I'm not going to sit here and act like Wanda was a perfectly written villain, but i'll die on the hill that she should have been the villain. Michael Waldron maybe wasn't the right guy to write Wanda's character in this movie. If it were me, I would've had Jac Schaeffer on as a co-writer on the film to specifically oversee Wanda and make sure that her character was being done right and was a three dimensional villain.
They needed to actual give Wanda a bit more of the Thanos treatment imo. Not go full Thanos, I don't mean that. Thanos was a perfect, three-dimensional villain. He wanted to wipe out half the population, so we're told by the writers right there that he's our most imposing villain that The Avengers will face yet, but at the same time, you can still understand where he's coming from and what his goal is. Yes, he wants to commit mass genocide, but the writers DID make you think about his plan and made his logic compelling enough that it was easy to see his side of it, even if it was wrong.
I thought they did a good job explaining how corrupting and dangerous the Darkhold was. I saw it it almost as a form of addiction. Wanda had compounded trauma throughout her life, and in her search for her children the Darkhold corrupted her deeper and deeper. For Harry Potter fans it operates like a more evil version of the horcrux locket. The more you wear it, the more it effects you.
im not a wanda Stan or superfan but the story structure of wandavision and this movie is very very poorly done, it feels like two different companies in two different countries did wandavision and this movie separately,
wandavision literally made us empathize with her heavily and almost forced people to connect with Wanda emotionally (wanda GOOD, big army man BAD!)
if anything wandavision had the chance to make wanda the true villain of the show as well, (we didnt need agatha)
wanda kidnapped an entire town of people and was torturing them, to the point of begging for death,
wanda should have been the villain of wandavision then, full evil wanda
but instead we got quirky fun loving warm mom wanda, silly funny loving wife wanda, which was good for the show by itself, but it doesnt work alongside this movie at all. Wanda from wandavision and wanda from this movie are simply not the same character. not the same values, not the same personality.
if anything wandavision ruins this movie or vice versa. it becomes a terrible viewing if you watch both on the same day,
the movie makes it feel like she completely forgot the ultron destruction and the death of her brother. like if this wanda was a brand new wanda.
it literally feels like a brand new evil wanda from another universe... like terminator and terminator 2, but in reverse. good arnold/ wanda, different evil arnold/ wanda (i would have accepted if this new wanda WAS from a different universe, she already acts like it
"but what about the darkhold, the darkhold corrupting her?"
so wanda had zero control? no free will? she was fully controlled to the point of betraying her inner values and personality:? by that point, have her be actually possessed by a demon, you might as well have her be possessed by a different villain. theres almost nothing left of the original wanda. the darkhold is so powerful that she becomes a new character.
its just pretty bad planning and cotinuation from wandavision to this movie, very very plot planning. this movie would have been better without wandavision existing,