6

At the beginning The Avengers 2: Age of Ultron, the Avengers are

attacking a Hydra base to retrieve Loki's sceptre. Taking advantage of the chaos, Scarlet Witch, a Hydra member, uses her power of telepathic suggestion to play on Tony Stark's fear of a new attack on the Earth by aliens and push him to use his intelligence to develop a dangerous weapon.

Indeed, it is discovered that the

heart of the sceptre is a powerful super-computer, and Tony Stark, with the help of Bruce Banner and J.A.R.V.I.S, uses it to develop the artificial intelligence he always dreamed to protect the Earth.

Of course,

everything goes wrong, and the new AI, under the name of Ultron, turns against its creators and decides to destroy mankind.

My question : what was Scarlet Witch's original plan?

She clearly intended to kill the Avengers to exact her revenge (her parents were supposedly killed by S.H.I.E.L.D./Avengers).

But her intention was not

the destruction of mankind, since she joins the fight of the Avengers at the end of the movie. How did she know that Ultron would turn itself against Stark and the Avengers? Did she only rely on the fear of Tony Stark of a new invasion and his lack of sense of precaution when it comes to create new technology?

It doesn't seem to me that her actions are part of a greater plan by

Hydra: Hydra's leader clearly hesitated to use the power of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch during the attack and the two siblings took advantage of the chaos of the battle to follow their own agenda.

4 Answers 4

7

I don’t think her plans were all that specific to begin with. It seems like her approach was always to

bring out the deepest fears of each Avenger, so that they would cease to work effectively as a team.

In advance, she wouldn’t know what

those fears were, and she certainly wouldn’t have known about the Ultron program. It’s not even clear that she knew about Ultron after getting into Stark’s mind.

4

She did not want to kill Stark; she could have easily have done that by crushing his brain with her tk powers. Many people in her shoes would have killed him without a second thought.

She and Pietro wanted to help people more than get revenge against Stark. They went through those experiments to fight for their country; Cap outright says they are the same as him. That's why she and Pietro d8dn't hesitate to save the people on the train.

She wanted to lash out rather than actually kill anyone; Stark, Cap, Thor, and Widow...she wanted them to feel what she felt...her pain. Note that Cap (the only Avenger she and Pietro have anything in common) and Thor got off easier.

She sees the Avenger's as Stark's tools, and also sees them as Government stooges.

Her powers amplify her emotions, and vice versa, so they magnify and bring to the surface the huge amount of suppressed emotions she carries. She is extremely introverted which combined with her powers makes her prone to "living in her own head".

When Ultron sympathized with her she felt they had common aims; Wanda felt he understood her, and would help her help her people. They were both in pain and angry.

She could not care less about HYDRA, she and Pietro abandoned them at the first opportunity.

The true origin of her powers (latent, remember) will likely be revealed when she meets Dr. Strange. I'm guessing Kronos might be the source.

3

Initially, Scarlet Witch didn't have such plan, that's why she tried to stop Stark by bringing his worst fear.

But then,

She became happy. At that point, she saw the obsession of Stark against alien threats and upto what extent he could go. At that point, Stark didn't know that the Sceptre could bring his Ultron program to life, but she could sense his visions of putting peace-keeping AI robots to work after seeing threats.

After that

it was an easy guess for her assuming she could sense the brain-like matrix of mind stone inside. She simply guessed that Stark would boot his peace-keeping AI using the Sceptre which would turn against Avengers because Avengers weren't Gandhi-type peace guys.

1
  • +1. Now, I remember that Scarlet Witch can read into Vision's mind but not into Ultron's cybernetic mind.
    – Taladris
    Commented Apr 27, 2015 at 3:42
2

We see very little of what the twins and Hydra were up to, so some pieces we can only infer what was going on. We know that the twins volunteered for the Hydra experiments because they hoped the powers and Hydra would enable them kill Stark, who they specifically hate due to the death of their parents. Then in come the Avengers to take down the last Hydra stronghold.

The twins are eager to take down the Avengers, Stark's anti-Hydra task force (from their perspective, at least). So when the Avengers show up, the twins take the chance to take them down. Upon entering Stark's mind, Scarlet Witch finds an unexpected surprise, by showing him his greatest fear, he'll become obsessed with preventing it. From his mind she learns that this could be his undoing.

We see in Iron Man 3 that an obsessed Stark is a self-destructive Stark. He only builds and tinkers, and never stops trying to find the solution. The issue that vexes him in Age of Ultron is the same one in Iron Man 3, that the Avengers alone cannot defend the planet from all threats, something bigger needs to be built that will handle those. His solution, as always, is to build suits of armor, and this time he seeks an AI to guide them.

From being at the Hydra base, Scarlet Witch is probably familiar with the scepter, the mid-credits scene from Captain America: The Winter Soldier indicates it was used to unlock/create/what-have-you the twins' powers. If she was treated as an agent of Hydra, and granted access to their ongoing research into the scepter (this is implied by the twins having free reign of the base at the start of the film), she would know that it contains an AI, or something like one. She'd know that said AI also sought bodies, the ones Hydra was building for it.

So, she saw Stark seeking an AI to defend the planet, and she saw an AI seeking to be freed. And she introduced them to each other. She pushed Stark to become obsessed again, and let him take the scepter. Days later, she got to meet her creation — Ultron — and she joined forces with it to kill Stark and the Avengers. Ultron said things that made it clear that was his goal, and he showed an interest in the twins and their goals. And so her initial plan was complete, but then she expected allying with Ultron to be more successful than allying with Hydra was.

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.