Elizabeth Olsen Isn't Coming Back for Marvel's Hail Mary Avengers Movies

The marketing machine for Avengers: Doomsday has notably ramped up this month. Part of that is the Russo Brothers shamelessly using their Marvel clout to promote The Electric State, which can use all the help it can get. However, another significant chunk is casting Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom in a weird, but bombastic Hail Mary pass that sees the real Marvel Jesus return. (Suck it, Deadpool.) Well, don’t expect to see Elisabeth Olsen slapped in a corset by Doom’s side.

While the rest of the MCU seems primed to return for both Doomsday and its sequel, Secret Wars, Olsen dropped the bomb that she’s not appearing in either film as they shoot back-to-back in London. Instead, she’s starring in a pilot for a new FX series called Seven Sisters. Turns out, Olsen has not enjoyed how much the Scarlet Witch has pulled her away from interesting roles. (She was supposed to star in Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster, but Age of Ultron blew that up.)

Via THR:

I didn’t realize this until about six years ago, but because Marvel and its influence takes up so much physical time and space in the world, it’s really important for me to make choices outside of Marvel that reflect my own taste. Your taste does create the artist that you are, and that wasn’t something I was thinking about when I first started working. I was just grateful to be a working actor. I wanted to stretch myself into different roles, and I wasn’t really thinking about my taste. So the opportunity to return to films like this is a reflection of the people I want to work with and my own personal taste in ways, even if I’m not the filmmaker.

Considering the prevalent fan theories that Doomsday will lean into the comics where Doom and Wanda have all kinds of… history, there is a very good chance that this could be a head fake. That said, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness did Wanda so dirty that no one would begrudge Elizabeth Olsen peacing out on the MCU. In fact, she recently revealed that she’s willing to return, but only in a specific project that finds Wanda very far removed from the current mess of the franchise.

Via Playlist:

“You know, when I think about my dream version [of Wanda], it’s like 50 years later, and I have white hair— such a big, massive white wig—and gnarly face of wrinkles doing like a Tracy Ullman thing,” she explained. “And I am just like a creature that they find. And that’s how I imagine Wanda’s next journey.”

“It’s something I have quite literally pitched,” she continued. “Because it would be so fun to get to do that to me. I mean, I guess in one of the comics, she ages quite quickly, and I think those are the images that are implanted in my brain next because I haven’t done it.

Time to talk to the Russo Brothers about it potentially? “Yeah,” was all Olsen would say.

Wow, love that “yeah” at the end. That’s a real vote of confidence.

For the record, that Playlist interview happened just a few days before Olsen told THR that she’s not coming back for the Russo Brothers’ double Avengers grab bag. Granted, this could be absolutely nothing and an elaborate ruse, but I’m gonna lean into the most petty interpretation possible. You gotta find joy in the little things these days. It’s all we got.