Highlights

  • Marvel Rivals introduces a 6v6 hero-shooter game with 18 playable characters, offering variety and fan favorites from the start.
  • Scarlet Witch, a powerful hero, has been historically underpowered in video games, missing out on her full potential.
  • Marvel Rivals has the opportunity to make Scarlet Witch truly overpowered and give her devastating chaos magic abilities.

Though it's lost its luster in the last few years, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been undeniably influential, both in terms of the general entertainment industry and in terms of the public perception of superhero media. Over the course of a decade and a half, the MCU has managed to not only re-popularize iconic characters like Hulk, Captain America, and Iron Man, but also bring some more obscure heroes to the forefront, some of which have now become so popular that they've earned a spot on Marvel Rivals' launch day roster.

Announced on March 28, 2024, Marvel Rivals is set to be a 6v6 objective-based hero shooter that seems to bear a striking resemblance to Overwatch. But with 18 playable heroes and villains available from the get-go, Marvel Rivals is offering a great deal of variety right out of the gate, with both fan favorites and lesser-known characters getting a chance to shine. Though she once belonged to the latter category, Scarlet Witch has become a household name, and Marvel Rivals must avoid one unfortunate trend for her character.

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Marvel Rivals' Scarlet Witch Can't Be Underpowered

A character that first debuted all the way back in 1964 with X-Men #4, Scarlet Witch has been around for quite some time, though her first real breakout role was in the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Avengers: Age of Ultron. Upon her comic book debut, Scarlet Witch's abilities were rather undefined, with the character having simple "hex" powers that allowed her to bend probability. As the comics went on, Scarlet Witch's powers continued to evolve, revealing that her abilities were a form of chaos magic and that her mutant genes allowed her to tap into those energy fields more so than others.

Over the course of the last six decades, the Scarlet Witch has become one of the most powerful beings in the Marvel universe, with most comics giving her some horrifyingly impressive magical abilities. However, those powerful abilities are very rarely utilized in the realm of video games.

Scarlet Witch Has a History of Being Nerfed in Video Games

While Wanda Maximoff has appeared in a good handful of games over the last decade or so, none really put the true power of the Scarlet Witch in players' hands. 2022's Marvel's Midnight Suns is a great example of this. For the first third of Midnight Suns' story, Wanda Maximoff is a captured agent of Lilith, and it's repeatedly made clear how dangerous she is and how important it is for the team to bring her back to their side. When Scarlet Witch does eventually turn sides and become playable, she loses a lot of her most powerful abilities, instead becoming a sort of support-based hero. And Midnight Suns is far from the only Marvel game that's done this.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3's version of Scarlet Witch is widely considered to be one of the weakest characters in the game, with just one synergy ability that's also rather weak. Even in Marvel Snap, Scarlet Witch's ability to swap her location to a random one is impressive, but it isn't necessarily useful.

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Marvel Rivals Needs to Take Scarlet Witch To The Next Level

It's about time that Scarlet Witch was made as overpowered as she is in the source material, and Marvel Rivals could finally right that wrong. Being an online hero shooter, Marvel Rivals obviously can't make Scarlet Witch too unbalanced, but there are ways to make her feel more powerful than she usually is. For instance, Scarlet Witch's Ultimate ability should be absolutely devastating, allowing her to unleash the full power of her chaos magic. It would also be fun to see Scarlet Witch take on a tank or attacker role as opposed to playing support like she usually does.