With the triumphant return of the Scarlet Witch to the MCU after a painful four-year drought, there’s been a lot of buzz around the idea that the MCU is heading towards an adaptation of The Children’s Crusade. But what is The Children’s Crusade, and why do people think it might appear on screen very soon? Well, let me break it down for you.
Avengers: The Children’s Crusade is a nine-issue Marvel Comics crossover event published between 2010 and 2012. It featured the return of the Scarlet Witch to the comics as a major character for the first time since the disastrous events of House of M, when, after remembering the loss of her children, Wanda had murdered several Avengers, created an alternative timeline and then controversially and famously delivered the line “No more mutants.” Wanda was disgraced and considered somewhat of a boogeyman of the comics universe. Redemption seemed impossible.
Then, with Allan Heinberg writing and Jim Cheung as the artist, The Children’s Crusade arrives, with Wanda on the cover alongside the Young Avengers, the looming presence of Captain America and Iron Man, plus Wolverine and Spider-Man for good measure. The comic opens with the Young Avengers, who had been formed in the aftermath of the Avengers Disassembled storyline and whose line-up notably features Wiccan and Speed, the children of the Scarlet Witch and the Vision. During the opening pages of the series, Billy Kaplan, aka Wiccan, uses a little too much power when defending his boyfriend in battle and is thus escorted to the Avengers, who ask him to stay with them, as they don’t want another Wanda Maximoff on their hands.
The Avengers explain Wanda’s various crimes to Billy and why they are concerned that, with his abilities, he could be led down a similar path. He is, of course, shocked and then concludes that if he really does have enough power to do what Wanda did on M-Day, then he and Speed are truly her children. Billy is unwilling to believe that the Scarlet Witch caused the kind of destruction and suffering that she did of her own accord and, after a series of interruptions, decides that he must find her to discover what truly happened. Like magic, as soon as this decision is made, who shows up but his, at the time, assumed grandfather, Magneto, who is eager to get to know his grandsons.
This first issue gives us our first clue as to why people feel that the MCU is looking to adapt The Children’s Crusade, because, well, it features Billy and Tommy deciding to look for their mother. With the twins having just reunited in VisionQuest, it does feel as though the stage is being set for their mother to re-enter the picture. However, this alone would not be a convincing enough argument. The second issue offers us our second clue as to why The Children’s Crusade seems poised for a screen debut. The issue ends with the revelation that the Scarlet Witch is in the hands of Doctor Doom.
Magneto suspects that the reason nobody has been able to locate Wanda could potentially be that Doom has been using his own considerable magic to shield her from view. Wiccan, desperate for answers, decides that he will go looking for Wanda himself inside Doom’s castle. He manages to get inside by disguising himself as the Scarlet Witch so that the Doombots will show him to her room. Once there, he is attacked by Wanda herself, who demands to know who he is. Billy, so shocked by her genuinely being in front of him, can’t quite manage to confess that he’s her son and so simply answers that he’s come to rescue her. He is shocked to discover that Wanda is actually getting married, and even more shocked to find out, as Doom himself enters the room, that it’s Doom she’s engaged to. Talk about a stepdad from hell.
After knocking him unconscious, Doom leaves Billy to regain consciousness and explains that Wanda is somehow repressing her powers and memories. He says that she came to him of her own free will on behalf of her people and that the two of them fell in love. He offers Wiccan a place to stay that will shield him from the Avengers, who are still looking for her, though with the caveat that he has, of course, used a spell to relieve him of his powers.
As the comic is a crossover event, there are a wide variety of plotlines and characters at play here. But by issue seven, Wanda explains that by uniting with Doctor Doom, she hopes to be able to fix the damage that she caused. She explains that, before the events of Avengers Disassembled and House of M, she had visited Doctor Doom, hoping to gain the power to bring her lost sons back. Together, they tapped into a power called the Life Force through Wanda’s own abilities as a Nexus being. It was the Life Force that then overwhelmed Wanda and granted her the godlike abilities that she displayed during Disassembled. Doom then apparently found her wandering around her birthplace of Transia with no memory of what had happened. Wanda explains that now she intends to harness the Life Force one more time in order to fix all the damage she caused before Doom destroys the power forever.
Wanda, Billy and Doom come together to perform the spell that will heal the world, but they are interrupted and Wanda panics as she believes the Life Force to be gone and all hope lost. However, instead, Doom floats down from above, no longer scarred and now possessing the Life Force’s power. Surprise! Doom has taken the magic for himself, and he genuinely thinks he’s done the world a favour. Brandishing his newfound abilities, Doom announces that he plans to completely reshape the world into a perfect one without any suffering, with the Scarlet Witch ruling beside him as his queen. Wanda is horrified and warns him that the Life Force is too powerful and will eventually overwhelm and corrupt him the way it did her. Doom admits that he can’t undo Wanda’s original spell and can instead only create a new one to sort of compensate for what was lost. He then once again proposes marriage to Wanda, who accepts, but only on the condition that he surrender the Life Force. Doom, however, isn’t down to negotiate and banishes Wanda and the Young Avengers to Avengers Mansion.
Doom attempts multiple times to get the Avengers and X-Men to accept his idea of a utopia, but is rebuffed. Then, in his rage, he begins an all-out assault on the heroes. Wiccan and Wanda attempt to work together to draw the Life Force out of Doom, who has, as predicted, become completely corrupted by it. During the battle, Wanda and Billy succeed in reopening the portal from which the Life Force came. Doom, in his own greed, attempts to draw out more power from the portal and is instead completely overwhelmed by it, his body burning as the Life Force begins to consume him from within.
Wanda attempts to comfort the defeated and scarred Doom, but he lashes out, mocking her for trusting him and seemingly revealing that, while using Wanda as a magical conduit, it was he who caused the events of both Avengers Disassembled and House of M. He teleports away and leaves the heroes to pick up the pieces. This element of the comic has always been treated as somewhat ambiguous in terms of canon, with most mutants still blaming Wanda for the depowering of mutantkind and Wanda herself always taking responsibility.
Now, with Robert Downey Jr. playing Doom in the MCU, it seems unlikely that Doomsday will be taking on the Bride of Doom storyline, however interesting that might have been. But the idea of a Wanda without memories working with Doom because she genuinely believes he’s doing the right thing seems plausible within the confines of what we know about Doomsday. If I had to place my bets, I’d imagine that in Doomsday the Scarlet Witch will have no memories of what transpired with the Darkhold and will perhaps be operating under the idea that Doom is her saviour. If rumours are to be believed and Strange and Clea are also part of the line-up, their influence could definitely convince Wanda to hand over her powers to Doom in order for him to correct the damage she did.
It’s possible that Wanda, unaware that her children are in fact alive, may be convinced by Doom’s offer to stop the incursions and create a better world with her powers. It’s been noted that several of the figures released of Doom ahead of Doomsday feature him wielding red energy effects, suggesting that he may be using Wanda’s chaos magic. The spellbook he seems to have acquired also features a design that resembles the Scarlet Witch rune from the Darkhold. The MCU has never been known for making one-to-one adaptations of the comics it takes inspiration from. However, there’s plenty of material in The Children’s Crusade that seems to lend itself to both Doomsday and Secret Wars, particularly with the potential involvement of the Young Avengers. I’m going to make the bold prediction in this article that Doomsday will use the last of Fox’s X-Men to realise Elizabeth Olsen’s long-held dream of saying “No more mutants’, in order to leave them depowered and make way for the new X-Men who are making their debut in the upcoming 2028 movie.
As a Wanda fan, the element I’d most like preserved from the original Children’s Crusade storyline is her return to heroism and genuine interest in redemption. While I know many have enjoyed her villainous turn, I’d like to see a general course correction of the public perception of Wanda Maximoff, from an anti-hero back into the empathetic heroine that she has been for much of her over-60-year comic history. But that’s just my perspective, and we’ll have to see what awaits us in just over a month’s time.
