M-Day-level event, or should she be forced to give up her powers because the risk of abuse is too high?

Wanda's powers could also prevent a universe wide tragedy from happening. She should be allowed to keep her powers. If a dangerous situation were to come, they would wish that Wanda would have kept her powers.

@fallen_crippled: The key part of that is "could." You're arguing that Wanda should be allowed to keep her powers because she might be useful in the event of a universe-scale crisis but where was she during Fear Itself? When the entire planet was under siege by evil Nazis and Asgardian monsters, the exact kind of situation someone with reality altering powers would be useful in, Wanda was twiddling her thumbs in an apartment somewhere or something while countless people died. Wanda could have depowered The Worthy (which we know works because of Franklin doing so to The Thing) and saved who knows how many lives. Instead she did nothing while the world burned around her. As far as I'm concerned Wanda has had plenty of opportunities to use her powers to avert crises but has chosen not to do so.

I honestly just interpreted Wanda's assertions to Red Skull basically just being a boast. A big boast since we kind of know that M-Day happened because the very top Marvel editors and writers wanting to implement a huge decade long company scale change of which Wanda was used as a catalyst. True the characters don't know this, leading to a few stories where they squabbled about whether she should die but I figure most of them will sort of semi ignore what could happen as much as we can unless Marvel actually decides they need another M-Day, which will happen anyway naturally no matter what precautions the characters implement. I get what you are saying though, interesting creative solutions.

They're her powers, so it's her choice what she does with them. Why should anyone else get to decide?

Train her with Doctor Stephen Strange and Reed Richards , both who has experience with high powers

one as a user of them , the other as a father of a cosmic

@sc: I took her at face value considering Red Skull was employing Xavier's telepathy against her (although it could have been an act, in which case she must really dislike Rogue).

@v_scarlotte_rose: Because she's abused them to an extreme. Granted she was possessed by a cosmic force that made her temporarily insane, but that doesn't change the fact that it was her choice to depower thousands of mutants during the House of M, some of whom, like Dani Moonstar and Tag, were happy as mutants. If she wanted to depower herself and her father that's one thing, but instead she decided to effect the entire mutant species. If you want a parallel look at Armory from Avengers:The Initiative. Armory killed one person and as a consequence she had her gauntlet forcibly removed and was shipped off to a mental institution. What makes Wanda's actions any different from Armory's? They both killed people, in fact Wanda killed off most of a species so if anything she's actually worse than Armory, yet Wanda is allowed to keep her powers and run around freely.

@nerx: I believe Wanda studied under Doctor Strange previously, but I do think a permanent mentorship would be a good idea and I think Reed could definately teach her control over her powers better than most. Imagine if the Illuminati as a team worked to stabilize her, that would be interesting.

@raggedscarecrow: She should maybe get some therapy or something, but I don't think she should have her powers taken away.

I thought she just de-powered all the mutants, not killed them?

@raggedscarecrow: I say fantastic family, since they have experience with that plus seeing her interact with franklin would be awesome

Well yeah, as far as Rogue and how Remender is constructing the story they do have a lot of conflict - Wanda and Rogue, but I am not sure that the alternative is that she has to really dislike Rogue - probably in a temporary sense she is as well mind you given Rogue's attitude towards her - oh and I just remembered what part you must be referred to as well. See there is a scene where Wanda talks about repeating what she did with Red Skull while he has telepathy, in that scene she makes reference to needing a source of power and time to cast - thats the loophole there basically. This is where things get iffy because when you add in those factors - House of M was basically involved a lot of mini retcons to achieve what it wanted - Childrens Crusade did itself - the former used the character of Wanda to implement plot changes, initially Dr Strange was going to be used, but given that the characters powers were dramatically changed you could argue that any character could have been used. Children's Crusade and basically stories after it are basically redemption stories for Wanda.

So when Wanda asserts she needs a great enough power source and time to cast to me what that translates to is that she actually needs the writers and editors approval to do something so dramatic again - but if you want to try and keep to the in story narrative, then a lot of characters are as capable as far as big changes like that - Reed Richards has constructed Anti Galactus suits and Celestial guns, but has also made Thor clones that have killed innocents and actually made a lot of other careless and poor decisions. Your parallel with Armory is a good one but to me its a good point in highlighting the hypocrisy of a lot of Marvels Heroes not just Wanda. Either in the what they have done in the past sense or what they have the potential to do sense. Usually both. Usually coincides unfortunately again for those trying to remain in the narrative with the characters popularity. Rachel wants to kill Selene and is about to, Wolverine stabs Rachel and lets Selene escape, Selene kills thousands, two decades later Wolverine admits he was wrong, but doesn't really change that his actions lead to the death of many. Heh with Wolverine thats just one example, based on what happened to Armory Wolverine should probably be neutered and neutralized, but Wolverine is Wolverine.