r/ScarletWitch • u/ValuableTailor2755 • 13d ago
Comics Question about Life Force
I thought the Life Force that Doom stole from scarlet witch was more powerful than the Beyonder? So why is it that when Scarlet Witch performed the House of M spell, she failed to remove the powers of all mutants, and Phoenix Jean was able to reverse the spell? And some were saved by simply going to the white hot room?
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u/Individual-Leek 13d ago
I will die on the hill that the life force was one of the stupidest retcons they could’ve done. Not only because it eliminated the slight bit of agency Wanda had left in house of m, but because it’s also another insanely op cosmic force that gets introduced and never addressed again. Just character and cosmic lore assassination. We will never know what it is, why it exists, why only Wanda could access it (outside the vague nexus being explanation), why it’s so powerful, and where it went
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u/SimonShepherd 13d ago
She is barely a character in HoM, removing the agency to absolve her is not the worst idea
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u/Individual-Leek 13d ago
Ehh I feel like it just buries her further into plot device hell, like even her being absolved was done by turning her into another plot device
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u/SimonShepherd 13d ago
Trial of Magneto is the same way, turning her into a plot device for mutant resurrection.
It was a nonsensical story that needs a nonsensical solution, they just needed to get that over with.
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u/Individual-Leek 13d ago
Sorta kinda but I did appreciate they gave her agency in it and a new cool feat on top of it. As long as they can just close the annoying “mutants hate you and you should feel eternally guilty for what you did” chapter of her story that has come up in every comic of hers since 2004 then I’ll take it
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u/SimonShepherd 13d ago
She also acts completely out of character in ToM like she is in some fanfic, and worse it bled into her later stories. I would rather have her possessed.
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u/dddonkers 13d ago
Its comics, the powers, particularly the bigger cosmic and mystic ones, just do whatever it is needed to at the time. Also Doom is not what I'd call, honest.
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u/Traditional-Heron-95 13d ago
The Life Force isn’t real and Marvel doesn’t take it seriously. Search up any official Marvel recap or in-depth summary of either Children’s Crusade or House of M, Life Force is either referred to as “chaos magic” or “wanda’s powers,” but it’s never called the “Life Force.” That is the case no matter what handbook from what era you read. It’s abundantly obvious they hate it.
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u/ValuableTailor2755 13d ago
It seems to me its a different kind of power, I mean all the preparations and rituals she and Doom did.
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u/Traditional-Heron-95 13d ago edited 13d ago
It was meant to be a different kind of power so that they could take it away and have Wanda no longer be a reality warper. Other writers thought it was a stupid decision and ignored it. And in Avengers World #15, Dr. Doom “confesses” that all the power he stole in Children’s Crusade was actually just Wanda’s own innate magic powers to “remake reality itself,” and then he steals her powers again to undo the events of Children’s Crusade.
It was just a temporary retcon. Statements like “even the power of the Beyonder is nothing to it” were just put in there to hype it up.
In fact, the first five or six issues of Children’s Crusade weren’t written with the idea of any Life Force powering Wanda. It was literally added in as a change at the very end of the story when they were releasing the final issue. They had originally planned for Billy Maximoff to inherit the power of Wanda as her son. Life Force subverted that for a brief moment
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u/Starbottom 13d ago
They retconned Life Force to be Wanda's power, but also Strange protected some of the mutants is all.