Steve Orlando on Scarlet Witch, ‘DC x AEW,’ and why Wanda is “The Disruptor”

Steve Orlando is one of those writers who makes being “busy” seem like an understatement. One minute, he’s guiding Wanda Maximoff through the kind of magic-politics that only Marvel can pull off, and the next he’s tossing DC heroes into larger-than-life crossovers. And that’s before you even get into everything else he’s juggling across other publishers and formats.

In a wide-ranging chat with AIPT, Orlando dug into the current emotional status quo of Wanda and Vision, what makes Agatha Harkness such a dangerous kind of villain to write, and why DC x AEW works to bridge the divide between comics and wrestling.

We’ll have the full conversation coming to the AIPT Comics Podcast this Sunday. But for now, here’s a feature highlight focusing on Orlando’s Scarlet Witch work and his approach to DC x AEW, with a few teases at the other lanes he’s currently speeding down.

Wanda and Vision: “That’s Just Adult Life”

Orlando was clear that what he’s exploring with Wanda and Vision isn’t just some back-and-forth soap opera. It’s something more grounded.

“It is oftentimes we can take a relatively childish or reductive look at relationships in comics,” Orlando said. “You know, are they broken up, they’re back together, they’ve always loved each other.”

Simply put, that binary doesn’t interest him.

“The reality is that everything in between happens,” Orlando said. “You don’t get that represented that often, where like, there’s no question that they care deeply for each other…It just means they don’t work as a couple. Like, that’s just adult life.”

He pushed back directly against the idea that divorced characters need to be enemies, adding, “I do think it’s a childish view to assume that they have to hate each other now or they can’t get along.”

In fact, he suggested the bond between them may actually be stronger now.

“In a way, the relationship may be even stronger than it was when they were married,” Orlando said. “It’s just not the kind of relationship it was back then.”

That space, where two people still love and rely on each other, but are no longer romantically together, is where Orlando sees something unique: “I think that’s very special for them to have that.”

On Writing Agatha Harkness

Changing topics, we moved onto Sorcerer Supreme, the latest series Orlando is writing with Scarlet Witch in the lead. This time, she’s facing Agatha Harkness, as the Vishanti chose Agatha over Scarlet Witch to serve as the Sorcerer Supreme. As you might have guessed already, Wanda simply isn’t having it.

If Wanda is the emotional anchor of the run, Agatha Harkness is the destabilizer.

“Agatha is supremely confident in herself, even when she’s not,” Orlando said, a sentiment which perfectly captures how she can feel like mentor, antagonist, and ally in the same breath.

One of his favorite dynamics is the imbalance between Wanda’s perception and reality. Wanda feels like Agatha has been a lifelong friend. But as Orlando points out, Agatha is “well over 10,000 years old.” Wanda’s entire experience with her is “a microsecond in her life.” That realization hits Wanda hard.

“She realizes the entire time, she’s known Agatha for only a microsecond in her life,” Orlando said. “She has no idea who Agatha really is like.”

That’s what makes Agatha dangerous — not just power, but perspective. And so Orlando embraced how alien that kind of lifespan is and the narrative bounty it offers.

“We can’t fathom someone who’s 10,000 years old,” Orlando said. “We can’t fathom what we would be like.”

And when conflicts play out at that level of magic, they are not going to resemble anything ordinary. Or, as Orlando put it, “Even a game between sorcerers as powerful as Wanda and Agatha isn’t going to look like you and I playing catch in Swampscott, David.”

Doing Your Thing as Sorcerer Supreme

The tension around Wanda becoming the Sorcerer Supreme is not only about rivalry. Rather, Orlando frames it as something much larger.

“Try to ascend to the height of your own silo…but don’t step into ours,” Orlando said, describing the invisible barrier marginalized people regularly encounter. He added “You can X, Y, and Z…but don’t take our thing.”

Orland said that once Wanda steps outside the role the world has assigned her, she becomes “a problem.” Suddenly, she’s told to “slow your roll a little bit, maybe pump the brakes.”

In Orlando’s run, magic becomes a metaphor for agency. Wanda wants it to “do more for people.” She doesn’t buy the idea that “every spell has a cost” simply because that’s how it’s always been framed. She sees magic as something that could be democratized. But he’s also clear she’s not infallible.

“She’s not perfect,” Orlando said. “She’s going to break things and eventually break the wrong thing.” Some rules exist to entrench power. Some exist for other reasons entirely. The story often lives in that very tension.

Wanda, “The Disruptor”

When I asked Orlando how he personally defines Wanda, he didn’t hesitate.

“I think when we call her the primal disruptor or the disruptor, that is how I will always see her,” Orlando said.

Everything else (Avenger, sorcerer, mutant, reality-shaper, etc.), is just a lens on that identity. Orlando goes on to say he re-framed chaos in a way that feels central to the run.

“Chaos and order are not good or bad,” Orlando said. “They simply are.” If you think order is purely good, Orlando said that “you’ve never lived in a police state.” If you think chaos is purely bad, he added that “you’ve never been part of any type of civil rights movement.”

For Wanda, chaos becomes freedom. Or, as Orlando perfectly encapsulated it: “To be a Scarlet Witch, to practice chaos magic, is to practice freedom magic.”

That means she refuses to do something simply because it’s always been done that way, and Orlando believes that she “would die before she does something simply because it’s the way it’s always been done.” Whether she’s dealing with someone on the street or some undeniable magic deity, she is going to do what she believes is right and accept the consequences.

That’s not just a character beat; that’s Orlando’s very thesis.

DC x AEW: Suplexing The Venn diagram

When we turned to DC x AEW, Orlando talked about wrestling and comics as cousins. The methods differ, but he noted that “the end goal is the same.”

The challenge, for him, is making sure the book works no matter where you’re coming from. If you’ve never watched wrestling and just buy DC books, he wants you to think it’s “a fun love letter to comics.” Meanwhile, if you’re an AEW fan who has never read a comic, it should feel like “a love letter to wrestling.” Ideally, it hits the center of that Venn diagram.

He even pointed to an unlikely example: the promotional one-shot Crisis of Infinite Colonels. The lesson wasn’t the gimmick; it was that even something that sounds ridiculous can still read like “a great comic book one-shot or comic book event” if it’s crafted right, according to Orlando.

And crucially, DC x AEW isn’t just a tournament in a ring. As Orlando noted,“very little in the wrestling ring” happens across the first issue. The fun is in watching bold personalities collide. In his words, the AEW roster has characters who are “extremely bold and extremely indelible.” Basically, you know exactly what happens if Guy Gardner meets Jon Moxley.

Orlando is Everywhere

Orlando rattled off his many projects with the energy of someone who genuinely loves what he’s doing. He described his ongoing X-Men Infinity run on Marvel Unlimited as something meant to be evergreen, welcoming readers who might be discovering the X-Men through media outside comics. From there, he talked about Magical Mysteries of Shazam as “Miyazaki meets C.C. Beck,” and sounded deeply proud of that collaboration.

When he later spoke about Tarzan Beyond, though, that’s when the emotion really surfaced. Kala, to him, is Tarzan’s real parent, nothing that “everything decent about him…that came from Kala.” In the same way Ma and Pa Kent are Superman’s true parents, Kala is the foundation of Tarzan. That through-line matters to Orlando.

And, yes, he even teased a return to Midnighter. It’s happening, for sure, just “not where anyone on the internet has guessed so far.”

As noted, the full conversation will hit the AIPT Comics Podcast on Sunday, March 1st. We also go deeper into the process, collaboration, crossover culture, and how Orlando e calibrates his voice across genres.We also get into working with comedian Bobby Lee on Deadweight and delivering his take on Valiant Beyond: X-O Manowar. Stay tuned!