Marvel has a canon of heroes, villains, and the like that all bring important characteristics to the table. But sometimes, the characters we know and love might end up having some similarities. Like Yelena Belova and Wanda Maximoff.
After Thunderbolts*, it was made incredibly clear to me that my love of both Yelena (Florence Pugh) and Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) is tied to what these two characters represent. I love them both for other reasons, Wanda being one of the strongest Avengers in the canon and Yelena being a Widow. But their exploration of grief and their own inner pain make them highly relatable.
When I went to get my tattoo for Wanda, I wanted a quote to go with it. I couldn’t exactly pinpoint a Wanda Maximoff quote that worked for it. But what did work was “It was real to me,” a quote that Yelena says in Black Widow when her Red Room family is all fighting about their time in Ohio. Little did I know then that the two would end up exploring grief and depression and anxiety in the way that they both have done in their respective moments.
The WandaVision affect
Movies like Iron Man 3 asked an important question with our heroes: What if they weren’t okay? And WandaVision expanded that idea by throwing one of Marvel’s most powerful heroes into a state of grief that meant she created her own entire town to live in. And it is highly relatable, especially when you understand that kind of all consuming grief that Wanda is going through.
Losing Vision (Paul Bettany) sends Wanda into a grief fueled world where she lives in television shows. Who among us hasn’t turned to a movie or television show as a source of comfort? But what I love about Wanda is that her grief and her upset is her own and even thought it ends up hurting all of Westview, it is still rooted in what she is going through.
It’s dark and messy but it is Wanda and how she copes with it all. Which is what ends up being the similarity between her and Yelena.
Feeling the void
In Thunderbolts*, a central theme of the entire movie was not being okay. Yelena is struggling and she admits that she doesn’t know the last time she felt happy. While Bob (Lewis Pullman) and his journey with depression and “the void” is a bit more of an obvious look at loneliness and that empty feeling that can consume us all. Yelena’s sadness is a bit more specific.
There are many of us who have to keep moving through, who used to be the “happy kids” who are now unable to move past others and their expectations on us. Her grief over her sister manifested in her as “the void” and yet Yelena didn’t stop moving. She kept pressing on, moving through it.
Both Yelena and Wanda were given the chance to be free with their upset and show us how they grieve and try to come back to us and it was really beautiful to see how these women are so similar in their approach to their emotions and yet how they are so different.
______________________
It is nice to see these two women being open with their emotions and that’s why I love them so dearly.
(featured image: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
