Warning! This article contains spoilers for Free Comic Book Day 2022: Avengers/X-Men
While MCU. However, Scarlet Witch’s dark nature seems to be spilling over from the Marvel Cinematic Universe back into the comics as her MCU "Hex" has just taken on a horrifying new meaning.
In the Disney+ original series WandaVision, Wanda uses a spell to encom an entire town in a magical barrier that keeps the residents of Westview under her control while simultaneously keeping out the influence of the outside world. When S.W.O.R.D. investigates the phenomenon, they bring in a team of experts including Thor’s Darcy Lewis who calls the barrier Wanda created the "Hex" as it has a hexagonal shape surrounding Westview while also being a curse upon the people there.
In the Free Comic Book Day 2022: Avengers/X-Men story “Of Deviation and Mutation” by Kieron Gillen and Dustin Weaver, Druig and Jack of Knives of the Eternals are discussing the X-Men after Jack secretly infiltrated Krakoa and discovered the secret of mutant resurrection. During a flashback sequence earlier in the comic to roughly a million years in the past, Druig and Uranos kill an entire community of mutant monkeys who all had shown signs of telepathy and began to form a collective hive mind. Since that mutation deviated too far from the natural order of evolution, the monkeys had to be killed. So, in the present day, Druig and Jack of Knives are discussing doing the same thing to the mutant population since cheating death is well beyond the natural order. While the two speak of potentially wiping out the mutant population because of this transgression against nature, there is a screen behind Druig showing a hexagon with the words "The Hex" written inside of it.
It is unclear at this point what the Eternals are actually planning in of attacking the X-Men, but it seems as though Scarlet Witch may be unwittingly involved in their plans, especially given her contribution to mutant resurrections. In the Trial of Magneto storyline, Wanda used her magic to the consciousnesses of every mutant who wasn’t yet backed up in Cerebro, creating a kind of "waiting room" for them to be reborn through the efforts of the Five. Since the resurrections are the cause of the Eternals’ issues with the X-Men and Scarlet Witch enhanced the mutant’s operation exponentially, it seems probable that the Eternals are going after the mutants’ resurrection capabilities, and Scarlet Witch could be instrumental in that effort.
Scarlet Witch has a troublesome history with the X-Men and the entirety of mutantkind after she erased most of the mutant population during House of M. Now that she may be the cause of the mutants' downfall once again after finally making up for her genocidal actions, the fallout of the Eternals versus the X-Men could be yet another dark chapter for Wanda Maximoff. Scarlet Witch’s MCU "Hex" takes on a horrifying new meaning as it could mean the end of mutantkind.
Free Comic Book Day 2022: Avengers/X-Men is available now from Marvel Comics.
