The Entire WandaVision Timeline Explained

In 2015, the Marvel Cinematic Universe got a major expansion with "Avengers: Age of Ultron," the second Avengers film and the first to feature several new characters. Among those new faces were the magic user Wanda Maximoff and the synthezoid known as Vision, two key players from the world of Marvel Comics whose destinies became intertwined.

By 2021, Wanda and Vision were the stars of their own MCU TV series, the Disney+ original "WandaVision." The show was well-received, as seen in its Rotten Tomatoes score, and charted the course of their love story in both the past and in the present, reaching back into Wanda's origin story and exploring what she was really capable of. As Wanda is primed to return to the big screen with "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness," it's a good time to look back on where she and Vision have been and how their story has progressed. This is the complete "WandaVision" timeline.

Wanda Maximoff was born in the late 1980s in the European nation of Sokovia, alongside a fraternal twin brother named Pietro. Though it was later revealed that Wanda possessed certain inherent supernatural gifts that had yet to be awakened, her early childhood was largely a normal one. She was raised by loving parents, developed a close bond with her brother, and grew to form a deep connection to American television, particularly classic sitcoms.

That all changed when Wanda and Pietro were 10 and a series of bombings in Sokovia shattered their world. A bomb that hit their apartment killed both Maximoff parents, leaving Wanda and Pietro to hide under a bed with an unexploded Stark Industries shell mere feet from them. The children were eventually able to escape, but they did so as orphans and developed a strong hatred for Tony Stark and his eventual superhero team, the Avengers. By early adulthood, both Maximoff children were protesting Stark and his fellow heroes in the streets of Sokovia.

As Overmental describes, increasing tensions fueled by the United States' military presence in Sokovia led Wanda and Pietro to remain politically active in their home country, protesting and even rioting in response to the conflict. Their activity eventually put them on the radar of HYDRA, the terrorist group that had developed new cells in Sokovia under the cover of the war. Sensing the twins could be exploited, HYDRA operatives recruited them, promising them something that could help them bring peace to the country again.

Pietro talked Wanda into joining the group, and the pair were subjected to experiments under the leadership of Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, including exposure to Loki's scepter, which contained the powerful Mind Stone. Though other test subjects died when exposed to the power of the scepter, the Maximoff twins developed new superhuman abilities. Pietro gained incredible speed, while Wanda's own latent powers were activated, unleashing her ability to manipulate reality. With their powers activated, Strucker saw a new opportunity to revive HYDRA's power to even rival the Avengers.

When the Avengers arrived in Europe to take out Strucker's base, Wanda and Pietro were sent out into the field for the first time. While they were effective, they were unable to stop Strucker's defeat and instead returned to Sokovia. They met the artificial intelligence known as Ultron, who sensed a mutual hatred for the Avengers and used the childhood tragedy that motivated the twins to recruit them to his cause.

Together, Ultron and the Maximoff twins battled the Avengers in South Africa, as Ultron attempted to secure a stockpile of vibranium for his evolving uprising. There, Wanda's hex powers allowed her to get inside and manipulate the minds of several Avengers, including Bruce Banner. Under Wanda's influence, Banner transformed into the Hulk and rampaged through Johannesburg, leaving the Avengers weakened and forced to go into hiding. With her powers growing, Ultron became convinced that Wanda might be the key to undoing the Avengers and thus fulfilling his eventual plans.

A key part of Ultron's eventual plan for domination involved his vision of creating a more perfect body for himself. Along with the Maximoffs, he journeyed to Seoul in South Korea to create a vibranium-infused new form with the unwilling help of scientist Helen Cho. Using Cho's invention, the Regeneration Cradle, Ultron began synthesizing his new body and even cracked open Loki's scepter to place the Mind Stone into the body's forehead. Unfortunately for him, the Avengers arrived before he could complete the project and forced him to flee.

The Avengers took the Cradle back to New York, where Tony Stark decided to attempt to imbue the body with the intelligence of his old A.I. JARVIS. When the Maximoff twins arrived at Avengers Tower, a chaotic confrontation ensued, and in the midst of the argument, Thor arrived and struck lightning down on the Cradle. The body inside sprang to life, and while no one knew what to initially expect, the powerful synthezoid known as Vision was born. As he made sense of the situation, Vision deduced that the best course of action would be to join with the Avengers and made himself a new member of the team.

In the midst of their journey to Seoul, Wanda Maximoff grew increasingly curious about Ultron's motives, worried that she and her brother may have chosen the wrong side. When Ultron began trying to upload his consciousness into his would-be new body, Wanda decided to look inside his mind and found plans not just to destroy the Avengers, but to eradicate all of humanity. Horrified by what she saw, Wanda told Pietro and freed Helen Cho from Ultron's control, giving the Avengers the opportunity to seize the Resurrection Cradle and ultimately create Vision.

After a brief misunderstanding upon their arrival in New York, Wanda and Pietro joined with the Avengers in an alliance against Ultron. Though Wanda found common ground with Steve Rogers, she was initially skeptical of Tony Stark's motives, and even prepared to fight him shortly before the birth of Vision. When it became clear that Sokovia would be the site of Ultron's attack, though, both Maximoff twins agreed to fight alongside the entire Avengers team.

The Avengers, now joined by Wanda and Pietro, traveled to Sokovia after learning of Ultron's plan to launch a chunk of a city into the sky and send it crashing back down to Earth, simulating a catastrophic meteor impact and wiping out all of humanity. The Maximoffs fought alongside the Avengers even as the city rose into the air, working to evacuate civilians onto helicarrier lifeboats while also fighting off Ultron's massive robot army. Though Wanda was initially shaky about the fight, Clint "Hawkeye" Barton was able to talk her into joining the conflict, and her chaos magic powers proved extremely useful in winning the battle.

Unfortunately, the fight was not without its losses. In the midst of the final evacuation, Pietro Maximoff jumped in front of a volley of bullets from an Ultron robot to save a child. He didn't survive the encounter, leaving Wanda both heartbroken and full of rage. As the battle wound down, Wanda herself destroyed Ultron's prime body, ripping out his "heart" as vengeance for the loss of her brother. With Pietro gone, Wanda returned to the Avenger Compound in upstate New York, joining the team for good.

Though she agreed to return to America with the Avengers and become a permanent member of the team's new roster, Wanda Maximoff found herself struggling in her new home. She had everything she needed, but because her brother was no longer with her, she also felt alone in the massive complex. Her loneliness eventually caught the attention of the Vision, who began making visits to her room.

Initially, Vision was intrigued by Wanda's emotional response to the loss of Pietro, and the pair began to bond while watching sitcoms together and discussing the feeling of grief that Wanda was dealing with. Though still a relatively new life form, Vision began to grasp what Wanda was dealing with and offered keen insights into her emotions through expressions like "What is grief if not love persevering" (via The Gamer). As their bond continued to grow, Vision and Wanda would develop romantic feelings for one another, but their superhero careers would soon create disruptions.

While she bonded romantically with Vision, Wanda Maximoff also developed a strong connection to Captain America, who seemed to understand her feelings of loss and alienation and took her under his wing as a young hero in training. In the months following the battle with Ultron, Wanda began going out into the field with Steve and his team. Eventually, they traveled to Lagos to track down leads on a dangerous chemical weapon, and that's when disaster struck.

Early in the mission, things seemed to be going well, as Wanda helped the team by drawing a cloud of poisonous gas out of a building and dissipating it harmlessly into the atmosphere. Things grew more complicated when the villain known as Crossbones showed up to battle Captain America and activated a suicide bomb meant to kill Steve. Wanda saw the explosion coming and was able to contain it and lift it away from Steve, but lost control before she could release it into the atmosphere. The bomb detonated on the upper floors of an apartment building, killing several civilians. The Lagos disaster was the last straw for world leaders, who drafted the superhero-controlling legislation known as the Sokovia Accords. Wanda returned to the Avengers Compound, wracked with guilt over her mistake.

As Wanda grappled with the lives lost in Lagos, the Avengers grew increasingly divided over both the Sokovia Accords and the status of the Winter Soldier, Bucky Barnes. As the team left for Europe to deal with the rising crisis, Wanda stayed behind with Vision, who was assigned to protect and keep her company. It deepened their bond, but when Clint Barton arrived to recruit her to Steve Rogers' anti-Accords team of heroes, Wanda left the compound, incapacitating Vision in the process.

Trusting in Steve and fearing that she'd be hunted and imprisoned if the Accords went through, Wanda eventually joined Captain America's squad of heroes in Berlin in a hero vs. hero battle which pitted her against Vision and numerous other heroes. By the end of the conflict, Wanda was captured and imprisoned in the Raft, a high-security facility off the coast of New York, as explained by Heavy. She was later freed by Steve, who led a team of fugitive heroes out of the country.

Wanda remained a hero on the run for the next several years, living in hiding with Steve, Natasha Romanoff, and Sam Wilson as a covert team. Despite their separation, Wanda and Vision eventually managed to reconnect, as Vision assumed a human form and turned off his trackers so they could go away together for a few days at a time. Over the course of these rendezvous, the pair grew closer, eventually falling in love and discussing the possibility of starting a new life together, separate from their careers as heroes.

Unfortunately, just as they were discussing staying together permanently, Thanos attacked Planet Earth with his Black Order, trying to complete his plan to capture all six Infinity Stones. The Mind Stone in Vision's head, which was a key part of Vision's very existence, was essential to this plan, putting Vision in Thanos' crosshairs.

Aware that losing the Mind Stone would cost the lives of half of all living beings, the Avengers on Earth reunited to stage a last-ditch battle against Thanos in Wakanda, where the scientist Shuri worked to detach the Mind Stone from Vision so Wanda could destroy it. Though they fought valiantly, the Avengers and the Wakandan army were unable to hold Thanos off, leaving Vision to beg Wanda to destroy the stone, which would leave him dead.

A tearful Wanda eventually gave in, disintegrating the stone and killing Vision, but seemingly stopping Thanos in his tracks. Unfortunately, the Mad Titan already had access to the Time Stone, which allowed him to reverse Wanda's spell, rip the Mind Stone from Vision's head, and unite the Infinity Stones. Despite Thor's last effort to kill Thanos, Thanos snapped his fingers while wearing the Infinity Gauntlet, wiping out half of all life. Vision already lay dead, and as she disintegrated under the effects of Thanos' effort, she seemed at least somewhat relieved to be free of the grief.

Five years after Thanos erased half of all life, Bruce Banner was able to use the reconstituted Infinity Stones to undo the event known as the Blip, restoring Wanda Maximoff to life. She fought alongside her fellow Avengers in a final battle against Thanos, which ended when Tony Stark used the Stones to wipe out Thanos and his army. But while the battle was won, Wanda was still without Vision and therefore reckoning with grief all over again.

Desperate to be reunited with her lost love, Wanda tracked Vision's body down to the headquarters of SWORD, a new agency that had emerged to fill the power vacuum left behind by SHIELD. Wanda tried to reason with SWORD director Tyler Hayward, asking for Vision's body so she could give him a proper burial, but Hayward refused and showed her the effort by the agency to dismantle Vision as a now-defunct weapon. Once again wracked by grief, Wanda left the SWORD facility, seething over losing Vision yet again.

After leaving SWORD, Wanda visited the town of Westview, New Jersey, where Vision had once purchased a plot of land with the intention of someday turning it into a home for the two of them. Consumed by grief and rage over the life she'd lost in her time as a hero, Wanda's mental state broke down, and the full force of her chaos magic powers activated around her, creating a pocket reality that consumed all of Westview.

Though Wanda didn't realize it at the time, she'd transformed Westview into a completely altered bubble that was informed by her childhood love of sitcoms, which she'd turned to as a comfort in times of grief and difficulty, per Insider. Through her chaos magic, she also created an entire alternate version of Vision completely from her memories of him, inadvertently casting him in the role of her sitcom husband. Comforted by the world she'd created, Wanda began to live out a sitcom life in Westview, still unaware of what she'd done.

As Wanda's life in her new version of Westview continued, her reliance on sitcom plotting eventually led to a pregnancy, which progressed at a supernatural rate due to the influence of Wanda's powers. Within a very short time, she'd given birth to twin boys each with superpowers of their own, who she named Tommy and Billy.

Though Wanda was happy with her sons, Vision soon began to grow suspicious of the goings-on inside Westview, observing strange, seemingly anachronistic occurrences inside the town, and watching as residents seemed to behave in loops, as though they were controlled by an unseen force. Soon, Vision met SWORD consultant Darcy Lewis, who helped him understand that he was living inside the Hex, an alternate reality Wanda was not even aware she'd constructed, which had rendered the residents of Westview helpless in the face of her power. Distressed by this realization, Vision began trying to confront Wanda about their reality and what she might have done.

Several strange confrontations, including the revelation that her neighbor Geraldine was actually SWORD Agent Monica Rambeau and the arrival of a duplicate version of her brother Pietro, eventually led Wanda to realize something was intruding into her home. Though she didn't grasp the full scope of what was happening, Wanda did manage to warn SWORD that they shouldn't intrude upon Westview and interrupt the life she'd made for herself. Blinded by grief, Wanda was determined to keep the Hex going, even as Vision grew more concerned by its implications. Meanwhile, outside the Hex, SWORD director Hayward revealed his plan to use Vision's reconstructed body as a new weapon that might be able to bring Maximoff down.

Back inside Westview, Wanda was taken in by her neighbor Agnes, who drew her down into the basement with the promise of showing her where Tommy and Billy had wandered to. In her inner sanctum, Agnes revealed herself to be centuries-old witch Agatha Harkness, who'd orchestrated much of Westview behind Wanda's back. Through a lengthy trip into Wanda's past, Agatha was able to explore exactly how Wanda's powers came to be, coming to the conclusion that Wanda was actually a long-prophesied chaos magic figure known as the Scarlet Witch.

Using Wanda's own emotions and her sons against her, Agatha Harkness sought to harness and capture the Scarlet Witch's power for herself. At the same time, SWORD sent the reconstituted original Vision — newly white — into Westview with the goal of taking out Wanda. As Wanda battled Agatha, Wanda's conception of Vision battled his original form, eventually defeating him through a logic puzzle that helped the White Vision realize he was wrong about who he was meant to destroy. 

Wanda, Vision, and their children ultimately teamed up to battle SWORD and Agatha at the same time, but in the process, Wanda learned the true cost of Westview as several residents broke free of her spell. With their minds back, they begged Wanda to release them from her control, laying bare what she was really doing by maintaining the Westview illusion. Together, the Maximoff family stopped SWORD's soldiers, and Wanda wiped Agatha's memory clean, leaving her to remain in limbo as "Agnes," the Westview neighbor. But despite the victory, it became clear that Wanda couldn't keep Westview.

After the battle against Agatha and SWORD, Wanda and Vision retreated to their home as the Hex collapsed around them, restoring Westview to its original reality and freeing its residents from Wanda's control. Aware that it was their last night together, Wanda and Vision tucked their children into bed, and Wanda thanked them both for choosing her to be their mother.

In the living room, as the Hex closed in around them, Vision assured Wanda that they could find another way to be together, because their lives up to that point had already been so unlikely that it stood to reason they could once again reunite. As they said their tearful goodbyes, Wanda watched Vision fade away in front of her, as their house once again became a vacant lot in the drab, original version of Westview, New Jersey. Having made peace with what she'd done and given up the life she made for herself, Wanda left Westview behind, fleeing just as the authorities arrived to potentially arrest her.

Forced to leave Westview and the world she'd created for herself behind, and once again without Vision in her life, Wanda Maximoff chose a life of seclusion for herself after years of collaborating with the Avengers. She moved into an isolated cabin and devoted herself to the study of the Darkhold, the ancient book of magic introduced to her by Agatha Harkness. Through her powers, she was able to essentially split herself into two forms. Wanda Maximoff would go about her life in the cabin, living a seemingly ordinary existence, while the Scarlet Witch studied the Darkhold in a back room, absorbing its magical knowledge.

At some point in her studies, two key events happened that will likely have a great impact on Wanda's future within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. According to Polygon, the first came when in her Scarlet Witch form, she heard the cries of her children from somewhere out in the universe, signaling a chance to reunite with them one day. The second came when her fellow magic user, Stephen Strange, approached her to ask for help in battling a new threat as the multiverse came apart around him (per Digital Spy). We don't yet know what form that adventure will take, but Wanda Maximoff's story is clearly far from over.