Bizarre Things About Scarlet Witch And Vision's Relationship

In the world of comic book superheroes, there are a few relationships that can be considered iconic, like Superman and Lois Lane or Spider-Man and Mary Jane Watson. While Scarlet Witch and Vision aren't quite that memorable, anyone who's seen Avengers: Infinity War knows these two are in a romantic relationship, and within the context of the film, it seems like a healthy and happy one. The heroes are genuinely sweet to each other and appear to be in love, with both of them expressing a desire to just run away from it all together. But alas, their commitments to their respective Avengers teams — and you know, saving the world — keep them from living out their fantasy of domestic bliss. And eventually, Scarlet Witch has to sacrifice Vision in an attempt to save the universe. It's almost poetic.

But longtime readers of Marvel Comics know better. The Vision and Scarlet Witch have had an on-again, off-again relationship for decades in the comics, but there's nothing poetic about it. Simply put, their relationship has been a complete disaster and is messed up in more ways than we can count. But we're going to try anyway, so take a look below at some of the most bizarre things about Scarlet Witch and Vision's relationship. 

Might as well get this out of the way immediately. The Vision is a robot. He was created by another robot, the villainous Ultron, who had the intent of using him to destroy the Avengers. In the comics, Vision has variously been described as an android (a human-like robot) and as a synthezoid (a synthetic human), but he's never described as being a human. Because he's not, he's a machine. Scarlet Witch, aka Wanda Maximoff, is not a robot. She's a human being (a mutant throughout most of her comic history, but mutants are still humans), and there's nothing mechanical about her. So how can a human and a robot be involved in a romantic relationship? Is a robot even capable of giving consent to such an arrangement?

In the comics, Vision has long held a desire to know what it means to become human. It's part of what drives him to become involved with Scarlet Witch to begin with. But he'll never be human, and no matter how closely his mainframe mimics a human being's thoughts and feelings, he's still severely lacking in the emotions department. As for Scarlet Witch, she bonds with Vision because both of them are outcasts among their fellow Avengers. And while she might think she's found a kindred spirit in Vision, what she's really feeling is, in a word, artificial.

The films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe do a lot of things incredibly well. After all, there's a reason why the franchise has grossed more than double the take of its closest competitor at the worldwide box office. But if there's one thing the films haven't done a very good job of, that's selling the audience on Scarlet Witch and Vision's relationship. Both characters are introduced in Avengers: Age of Ultron, but they have very little interaction with one another. It isn't until Captain America: Civil War when their relationship starts to develop, and it does so under some pretty unsettling circumstances. 

One scene in particular that stands out among their courtship is when Vision goes to Wanda's room to check on her. Instead of knocking on her door and asking to enter like a normal human would do (another strike against robots), Vision uses his phasing power to simply coast through her wall without saying a word, completely barging in on her. Wanda rightly calls him out on his creepy behavior, telling him, "We talked about this." That means he's barged in on her before and has continued to do so explicitly against her wishes. Vision apologizes and then makes up for it by ... trying to keep Wanda from leaving the mansion when she wants to go outside. He says he's protecting her, but that's not his decision to make. Vision's wanton disregard of Wanda's requests and his desire to control her actions are both major red flags. Not exactly boyfriend material, Wanda.

After the initial awkwardness of Vision's uncomfortable flirting in Civil War, he and Scarlet Witch get into a physical altercation when she tries to leave the house. Aided by Hawkeye, who distracts Vision, Wanda uses her powers to make Vision sink into the floor, leaving him trapped there so she can escape. We know he was being a jerk, but still, there's no excuse for resorting to violence. 

After Wanda flees, she joins Team Cap in opposing the superhero-restricting Sokovia Accords. Vision, meanwhile, is a being of logic and not emotion, so he sides with Team Iron Man in support of the Accords. This leads to a giant confrontation between the two groups at a German airport, with Vision and Scarlet Witch engaging in the battle on opposing sides.

Although the two don't directly fight each other, they're still using near-lethal force against their friends, and either one of them could've taken the other out by accident. In fact, this almost happens after Vision uses his solar beam to cut down a tower in an attempt to block the path of the fleeing Captain America and Winter Soldier. Scarlet Witch uses her hex powers to keep the tower from falling, but it drops anyway after War Machine hits her with a sonic attack, leaving her very close to becoming seriously injured as a result of Vision's initial assault. After this, the two apologize to each other, but that doesn't excuse the fact that they almost killed each other to begin with.

In the MCU, things between Vision and Scarlet Witch haven't progressed beyond the point of living together, but they go much, much further in the comics. The duo gets married in 1975's Giant-Size Avengers #4 in a dual-ceremony alongside their fellow Avengers, Mantis and the Swordsman. Technically, it isn't really the Swordsman, but rather a Cotati plant alien inhabiting the Swordsman's corpse, making Vision and Scarlet Witch's wedding only the second strangest nuptials to take place that day. Comic books can be weird sometimes.

Speaking of weird, Vision asks Scarlet Witch to marry him immediately after the two of them fight and defeat some demons in another dimension. When accepting his proposal, Wanda says, "Don't you see, love is for souls, not bodies!" This, of course, makes zero sense. Vision is a synthetic human. The one thing he definitely has is a body, but he most certainly does not have a soul in the traditional sense. We're not really sure what Scarlet Witch was getting at here, but she unintentionally makes the argument against marrying Vision. Not only that, but the pair get married in Vietnam, a country where the marriage laws — like those of most countries — are only valid between two humans. No robot-human unions are permitted.

Okay, so Scarlet Witch, a human, illegally marries Vision, a robot who may or may not have the capacity to love or fully understand entering into a commitment such as wedlock. You'd think that would be the strangest thing about this couple, but you'd be wrong because Scarlet Witch and Vision actually have kids. Yes, you read that right. A robot man fathers children with a human woman. Now, without getting into a biology lesson here, let's just say that such a feat would be impossible. Humans can't even mate with other organic species, let alone machines. But the comics get around this impossibility by way of ... wait for it ... magic.

Scarlet Witch explains to Vision that she conceived when magic from some defeated witches was funnelled through her as Vision held her, saying that while it was happening, she wished for a child and felt his love all around her. Yikes. After having a relatively normal pregnancy, Wanda gives birth to twin boys, William and Tommy, in 1986's The Vision and The Scarlet Witch #12 in a story titled "Double Sized Climax." You can't make this stuff up, folks. Tommy is named after the man who created the original Human Torch (the android whose body became Vision), while William was named for Simon Williams, the man whose brain Vision's mind is based on. So basically, just to reinforce that their father is not human, Wanda names her kids after the originators of Vision's synthetic body and mind. Ouch.

Just a few years after Scarlet Witch and Vision defy the odds and have children, those kids are taken away from them in one of the most cruel and unusual ways possible. So how does that happen? Well, given that many comic book storylines run for decades, their writers frequently employ a technique known as retconning in order to keep things fresh and sort of making sense. A retcon is when a writer essentially changes the history of a character (usually one written by a different writer) by saying that whatever was depicted in the past never happened and this new thing that's being written is actually true. One recent example of a retcon applies to the Scarlet Witch herself, as after decades of being known as a mutant — someone who's born with their superpowers — her backstory was retconned to make her a non-mutant human who gained her powers via experimentation by supervillain the High Evolutionary.

As for the retcon concerning the children of Vision and Scarlet Witch, that occurs in 1989's Avengers West Coast #52. In the story, the demon Mephisto — while using a possessed man called Master Pandemonium as his unwitting pawn — absorbs the twins into his own body (they become Master Pandemonium's hands for a minute, it's bonkers). Apparently, Thomas and William were not actual people. Rather, they were fragments of Mephisto's soul that had manifested into child-like apparitions by way of the magic Scarlet Witch used to get herself pregnant. You know, that old chestnut.

For a long time, the status quo remained that Scarlet Witch and Vision's kids were not real. This, understandably, caused great strain on their relationship, and it also had a tremendous effect on Wanda's life moving forward. The memory — or in some storylines where she was amnesiac, missing memory — of her children drove Scarlet Witch mad, and at multiple times, she lashed out with Earth-changing consequences. At some point, the writers at Marvel must've felt bad for her because they decided to pull another retcon and declare that Scarlet Witch and Vision's kids existed after all.

In the comic series Young Avengers, we're introduced to two members of the titular team: Wiccan (real name William) and Speed (real name Thomas). They're both mutants, with Wiccan having similar powers to Scarlet Witch and Speed having the same power set as Scarlet Witch's twin brother, Quicksilver. The two youngsters soon discover that they're long lost twin brothers, and not only that, but they claim they're the same William and Thomas who were the sons of Scarlet Witch and Vision. After some hemming and hawing, everyone agrees that they are the kids of the two Avengers, as it's explained that Wiccan and Speed are the reincarnated souls of the long thought-nonexistent, magical offspring. Can non-existent beings have souls? In a world where robots can make babies, why not?

When Ultron first creates the Vision, he bases Vision's mind on the brain patterns of the Avenger Wonder Man, aka Simon Williams. Over the years, this leads to a lot of confusion over how much of Vision's thoughts and feelings are really his own, and how much is just coming from Simon. Eventually, Vision is killed and then rebuilt (this happens to him a ton of times in the comics, so don't be surprised if he's rebuilt in the MCU), and Simon refuses to let his brain patterns be used again in the new Vision. As a result, Vision is reduced to an unfeeling, emotionless robot, one who couldn't possibly give Scarlet Witch the love she deserves. So Wanda decides to date Simon instead.

To be fair, Scarlet Witch doesn't immediately start dating Wonder Man. Their romance takes about ten years to blossom, and in the ensuing decade, Wonder Man actually dies and is then brought back to life by Wanda by way of her magic powers prior to their affair (in case you couldn't tell, Scarlet Witch's powers are very loosely defined and don't seem to have much of a limit, if they have a limit at all). Their fling is short-lived, however, as Scarlet Witch still has feelings for her ex-husband, Vision. You know what they say, once you go android ...

We already briefly mentioned how Scarlet Witch has gone a little nuts a few times and done some pretty bad stuff, and one of those times marked the end of her on-again, off-again relationship with Vision (so far). After losing control of her powers and falling under the control of the villainous Doctor Doom in the 2004 comic book storyline Avengers Disassembled, Wanda launches a series of attacks on the Avengers. One of these assaults involves her taking control of her ex's body and having him crash a jet into Avengers Mansion. Vision survives the crash, but Wanda uses her powers to make She-Hulk rip Vision in half, killing him once again. 

Vision is rebuilt, but this event proves to be the final straw for his relationship with Wanda. During the 2012 "Avengers vs. X-Men" storyline, Vision finally gets the chance to confront Wanda about what she did to him. He essentially tells her that her actions were unforgivable, regardless of the fact that she wasn't in control of her mind when she committed them. This marks the end of the pair's decades-long relationship (so far) in the comics, but they're still going strong in the MCU. The upcoming Disney+ series WandaVision will detail the couple's relationship, and will presumably either feature a rebuilt Vision, take place in a parallel universe, or incorporate Scarlet Witch's reality-warping powers. Whatever the show ends up being, you can bet it won't be nearly as bizarre as the couple's comic book history.

Although his former wife is now out of the picture, Vision still feels the need for a relationship as part of his never-ending quest to become a real boy. And let's face it, getting a date is hard enough for a regular guy, let alone an android with two reincarnated imaginary demon kids and an ex-wife who literally killed him. So what's a Vision to do but create himself a new wife in his own image? And in the 2016 self-titled comic book series Vision, that's exactly what he does. 

Vision creates himself a synthezoid wife named Virginia, and he even uses Wanda's brainwaves to do so, effectively giving her the mind of his ex (and we're back to Vision being a creep). He then uses their combined brainwaves to create two children: son Vin and daughter Viv. They live in the suburbs, and Vin and Viv attend school. Everything is great ... for about five seconds. Then the villain Grim Reaper invades their home and attacks Viv. He's killed by Virginia, who buries him in their backyard. Virginia then inadvertently kills Viv's friend from school when the kid's father attempts to blackmail her. From there, things just get worse. Virginia kills the family dog that Vision created. Vin is killed by the Ultron-created android Victor Mancha, whom Vision considered a brother. And finally, Virginia kills herself after confessing to her crimes. 

Suddenly, the Vision and Scarlet Witch's relationship doesn't sound so bad.