Scarlett Witch: Love, Sacrifice, and Grief

        

            While the happy love stories in most romantic movies have always been something delightful to watch, conversely in reality love has not always been the provenance of joy, instead, it could bring sorrow and gloominess. Thinking of love should always be followed by thinking about grief. For everything have its own consequences— or at least I am a person who lives with this mindset. Marvel Cinematic Universe, through their movies, perspicuously describes how painful love could be in the most distressful way. The most valuable thing I have learned so far from all MCU movies is that love, sacrifice, and grief are like dots which are connected to each other. As I quoted from Vision, “What is grief? If not love persevering”. 

        Recently, Marvel Cinematic Universe just released their newest movie, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Proud to mention that for years, I have always been a big fan of Marvel superheroes. This movie is just as powerful as other Marvel’s movies, but what excites me the most, until I booked the ticket on the first day the movie premiered in Indonesia was the appearance of Wanda Maximoff in this movie, since she has always been my favorite female superhero in MCU. All of the sudden, my excitement was wrecked to the ground finding out Scarlett Witch became the supervillain, albeit it was actually not an unexpected thing to happen. Even though her harmful actions— including hurting and  killing people, also putting America Chavez in hostage to subdue her power— could not be tolerated, let’s reflect for a moment about how mournful it is to be Wanda.

        I recall having tremendous sadness and anxiety as I finished watching Wanda & Vision the series. Life is so unfair for Wanda, thinking of a happy life only exists in her own fantasy. That is obviously a life we all do not claim to live. Looking back to Avengers: Infinity War, the moment she had to witness the suffering of her beloved husband, Vision. Even she, herself, had to sacrifice her husband for the sake of beating Thanos and saving the world. As she said to Strange in MoM, “I blew a hole through the head of the man I loved and it meant nothing. Do not speak to me of sacrifice, Stephen Strange.” Her words were enough to have me shattered. As painful as it could be. To sacrifice is to be powerful, I presume. Even if your sacrifice means nothing to others, your soul undeniably will be affected by it. 

        The life of Wanda Maximoff, had me re-thinking about love, sacrifice, and grief. As far as I’m aware, love always comes with sacrifice, and always ends in grief. It is a patent cycle which apparently could not be broken. When we truly put our love to something or someone, it is an instinctive thought and behavior to always have them safe and happy with everything we have. It may have left you questioning why Wanda finally agreed to destroy Vision, if she really loved him. The answer is because there was no other way to destroy the mind stone, because they knew it would be even more noxious if Thanos got the mind stone first. In this case, not only Wanda sacrificed the love of her life, but also Vision sacrificed himself for the sake of protecting Wanda and also the world from the ruthlessness of Thanos. Certainly, the sacrifice they made was later followed by grief.

            Scarlett Witch is a manifestation of prolonged grief, I suppose. Her love, her sacrifices, her undying grief, which leads her to be unreasonable. Without justifying her amateurish actions, there are things I personally could learn from her story, about love, sacrifice, and grief. How we grapple our grief is the substantiation of how ripe we are to love. Since love comes with sacrifice, and will always end in grief.

           In conclusion, love is nothing without sacrifice, and grief itself is a manifestation of how pure our love is. May we all have the courage to love, and be powerful enough to sacrifice, and be prepared to take on grief as the most sincere proof of love.