Doctor Strange and the Masters of the Mystic Arts could secretly be limited Scarlet Witch's reality-warping powers in WandaVision. A grieving Wanda Maximoff has unleashed sheer chaos on the town of Westview, New Jersey, plunging it into a strange sitcom-esque world in which she gets to live her imagined Happily Ever After with a resurrected Vision, whom she saw brutally murdered by Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War. The residents of Westview appear to be being subjected to her will, forced to play their part in this twisted reality.

A stroke of bad luck on Wanda's part led FBI agent Jimmy Woo to discover something strange was taking place at Westview, and soon he'd called in SWORD to investigate. But perhaps the strangest thing is that Wanda's actions don't appear to have been investigated by anybody else - specifically by Doctor Strange and the Masters of the Mystic Arts, who monitor the entire planet looking for reality warps just like this. Unlike SWORD, they possess the skills and experience to confront the Hex covering Westview with ease.

Related: Theory: Wanda Was Saving Vision From SWORD, Not Stealing Him

It's possible the Masters of the Mystic Arts are currently reorganizing themselves after the chaos of Avengers: Endgame - their numbers suddenly bolstered when Thanos' snap was reversed - and simply haven't noticed what's going on in Westview. Alternatively, it's also possible they are in fact already on the scene - and they are responsible for some of what's happening in an attempt to restrain Wanda Maximoff.

Wanda Maximoff May Not Responsible For Everything In WandaVision

Wandavision Wanda Hex

As powerful as Scarlet Witch may be, WandaVision actually suggests something may be limiting her powers. She has rewritten reality around the town of Westview, and her false sitcom world is cut off from the rest of the planet by an energy barrier that is being referred to as "the Hex," due to its hexagonal shape. Most viewers are assuming Scarlet Witch is herself responsible for creating the Hex, but that may not be the case. Notice that, until Wanda used her powers directly on the Hex in WandaVision in episode 5, it lacked the distinctive red tinge that indicates her powers are at work. That suggests the Hex may well have been created by someone else - perhaps in an attempt to contain Scarlet Witch's reality-altering powers, to ensure just one town was affected rather than the entire planet.

Meanwhile, it's also worth noting another spell appears to have been woven on the area around Westview - one that makes everybody in the area forget the town even exists. In fact, this magic is so powerful that in WandaVision episode 4 police officers were stood in front of a sign welcoming them to Westview, denying any knowledge of the town. This, too, could be part of an attempt to contain Wanda - to reduce the scale of her impact, to prevent a confrontation with the real world. If that is indeed the case, then clearly it hasn't worked, because the spell seems to have been geographically limited in effect. Jimmy Woo and Monica Rambeau were presumably unaffected because they were further away at the moment it was woven. Again, there's no reason to assume the magical practitioner here was Wanda; it could well have been the Masters of the Mystic Arts, trying to keep Wanda under wraps.

Agnes Could Well Be Agatha Harkness... Master of the Mystic Arts

Agnes Agatha Harkness wandavision

The general assumption is that Kathryn Hahn's mysterious WandaVision character Agnes is actually Agatha Harkness, a powerful sorceress who has been strongly tied to Scarlet Witch in the comics. Most theories suggest she is the real villain of WandaVision, a Machiavellian figure who is perhaps serving even darker forces like Dormammu or Mephisto. But it's worth noting Agnes' façade cracked a little in WandaVision episode 5, in a scene where she seemed genuinely disturbed about the potential scale of Wanda's power. This raises the possibility she is not there as a manipulator, but rather as a mystic who is on hand to attempt to contain her, and is beginning to fear she is seriously out of her depth.

Related: Marvel Confirms When WandaVision Is Set In The MCU Timeline

It's important to note Agatha Harkness is a "shades of gray" character in the comics. While it is true she has often been portrayed as a practitioner of the Dark Arts, she has also been a friend and ally to many superheroes; Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman of the Fantastic Four even hired her to serve as a nursemaid for their son Franklin Richards, confident she was powerful and skilled enough to protect him should any of their enemies target their son. So there is absolutely no reason why the MCU could not reinvent Agatha Harkness as one of the Masters of the Mystic Arts, an agent on hand to keep a close eye on Wanda.

Doctor Strange Could Be Needed To Stop Scarlet Witch

WandaVision Scarlet Witch Doctor Strange 2 Agatha Harkness

All this could well culminate in Agatha Harkness calling in one more powerful than herself - Doctor Strange, yet to attain the title of Sorcerer Supreme in the MCU but still one of the greatest mystics even now he has lost the Time Stone. In the comics, it was Stephen Strange who eventually restrained Scarlet Witch when her powers flared out of control, casting her into an enchanted sleep while he tried (and failed) to figure out how to contain her magic. He could well do the same in WandaVision, turning up in the final episode in an unexpected cameo where he takes Wanda off SWORD's hands.

Scarlet Witch is confirmed to appear in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and a Doctor Strange cameo would help make that seamless. In a similar way to the comics, Doctor Strange 2 could see Wanda's power overwhelm even Stephen Strange's, plunging the entire world into chaos - and forcing Strange to prove himself the Sorcerer Supreme by the efforts he took to put matters to right. This theory would work well, then, not only to explain some of the oddities around WandaVision but also to set Scarlet Witch for her future role - essentially turning her into the Multiverse of Madness that must be overcome.

More: WandaVision Makes Endgame's Deleted Post-Credits Scene Canon

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