60 years of the Scarlet Witch, Marvel’s most popular and polarizing Romani hero
Wanda Maximoff, better known as the Scarlet Witch, has rapidly become one of the most well-known characters in the Marvel canon, due in no small part to the success of MCU projects such as WandaVision, but there’s a lot that modern fans might not know about this character’s history. Wanda is one of, if not the most prominent Romani characters in American pop culture, but that representation hasn’t always been clear-cut. This year marks the 60th anniversary of Wanda and her twin brother Pietro’s first appearance, and Marvel is celebrating the occasion with a special Scarlet Witch & Quicksilver limited series, so now is the perfect time to revisit Wanda’s origins and take a critical look at the history of Romani characters in Marvel comics.
Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch made their debut in 1964, in the fourth issue of the original X-Men series. The twins were introduced as reluctant villains, but in the following year, they joined the cast of The Avengers as heroes, and for the most part, that’s where they’ve remained. Like most characters from the 1960s, Wanda and Pietro were introduced without any substantial backstory, and their origins were slowly developed over the next couple decades of publication. The twins were originally conceived as mutants — people born with a special gene that grants them superhuman powers, but who are treated within the fiction of the Marvel universe, as a sort of allegorical minority. As their backstory evolved, Wanda discovered that she also possessed magical abilities, and studied witchcraft in order to master these latent powers.
As her powers became more complicated, so, too, did her family life. In the late 70s and early 80s, it was established that Wanda and Pietro had been born in a small, fictional country in Central Europe, where they were adopted by a Romani couple, the Maximoffs, who raised them them in a traditional community. Their birth mother was also Romani — a woman named Magda, the late wife of the notorious X-Men villain-turned-antihero, Magneto, who confirmed in 1983 that he was the twins’ birth father. Over the next two decades, Marvel writers expanded on their backstories as well, and it became known that Magneto is Jewish, and that he and Magda were both Holocaust survivors.
For a variety of editorial reasons, Wanda and Pietro’s parentage was changed again in 2016. In the current Marvel canon, the couple who raised them are actually their maternal aunt and uncle, and their birth mother was a different Romani woman named Natalya. I wish I could say this sort of thing wasn’t common in superhero comics, but it is. Natalya is fascinating character in her own right, and fortunately, the Maximoffs’ ethnic and cultural heritage is largely unchanged — they’ve been consistently depicted as Romani for over forty years.
If you’re reading this and you’re not sure what the word “Romani” means, it’s actually the name of a racialized, diasporic minority. Modern-day scholars believe that the Romani diaspora was displaced from northern India in the 11th century, and began to arrive in Europe in 1300s. In the present day, Romani people exist all over the world, and the diaspora is made up of many subgroups, each with their own names and dialects. I, myself, am descended from the Cale community of Spain. In Europe, Romani communities are heavily oppressed by systemic racism, poverty, and inequality. Historically, the Romani people were victims of a centuries-long slave trade, and during World War II they were targeted for ethnic cleansing and genocide alongside the Jewish community. In spite of this, we’re often excluded from history texts and WWII memorials.
Romani people are nothing if not survivors, though, and our culture is rich and diverse. It’s no wonder that Romani people — especially women — are frequent subjects in Western art, but these depictions are often exploitative, and reduce our culture and history to harmful stereotypes. If you’ve ever seen a witch, fortuneteller, or gypsy in fantasy media, you’ve seen a racist, anti-Romani trope. In fact, the word “gypsy” is actually an exonym for the Romani people that is frequently used as a racial pejorative or slur. Like many other marginalized communities, Romani folks often reclaim this word or adapt it into their own languages — for example, I identify as gitano, which is just the Cale translation. You’re going to come across the word “gypsy” any time you engage with content by or about Romani people, but if you’re not a part of the community, you should avoid using it yourself. Fair warning — it does come up a lot in old comics.
A lot of the common tropes about Romani people are based in historical truths, but they’ve been twisted to make us seem like backwards, superstitious criminals who exist in the margins of society by choice — and this perception only furthers the racist treatment of Romani people in real life. Romani communities are over-policed to this day, even in America, and that goes double for itinerant workers, poor people, unhoused people, and folks living in mobile homes.
One of the most common tropes about Romani people, and one that you’ll see all the time in superhero comics, is that Romani women are all witches or fortunetellers. The truth is that things like folk medicine and divination are actually traditional occupations in some families. These practices typically began as a form of survival work, and much of the knowledge behind them was born from our ancestral customs. It’s a really special and beautiful part of our history, but it’s been blown way out of proportion and weaponized against us over the centuries by bigots. Even today, this line of work is criminalized in many places. In spite of that, the image of the gypsy fortuneteller is commodified and appropriated by non-Roma as an exotic archetype. As we explore the history of the Scarlet Witch, we’ll see how she and other Marvel characters engage with this archetype and often turn it on its head.
Romani characters can be found all throughout the Marvel world, but almost all of them are are involved in some way with magic or witchcraft, and most of them only demonstrate their Romani identities through performative stereotypes. These characters are the products of non-Romani imaginations, and they primarily reflect the fantasies that outsiders project onto us. In spite of this, I do think that many of these characters provide nuanced insight to aspects of Romani reality that American readers might not otherwise be exposed to.
One of my favorite examples is the classic villain, Doctor Doom. Born Victor von Doom, the Fantastic Four’s greatest enemy was raised, much like Wanda and Pietro, by Romani parents in a small European nation. Growing up, Victor lost both of his parents as a result of systemic racism. As a young man, he used his knowledge of both science and magic to provide for his community, and eventually, to overthrow the oppressive monarchy of his homeland. Although Doctor Doom is designed to be morally and politically threatening to his American counterparts — and by extension, the American reader — his first and greatest motive has always been the liberation of his people.
Victor’s parents are equally compelling characters. His father, Werner, was a healer whose services were in popular demand with the ruling class, but Werner was punished and eventually killed for failing to save a terminally ill baroness. Victor’s mother, Cynthia, was a witch, but like her son, she explicitly used her powers to protect her community. Marvel Graphic Novel #49 describes how her people were condemned for being “shiftless wanderers,” but were forced to live that way by displacement and discrimination. In the real world, the custom of migrant living is more nuanced than that, but Cynthia’s narration debunks a common assumption about Romani culture and invites readers to question how poverty and oppression inform those stereotypes.
The Maximoff family have a lot in common with the von Dooms. Wanda and Pietro’s adoptive father, Django, is a talented woodcarver who nevertheless struggles to provide for his family due to job discrimination. Desperate to feed his children, Django resorts to theft, and the whole family is punished in a violent hate crime. Django’s sister Natalya — the twins’ birth mother — was a witch who used her powers as a sort of local superhero. In spite of her heroism, she was shunned and feared by her white European neighbors.
[As an aside, the Maximoff family name is borrowed from a real-world historical figure — Romani writer Mateo Maximoff — and the character Django is named after the trailblazing Romani musician Django Reinhardt.]
The Maximoffs and the von Dooms demonstrate that Romani people are an oppressed community whose labor and customs are frequently exploited by a majority culture that wants nothing more than to keep us at the margins of their society, and then punish us for failing to integrate. In the Marvel world, colorful gypsy stereotypes live alongside these nuanced realities. The result is a deeply flawed, but compelling text.
Not all Romani characters are created equal, though. For every Doctor Doom, there is a Margali Szardos, the wicked, green-skinned sorceress; a Meggan Puceanu, the faerie changeling who was forced into isolation by her superstitious parents; or Lilia Calderu, the seditious, scantily-clad, “Witch Queen.” While these Marvel characters remain mired in fantasy tropes, the few Romani characters in DC comics originate almost exclusively from crime families and circus troupes. These DC characters, such as Batman’s Nightwing, are less stereotypical, but they also don’t do as much to humanize Romani people or provide readers with learning opportunities.
One of the biggest challenges for Romani characters is adaptation. Typically, when characters like the Maximoffs appear in tv shows, movies, or video games, they are whitewashed to varying degrees. Their Romani upbringing is omitted, they’re often transplanted to America, and they’re almost always played by white actors. In my opinion, one of the main reasons this keeps happening is because most, if not all Romani characters are drawn as white people in comics. Now, to be clear, the Romani community is super diverse, and there’s no right or wrong way to look Roma, but painting the entire population, across all of Europe and the UK, as white-presenting is just wildly inaccurate. It’s not inclusive, and I think it makes it easy for people to forget that we’re talking about a racialized minority whose representation, therefore, requires a certain amount of care.
Famously, Wanda and Pietro have appeared in both the MCU and the X-Men film franchises, where they are both played by white American and British actors. Despite being whitewashed, these adaptions do often invoke anti-Romani tropes and other forms of racism. Because these movies are so popular, a heated division has formed between fans who uncritically support these whitewashed portrayals, and those who criticize them. When these debates spill over onto social media, they often attract vocal racists who disperse hate speech and harass people, especially Romani folks who get caught in the crosshairs. It’s happened to me and several of my friends. It just goes to show that the way we talk about these characters exposes real ignorance and can have real, harmful consequences.
So, where do we go from here? Well, I’m happy to say that there is a growing number of comic book fans who have really done the work to educate themselves and become better Romani allies. I’ve spent the last several years — pretty much since Wanda started being in movies — speaking out about Romani representation in online fandom spaces, so I’ve witnessed that change in real time, and I’m grateful that Romani fans can still find safe, supportive platforms.
Writers and artists have also begun to demonstrate more awareness, and I think that’s due in no small part to the fandom’s efforts. One of my favorite comic books that’s come out in recent years is the 2018 miniseries Quicksilver: No Surrender, in which writer Saladin Ahmed examines how Pietro carries complex trauma from a lifetime of poverty and systemic racism. In the 2023 Scarlet Witch solo title, writer Steve Orlando and artist Russell Dauterman officially redesigned the Maximoff twins as visible people of color, a change that is now being reflected across the board for the entire company. Orlando also goes out of his way to sprinkle in fun cultural references — Wanda defeats a demon using enchanted sarmale — and just generally treat her character with way more sensitivity then she’s previously recieved. Having more inclusive and thoughtful representations really can help to combat ignorance, and because these characters have gathered such a massive audience, I think that makes a real difference.
For the first time in my life, I feel good about where Romani representation in Marvel comics is heading. It’s far from perfect, but here’s the thing — these characters are going to stick around for a long time, whether we like them or not, so I’m always happy to see growth and improvement. The fact that we are seeing these positive changes right now, when Wanda and Pietro are at the height of their popularity, is amazing, and I really hope that this newfound awareness will create opportunities for Romani writers and artists to work with the characters in the future. As far as I’m aware, that’s never happened, and I think it’s the next big step in creating truly authentic and inclusive representation — and I believe that’s something we all deserve.
