Scarlet Witch, Vision, & Wonder Man: The Avengers' Biggest Love Triangle, Explained

"Wonder Man" (read /Film's review here) introduces Simon Williams (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The trend of MCU-set Disney+ series kicked off with 2021's "WandaVision," and the three leads of these two series have, in the pages of Marvel Comics, shared a longstanding love triangle. It's all the weirder because Vision's synthezoid brain is modeled on Wonder Man's — they're almost the same person. 

Wonder Man debuted in Stan Lee and Don Heck's "Avengers" issue #9. Baron Zemo and the Masters of Evil gave failed businessman Simon Williams superpowers so he could infiltrate and destroy the Avengers. Instead, Wonder Man gave his life to save his new friends. (One young reader who was inspired by the story of Wonder Man? George R.R. Martin.)

But that wasn't the end for Wonder Man. "Avengers" #58 (by Roy Thomas and John Buscema) retconned that the Avengers had copied the character's brain patterns in a faint hope that one day, they could revive him. The evil android Ultron used Wonder Man's mind to create the Vision and set him on the Avengers — but like Wonder Man, Vision turned on his creator and chose good.

Wonder Man would, eventually, return for real. Revived in 1977's "Avengers" #160 (by Jim Shooter and George Pérez), Simon became an ongoing Avenger. Over time, he and Vision more or less accepted themselves as brothers. But since Vision was based on Wonder Man's personality, it makes sense that Simon turned out to share Vision's affection for Wanda.

Superhero comic books, especially team books like "Avengers," are soap operas, and this is a great example of that. Wanda has spent time in love with both Vision and Wonder Man, but her relationship with Vision came first; for her, which man is truly an echo of which?

Roy Thomas and then Steve Englehart wrote Wanda and Vision's slow-blooming romance across the "The Avengers" issues of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Wanda's overprotective brother Quicksilver disapproved of Vision, and Vision himself thought Wanda deserved better than a facsimile of a man. But if even an android can cry (as "Avengers" #58 famously declared), then surely he can love, too.

Eventually, Wanda and Vision threw caution to the wind and got together. In 1975's "Giant-Size Avengers" #4 (by Englehart and Don Heck), they married and stayed together for over a decade in real-world publication time. But it all comes crashing down in John Byrne's "West Coast Avengers," when Vision is wiped of his emotions, and an envious Wonder Man refuses to let his brain patterns be used to restore Vision in full. As Byrne explained in magazine "Comic Interviews" #71: 

"[Wonder Man] came out of being dead and here was this woman who was everything he had ever dreamed of, and she was married to a toaster. So he was holding himself back and being a gentleman about it, but now he's pursuing her."

By Kurt Busiek and George Pérez's 1990s "Avengers" run, Wonder Man and a now-restored Vision had swapped places; Wonder Man was with Wanda, while Vision — because of how disastrously their marriage ended — loved her silently from the shadows. "Avengers" #23 was all about a confrontation between Wonder Man and Vision, who admits his pain that his entire existence is just an echo of Wonder Man's. 

"[Wanda's love was] one thing that was my own — that was a part of my life, my self, without having been part of yours first," Vision says. Now, Vision understands, even that derived first from Simon's soul.

Like most superhero love triangles, there's been no permanent resolution here — though Wanda and Vision recently teamed up for a new "The Vision & the Scarlet Witch" series (by Steve Orlando and Lorenzo Tammetta) commemorating their 50th anniversary.

Yet don't expect to see Yahya Abdul-Mateen II's Simon Williams competing with Paul Bettany's Vision for Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen). When Vision debuted in "Avengers: Age of Ultron," the MCU hadn't introduced Wonder Man. So, his mind is instead based on Tony Stark's (Robert Downey Jr.) AI assistant, JARVIS. That means there's no built-in tension between him and Wonder Man on screen.

Last we heard from Wanda in "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness," she was dead, crushed under Mount Wundagore. Granted, Olsen has signaled openness to returning as Scarlet Witch — she did come back to play an alternate Wanda in animated series "Marvel Zombies."

"Agatha All Along" revealed Wanda's children Billy and Tommy reincarnated, while Vision is getting his own series, "VisionQuest." I wouldn't be surprised if a Maximoff family reunion is in the cards. However, Olsen has also said she does not want the MCU bringing in the Scarlet Witch, Vision, and Wonder Man love triangle after doing exploring similar subject matter in her high-concept romance film "Eternity."

"I just made a movie about a woman who's choosing between her two dead husbands in the afterlife, so I feel okay with not doing another movie about two men wanting my love for a minute," Olsen said at LA Comic-Con 2025 (via ComicBookMovie). The MCU has shown Wanda as a one synthezoid woman who'd rather cast an illusion of the dead Vision than move on, so why complicate that with a love triangle now?