Hi! It’s Annie!
I’m back again after another while because I, once again, felt the strong urge to talk about some of my favorite characters in fiction. But specifically, the representation of women and why some character representation is better than others. This post, in particular, will be the battle of the Mothers and the portrayal of women as Mothers or having motherly qualities in media but more specifically in superhero media. This has been a topic of conversation for quite a while, specifically since ‘Multiverse of Madness’ came out and this has only been exacerbated by the release of the ‘Fantastic Four: First Steps’. We now have two major characters in Marvel who are both superheroes and Mothers, those two being Wanda Maximoff and Sue Storm. And while I also hesitate to compare the only two featured superhero Mothers in big Marvel media because it honestly feels like a miracle that they were on screen at all; I definitely feel like people have seen these two interpretations and felt strongly one way or the other about them both. (There was a specific movie in this mix that hit very wrong.) But I kind of want to also use this as a lens to talk about Motherhood in media. Because that has also hit very wrong for a very long time. So I’m just going to jump into it!
SPOILERS FOR FANTASTIC FOUR, WANDAVISION, AND MoM AHEAD!!!
Wanda Maximoff (The Scarlet Witch):
Wanda Maximoff began her journey into being a Mother in the very popular and amazing Disney+ series ‘WandaVision’ in which Wanda kind of creates kids for herself by bending the reality around her. However, despite the fact that Billy and Tommy are essentially her own creations; the family still kind of functions like a regular family (with the exception of the ultra-fast growth spurts). Wanda still views herself as a Mother from here on out and the series and movies treat her as such. Which is a good thing! I don’t think it much matters where Wanda’s kids came from, they’re still her kids. In ‘WandaVision’, Wanda is incredibly great representation of a woman as a Mother. When she has kids, they don’t become Wanda’s entire personality or her only focus for the rest of the series. Even though Wanda now has kids, the story remains connected to Wanda’s feelings of loss, grief, and her own mental turmoil. The story doesn’t pivot suddenly to “Wanda is a Mother and that’s all she is”. That tune changes drastically in ‘Multiverse of Madness’.
When ‘Multiverse of Madness’ first came out, a specific interview of Elizabeth Olsen went viral. This interview involved her being candid that writers of MoM had never even watched ‘WandaVision’ and that she felt like they were treading the same ground and expressed this fear, which was automatically brushed off. And she’s right. This movie once again covered Wanda’s grief in a very similar way but as if Wanda never learned anything. You saw none of that character growth from the series and the way the movie expands on her grief has nothing to do with focusing on Wanda or even the character study of her grief. It’s all about her kids. In ‘WandaVision’, Wanda will talk about her kids and the plot features her kids often, but this isn’t all she talks about or thinks about. She’s constantly fixated on her own grief, mental turmoil, the new features of her powers that she doesn’t understand, and even Vision. Now in the movie, she only talks about her kids. The plot doesn’t stop to examine her own backstory, deep dive into her feelings, or even talk about Vision which is a huge part of her feeling seen to begin with and where her grief initially stems from. There is no deep dive into Wanda as a character. She is just a Mother who will do anything to get her kids back. Every decision falls back on that. Not on her, on her kids. Not even on what her kids would mean to her as a person if she did have them back.
This is the way Mothers have been portrayed for ages. Once they have kids, all they can talk about is their kids. They exist for their kids. Their reason for living is their kids. Their entire personality is their kids. Wanda is more complicated than that because women are more complicated than that. Society has sought to push women into the roles of Mothers for ages and it is absolutely ok for a woman to be a Mother. Women can be whatever they want to be. But being a Mother will never be the entire heart of who a woman is. So to take the strongest superhero in Marvel and to strip her of everything except being a Mother was directly playing into that ages-long societal stereotype and it really didn’t help that a man wrote it. And not only that, a man wrote it after being told by the woman who has been playing this character for years that the storyline no longer felt relevant to her character after he refused to watch the biggest piece of media ever created about that character. (By the way ‘WandaVision’ was written by a woman. So technically he ignored two women in his process to ruin this character. Go figure.) This is one of the many reasons why women say they hate men.
Sue Storm (Invisible Woman):
I’m not going to pretend that this movie was written by women because it wasn’t. However, this is probably some of the most diversity we’ve gotten out of Marvel for a long time. And a lot of that successful diversity came out of the depiction of Sue Storm. (Though also a hispanic Reed Richards is nothing short of a triumph.) Sue Storm can easily be slated as the head of this iteration of the Fantastic Four. She runs the Future Foundation, is the member that is in charge of speaking with the UN, and she is also a very decorated scientist in her own right. She brings the team together and her personality traits that are very nurturing do not come at the cost of any of her other strengths. She is the leader. She makes the speeches and takes control of the team often and these “masculine” traits are shown directly alongside her more stereotypically feminine ones. She never gives up one for the other. Even pregnancy in this movie is treated differently. Pregnancy lasts nine moths and yet, I feel like most media treats it as though a woman is deathly ill and cannot be moved for those nine months. Not here; Sue goes to space!!
After she gives birth in the movie she still remains an equally complex character. None of the things she was doing before that happened stop or diminish. And Franklin isn’t the only thing she’s worried about. In fact, she makes an entire speech about how she would not give up the Earth for her son or her son for the Earth. Her motivations of keeping people safe, continuing her scientific work, and her love for her family remain the same. The addition to her family just strengthens all of them more. Not just the family love part. Sue remains a character who is complex and has a personality alongside also being a Mother. And they managed to do that without having to make the movie only focus on Sue. I wanted all of the characters in this movie to have more character moments, but I was absolutely astounded that they managed to make Sue a badass woman and a Mother at the same time within a cast of superhero characters. Not because I didn’t believe that a woman could be that, but because Hollywood has been gaslighting us into believing that this can’t exist in an action movie for as long as I can remember.
These, obviously, are not the only examples of Motherhood when it comes to superheroes. I, personally, think of Pamela Isley who very much thinks of her plants as her babies. And damn is she one badass Mom if that’s the case. But we just haven’t gotten a whole lot of big time media exploration of women as superheroes and Mothers. ‘The Incredibles’ has done an excellent job of this too, but it’s still not very often. And, obviously, we’re still seeing very poor work when it comes to this topic. Wanda could have been great if a man had listened to the women around him about a character who is also a woman. Instead, he ruined that character for many people. It’s painful to think about how recent that was and I honestly feel like Sue Storm’s storyline purposefully took Wanda’s complete fumble into account. I just hope we keep getting characters like Sue, but I also want to continue to have deep dive media like ‘WandaVision’ that go more into this as well. I would just prefer to not have some dude come in and character assassinate said badass woman afterwards. All in all, it’s easy to look into Marvel now and see that Sue is going in the right direction. But I do fear that this will be a lost cause if we are not aware of the mistakes that made Marvel more conscientious of writing a superhero Mom to begin with. Media needs to keep growing and examining the failures of Wanda Maximoff is important to keep progressing powerful superheroes like Sue Storm.
See you across the pond!
Sincerely, Annie
Oreos & Peanut Butter 