Dr Strange 2: In the Multiverse of Madness (Spoilers)

[Tonguez]

The difference is that there's no sign the Purple Man had any ability to recognize he'd done anything wrong, which was clearly not the case with Wanda. Wanda, to the degree she harmed people, did it with no real intent; the Purple Man did it not only without concern, but often maliciously.

If people are gonna make analogies here, you need to at least compare like to like.

in WandaVision we get the scene where Wanda comes out of the Hex and tells SWORD to leave her “and her family” alone and later we get the scene where she Purposefully expands the Hex turning the SWORD camp into a circus - that told me that Wanda is aware that She controls the Hex and the town-illusion, but She deludes herself into living in her fantasy. She may not have been malicious but she did make a choice to cause harm to its residents.

 

[MarkB]

in WandaVision we get the scene where Wanda comes out of the Hex and tells SWORD to leave her “and her family” alone and later we get the scene where she Purposefully expands the Hex turning the SWORD camp into a circus - that told me that Wanda is aware that the She controls the Hex and the town-illusion, but She deludes herself into living in her fantasy. She may not have been malicious but she did make a choice to cause harm to its residents.

The timings are awkward in the show. Early on, she seems to have little comprehension of what she's actually doing. Later she does, but by that time she has her kids, and the stakes are thus much higher for her. She could release the town, but doing so would kill Vision and her children. Managing to come to the point where she can consciously make that choice and lose her family all over again in order to free the townspeople from her control is a heroic choice, even if everything that had brought her to that point was terrible.

 

[Thomas Shey]

in WandaVision we get the scene where Wanda comes out of the Hex and tells SWORD to leave her “and her family” alone and later we get the scene where she Purposefully expands the Hex turning the SWORD camp into a circus - that told me that Wanda is aware that She controls the Hex and the town-illusion, but She deludes herself into living in her fantasy. She may not have been malicious but she did make a choice to cause harm to its residents.

As MarkB says above, deciding to, essentially, destroy her family sets the stakes of that much higher than you're ascribing. And honestly, its not even clear to me that at the point she confronts SWORD that she's fully cognizant of what she's doing. She knows they're threatening her and her family, but has she internalized what that means in terms of the other townspeople? Does she even know that the latter are any more real than her family? I don't think that's clear from context.

 

[Eric V]

Wanda is not a hero in Wandavision. She's not even heroic; merely stopping the torture that one has begun is not heroic (or else, the bar is pretty low).

Talk of her sacrifice seems silly, since her kids weren't real. She sacrificed a delusion.

Agatha might be helping people, but she's not heroic either. She's looking out for herself.

I read the scenario where Wanda exits the hex and threatens SWORD the same mostly the way @Tonguez does, though I might frame it as "She controls the hex, makes the choice to live her delusion and not care about any possible effects on the townsfolk." This is to allow for the possibility that she doesn't know the torture she's inflicting...but in the end, it doesn't matter. Even if the people aren't suffering, per se, they are still marionettes in Wanda's fantasy, she is absconding with their agency, and this is still incredibly bad.

There were no heroes in the show. And that's fine...except I think the writers did Wanda dirty, myself. Would have been nice to see her in a more heroic light.

 

[Staffan]

I get the impression that at the start of Wandavision, Wanda is disassociating. Wanda is entirely subsumed into the sitcom role she has created for herself along with the Vision. She is not consciously aware of what she is doing. The ad breaks and the "moments of weirdness" are symptoms of her coming to terms with things, and by episode 3 sitcom-Wanda is essentially a mask worn by real-Wanda, who is now at least situationally aware of the situation – enough to recognize threats and deal with them (like recognizing that "Geraldine" is a SWORD agent and violently expelling her).

 

[BrokenTwin]

I find it funny that in Wandavision the person with the cruelest objective (Agatha trying to steal Wanda's powers) is also the one that does the most "good". Without her forcing Wanda to confront her trauma and acknowledge what she was doing, it's possible Wanda never would have had the strength to overcome her addiction to her "perfect world" and bring down the hex. SWORD was a bunch of "ends justify the means" meatheads completely out of their depth, and Wanda was a multi-trauma victim in the middle of a psychotic break. Who, I might add, STILL arguably handled things better than Hawkeye did. I'm really annoyed that they made Agatha generic evil instead of leaning into her being a "cruel to be kind" mentor for Wanda.

And I still have a hard time reconciling the Wanda at the end of Wandavision with the Wanda we get in MoM. Like, I can see the connective tissue they're working with, but it's kinda trash that the character who has to repeatedly resort to bad options to handle her trauma (and getting punished for it) gets taken out by the character who frequently resorts to bad options because he can (and never gets more than a finger wagging).
MoM could have been a really interesting look at the reasons people grab for power and the way your privileges affect it (a man who came from everything and is given plenty of leeway for his actions vs a woman who came from nothing and is frequently chastised for hers).
Wanda bewitched the people she blamed for killing her family, accidentally caused collateral damage in a fight and unconsiously enslaved a town. Two of those three she was under the command of people she trusted (a father figure in Ultron and her newfound family in the Avengers). Steven knowingly risked the destruction of reality twice, once for a justifiable reason (Dormammu) and once because someone he kind of knew couldn't handle being a public figure (Spider Man). MoM could have been a really nuanced look at the two of them as mirrors and foils to each other, and it just... wasn't.

Also, I'm just really upset that this means there's absolutely no 616 version of her kids for a Young Avengers movie. I want my Wiccan/Hulkling romance in live action!

 

[Thomas Shey]

Wanda is not a hero in Wandavision. She's not even heroic; merely stopping the torture that one has begun is not heroic (or else, the bar is pretty low).

Talk of her sacrifice seems silly, since her kids weren't real. She sacrificed a delusion.

I'm not sure how true that is. These weren't just delusions; they were constructs of chaos magic. They were clearly dependent on it, too. But there's very little sign they were just puppets. There's literally no way to tell. But I find it suspect that they exactly match the children other versions of her in other worlds have. That suggests to me that they're could-have-beens given life by her magic.

But if being a construct makes them irrelevant, why does anyone care about Vision-the-android either? He was a construct too, and though he had a physical existance separate from it, was dependent on the power of the Mind Stone to exist--and the White Vision appears to be fueled partly off her magic.

So what "real" is here is not cut and dried, and it clearly wasn't to her.

I read the scenario where Wanda exits the hex and threatens SWORD the same mostly the way @Tonguez does, though I might frame it as "She controls the hex, makes the choice to live her delusion and not care about any possible effects on the townsfolk." This is to allow for the possibility that she doesn't know the torture she's inflicting...but in the end, it doesn't matter. Even if the people aren't suffering, per se, they are still marionettes in Wanda's fantasy, she is absconding with their agency, and this is still incredibly bad.

Again, assuming she really understands that's what's going on at that point. I'm unconvinced from context that she does, until later in the process.

There were no heroes in the show. And that's fine...except I think the writers did Wanda dirty, myself. Would have been nice to see her in a more heroic light.

Again, I'm not saying she was a hero there--but I'm not sold she was so much a villain, as a sort of natural disaster caused by her psychotic break mixing with her very profound powers. That's a very different beast from what goes on in MoM.

 

[Tonguez]

Again, I'm not saying she was a hero there--but I'm not sold she was so much a villain, as a sort of natural disaster caused by her psychotic break mixing with her very profound powers. That's a very different beast from what goes on in MoM.

I think that’s one of the difficulties ascribing morality to “Acts of god”-like beings, It’s the same argument that people must see Superman as a Boy Scout otherwise he is a Monster. but When and how do we mere mortals judge when their action become monstrous?

WandaVision was compared to Legion - a reality bending telepath with a disassociative personality Who eventually became the Villain of his show - of course that took 3 seasons not one season and a Semi-connected movie.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think that’s one of the difficulties ascribing morality to “Acts of god”-like beings, It’s the same argument that people must see Superman as a Boy Scout otherwise he is a Monster. but When and how do we mere mortals judge when their action become monstrous?

WandaVision was compared to Legion - a reality bending telepath with a disassociative personality Who eventually became the Villain of his show - of course that took 3 seasons not one season and a Semi-connected movie.

It is difficult question; at what point is one a "villain" if you have limited volition or even comprehension of what you're doing? You're certainly a problem either way, but there's a reason intent is considered an important element in legal matters; if you don't factor intent and understanding into such things, there's no difference between accident and malice.

 

[Older Beholder]

As to whether or not Wanda dies at the end, I believe it was meant to be ambiguous.
There's a flash of red magic that can be seen before the collapse that could either be her dying or using magic to get away.