12 Recent Movie Sequels That Outrageously Ruined Great Characters
2. Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness - Wanda Maximoff
Throughout this list, the two most common types of character assassination have been firstly, regressing a character by undoing their growth and secondly, making them completely unlikable. What Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness did with poor Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) is both of those things combined, and turned up to eleven.
Wanda might not be everyone's favourite Avenger but she was always a likable hero and Elizabeth Olsen is a very good actress. Furthermore, WandaVision added new depth to her and really gave her a chance to shine, and the series sent the character through a largely well-executed arc of overcoming her grief and rage at all she had lost.
Doctor Strange 2, for some inexplicable reason, took this character and turned her into a hateful murderer who seemed to have learned absolutely nothing whatsoever from the events of WandaVision, and thus made this once-amiable hero into one of the very worst antagonists in the history of the MCU.
Speaking of which, it was a potentially great idea to turn one of the Avengers into a villain, and it's beyond infuriating that they messed this up so badly. This is, quite possibly, the quintessential example of a character assassination from the 2020s so far.