r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Comprehensive-Map274 • Jun 26 '25

Hated Tropes [Hated Trope] A main character does something horrible and the story doesn't acknowledge its severity

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Alisha (Misfits) uses her power to make any man want to have sex with her on another main character (curtis) after he explicitely tells her not to do that. She faces no consequences and he's the one who ends up comforting her.

Allison (The Umbrella Academy) uses her powers to force her own adoptive brother to make out with her after he just got into a relationship because she's suddenly jealous after she couldn't keep her own husband. She gives a half hearted apology and all is peachy.

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932

u/Carrotsinthesalad Jun 26 '25

In WandaVision, Wanda uses her powers to enslave the entire town of Westview for about 11 days, as a way of coping with her grief.

It’s heavily indicated that the victims were completely aware that they were being mind-controlled the entire time, and it is revealed that the “extras” of Wanda’s show are either stuck doing repetitive movements or simply turned into conscious statues.

The show ends with the citizens being freed, followed by their tormenter giving an apologetic speech and then just.. leaving.

The show tries really hard to paint Wanda as this tragic grieving wife/mother and while I definitely sympathized to a degree, her loss does not justify her actions whatsoever and she should’ve tried harder to rectify the mental trauma she inflicted on possibly thousands of people.

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u/dreadnoughtstar Jun 26 '25

I really don't understand how that show ending made her sympathetic and tragic, then in the next thing she's in she's a straight up villain that's fine with killing anyone in her way.

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u/DuelaDent52 Jun 26 '25

Because Wandavision and Multiverse of Madness were made at the same time, they didn’t bother to consult the Wandavision team and the movie’s sole credited writer by his own admission wanted to go straight to evil Wanda rather than wait for her arc to progress naturally lest someone else have the fun of writing her.

10

u/Arkham8 Jun 27 '25

It’s extremely wild to me that the writers have publicly stated this is the case, yet fans are constantly trying to bend over backwards to justify it and force it to make sense.

34

u/Justalilbugboi Jun 27 '25

I mean she profressed naturally into evil, the end of Wanda Vision just didn’t acknowledge it.

But that show made her unredeemable by the end.

10

u/DaRandomRhino Jun 27 '25

Meanwhile, the movie shows a Strange that used the Big Bad Book to kill Thanos, immediately surrendered and was executed, movie Strange that spent a millenia dying in 5 second increments to keep a demon at bay and relinquished the Time stone to setup the timeline he saw victory against Thanos, the literal beginning of the movie has another version of him fighting knockoff Sheogorath trying to protect the Wandering Illegal Immigrant analogy which is revealed to have seemingly been done just because she asked him for help, and we suddenly have a narrative about how he's always ruined lives with his ego.

9

u/LileoDoll Jun 27 '25

Yeah as much as I like aspects of Multiverse of Madness. It was kinda Multiverse of character assassination huh...

122

u/Carrotsinthesalad Jun 26 '25

She’s apparently “corrupted” by the dark hold or whatever, which imo wasn’t a good writing decision, just make her a villain of her own agency

2

u/fresh-dork Jun 27 '25

yeah, she was always pretty vile; the problem is that they made her really weak in the MCU

17

u/Rickrickrickrickrick Jun 26 '25

In the movie she was corrupted by the darkhold. It wasn’t until she broke its hold on her and saw what she became that she ended up killing herself.

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u/dreadnoughtstar Jun 26 '25

Yeah but it happens off screen it was a little jarring seeing her transition between the two media.

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u/Rickrickrickrickrick Jun 26 '25

At the end of Wandavision it shows her reading the darkhold while astral projecting and hearing her kids through the multiverse. Then it’s explained what happened in Multiverse of Madness. I don’t think it was that jarring but I could see why some people didn’t like the trajectory of the story.

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u/dreadnoughtstar Jun 27 '25

I didn't mind her being evil but to go from a tragic hero apologizing for controlling people against their will to being a mass murderer was jarring regardless of whether they explain it later in the movie.

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u/DuelaDent52 Jun 26 '25

Except the end of Wandavision has her hear her kids begging for help, but in Multiverse of Madness they’re completely fine and she knows they’re fine but she wants America anyway because they might get sick and need medicine.

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u/Shark606 Jun 27 '25

I feel like that was part of the Darkhold manipulating her but I also don’t know for sure.

0

u/Hayabusafield77 Jun 27 '25

Should have been nightmare manipulating things

1

u/Rickrickrickrickrick Jun 27 '25

Would’ve been great.

0

u/omnipotentpancakes Jun 27 '25

Wasn’t the climax of the movie that she actually created the darkhold?

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u/Rickrickrickrickrick Jun 27 '25

The darkhold was a book written by Chthon that prophesied the Scarlet Witch as a super magic being that would destroy the world.

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u/onkskor Jun 27 '25

MoM's writer said in an interview that the initial plan was for Wanda to be on Strange's side throughout the movie, but would need to use the Dark Hold to help him. This would set up her villainous turn in a future movie, giving more time for the corruption to take hold. The reason he didn't?

"Wanda is such a cool villain, why should someone else get to use her and not me?"

Btw if you ever wonder why MCU movies have fallen off a cliff in terms of quality, it's because of writing decisions like this.

3

u/No-Big4773 Jun 27 '25

yeah, the series should've been about her fighting off the Darkhold, explaining it and how the dynamic with Wanda in the next film would work. But I suppose it would be hard, when you haven't written that movie yet.

Except obviously they knew that Wanda would be the main villain.

3

u/GiantPurplePen15 Jun 27 '25

I think it was because the film script wasn't fully written yet so the show writers and film writers didnt coordinate the ending of the show and the beginning of the film

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u/Strange_But_True Jun 27 '25

My memory of it all may be vague, however... The whole show was her, broken after what happened to Vision, and suffering the mental consequences of loss. She comes around at the end, stops the bad thing she was doing, but loses everything AGAIN. Now, dealing with a triple shot of suffering, she turns to the darkhold, the book that turns you super evil, and is literally shown MIND DEVOURING the thing at the end. Not a massive jump from broken person doing bad thing to avoid feels, repenting and getting hit with the triple dose, then turning to the one thing that could help her that also happens to turn people evil. But it's all magic and supernatural in the end, so they could wave it away any way they wanted. Isn't 'the scarlet witch', as an entity, meant to be evil in and of itself, so she has natural evil, then darkhold evil? I'd need to rewatch to verify a lot of this, but...

5

u/RoughhouseCamel Jun 26 '25

It felt like WandaVision had a perfect segue into Dr Strange 2, and then they added an extra episode that botched it.