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Scarlet Witch Avengers Age of Ultron 2015 Wallpaper

Le sigh. There’s always some quagmire of bad bad bad or other to be bogged down in on the internet, but I was really hoping we were done with this female toy erasure thing. How many whoopsies do we have to get through before it finally gets through toy makers’ skulls that we want the friggin female heroes? Between the #WheresRey and #WheresGamora ruckus, as well as the dearth of Black Widow merchandise, we were hoping that maybe, just maybe toy companies and studios would figure out that sweeping female franchise characters under the rug was not such a good idea. No such luck! Wahoooo!

There were notably no female characters showcased in Disney’s trailer for the Marvel Battlegrounds Play Set, which otherwise highlights new characters Black Panther, Vision, and Ant-Man from the upcoming Captain America: Civil War. But, no Scarlet Witch. And of the 28 playable characters, Black Widow and Gamora are the only two playable women. You can see for yourself:

In spite of this latest infraction, Marvel has announced a “Women of Power” initiative, which hopefully won’t just be backpedalling. They intend to showcase female characters on comic book covers and games which would be a breath of fresh air given their recent slip ups. The company has also announced that Scarlet Witch will be included as an action figure and in other Civil War merchandise. So, hopefully this is the last time we’ll have to roll our eyes over something like this? Pretty please?

(via The Verge)

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Nandita Seshadri

2 CommentsLeave a comment

  • Sometimes it seems like the movie division of Disney is learning, and trying, just for the toy licensing department to sabotage it all.

    Can’t they just fire someone, whoever is signing these deals?

  • Pretty sure Scarlett Witch is going to be in the second wave of characters released around the time of the movie. In the post trailer/announcement stream they did afterwards they talked about some of their favorite characters in battlegrounds that they couldn’t announce yet and Allison Petrek (Lead Community Manager of Disney Infinity) let slip that her favorite character was a “she” but that they couldn’t talk about her yet.

    I agree that there needs to be more female representation in battlegrounds (especially when Sif, Captain Marvel, and Wasp all have models ready to go in game. Sif even has moves as an NPC), but no Scarlett Witch right now just has to do with timing/marketing and less about some insidious plot or grievous oversight.