There were a lot of questions we had after watchingAvengers: Infinity War. Most were big-picture quandaries about Thanos’ Snap, the Soul Stone, what happened to those who were dusted, what happened to those who died by other means, etc. But the first question I personally had was small and yet significant: what happened to Scarlet Witch’s accent?Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff had a pretty heavy Eastern European accent when we first met her and her brother (RIP) inAvengers: Age of Ultronthat was completely erased by the time we got toAvengers: Infinity War.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one who wondered, though; on Josh Horowitz’sHappy Sad Confused podcast, he askedInfinity WardirectorsJoe and Anthony Russoabout Accent Gate (relating to Wanda, that is, notPeter Dinklage’s Eitri). The brothers explained:
“We have intentionally tried to strip that accent away for a couple of reasons. One is you’ll notice at the beginning of Civil War that Black Widow is training her to be a spy, and two is she’s been on the run, and one of the most distinguishing characteristics that she has is her accent. So if you’re gonna try to disguise yourself or hide yourself or not be caught, you’re going to try to limit those trigger warnings that would make it easy for someone to identify you, which would be inclusive of her accent. Clearly Black Widow as a red head is an incredibly distinguishing characteristic for her, which is why she has blonde hair. Cap, we’ve seen Chris Evans walk around in public with a beard and no one recognizes him. There are simple things you’re able to do to your appearance that take about 90% of your visibility away, and for us it was very intentional that we would just keep stripping that accent down to show her acclimating and hiding.”
Hmm. Well, ok. But most of the time we see her alone with Vision, sans accent or speaking in her native language as well. It’s not a big deal, and maybe I’m being pedantic, but it was athing! (Let’s not get into Natasha never having an accent, either. It can work without being cartoonish, just check outJodie Comer’s work inKilling Eve! One thing that’s so fun about that particular character is hearing her accents change depending on who her mark is).
Anyway, let’s not let this detract from that great (and horrifying) final moments that Wanda went through in having to kill Vision to prevent Thanos from getting the Mind Stone, even worse because it didn’t work and then shegot dusted. Wanda has had itrough, y’all.
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