Oh dog, I’ve been gnidaerd this one.

 

Why Wanda Will Win

 

It’s really simple.

 

1. We know that Wanda is getting the Life Force because her preview directly talks about the “No more mutants” depowerment.

 

1. We know from Lex vs Doom that Swank doesn’t see any difference between pre-retcon Beyonder and post-retcon cosmic cube Beyonder.

 

1. Due to Life Force Doom (the original Doom-the-White, eat your heart out Hackman) saying that the Life Force is more powerful than the Beyonder, the scaling for Wanda is insane. She’s above a guy above the Marvel setting. She’s 2 steps above the entire cosmology. Swan might make her the most powerful being in all of Marvel. 

 

1. Even if Swan tempers himself a bit in the scaling (yeah like that’ll happen), the argument for her winning will probably go something like this–Zatanna has needed help to beat beings like Zor (she had to call in the Seven Men of Slaughter Swamp), Pralaya, and the Upside Downsyndrome Man (the JLD). Wanda should at least be in the ballpark of these beings, and Wanda isn’t allowed to get help in the fight so she loses.

 

Wanda’s bigatons are just bigger than Zatanna’s bigatons, and bigatons are all that matter to modern Death Battle.

 

Why Zatanna Should Win

 

If tactics were actually worth a damn in Death Battle, Zatanna would win because Wanda is a space case when she’s at her strongest alternating between simple minded brute force and rocking back and forth in the corner muttering about her kids. Against a master illusionist who can actively scan and pluck images from her mind while obscuring herself behind several alternate/false realities (just look at the Zor fight) Wanda is going to fold. Keep in mind that in Children’s Crusade she was actively trying to kill herself because she feared the Life Force corrupting her. Zatanna killing Wanda by mental manipulation isn’t far-fetched at all. Remember when she tegrof’d Dr. Light and all those other supervillains (and Batman)? She’d create illusions of Vision and have them go full LTG on Wanda. And it would work.

 

Wanda wouldn’t be able to delete Zatanna because she wouldn’t be able to identify Zatanna amid the myriad illusions. She wouldn’t be able to process everything happening around her before she gets attacked at her most vulnerable place–her mind.

 

Why The Fight Will Underperform

 

Releasing a Scarlet Witch fight long after Wandavision and after the hype for Multiverse of Madness has died down? Way to strike while the iron is ice cold, Death Battle.

 

This was always going to be a fight for Scarlet Witch. It was always going to be Scarlet Witch vs somebody. Picking Zatanna seems like a poor move. She’s D-list. She was DLC for Injustice and didn’t come back for Injustice 2. She’s primarily known for being Bruce Timm’s waifu, which is a shame because she was the focus character of DC’s first big cross-title story. Before Zatanna’s Search, what happened in Justice League of America might as well have happened in another reality compared to what happened in Batman, Superman, or Green Lantern. In this way, Zatanna played a crucial part in the development of the DC universe.

 

Who wants to bet Death Battle isn’t even going to mention Zatanna’s Search?

 

The reality is that Zatanna is literally who tier for normies, and normies are where the money comes from. So they’re stuck relying on Wanda to carry the fight and Wanda is experiencing a lull in popularity. You factor in what I’ve already said about the fight sucking and the writing is on the wall, this is going to tank in views.

Death Battle, why didn’t you feed Sailor Moon to Scarlet Witch? The most popular magical girl in anime vs the most popular magical girl in Marvel movies. It would have brought the clicks–and more importantly, it would have brought the weeb salt. Would it have been lop-sided? Yeah, but every fight with Scarlet Witch is lopsided when you scale her above pre-retcon Beyonder.And it’s not like they didn’t feed the last Sailor Moon character to someone several billion times her power level.

 

Why didn’t you lean into Wandavision and make Wandavision Wanda vs Jeannie? That would have been fun. You could even throw in Samantha and bring back the battle royal. We haven’t had one of those in so long.

 

Update

 

I’m going to switch my marker.

 

I want to believe. I want to believe that they’re not stupid enough to use pre-retcon Beyonder scaling. I want to believe that hax and skill can overcome biggatons. I want to believe that the soundtrack hints toward a Zatanna win.

 

Is not belief magic?