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 hotsauceman1 wrote:
In her warped mind, she thought she was giving them a perfect life

Every villain is the hero of their own story.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:

Voss wrote:

Yep. Whoever is (theoretically) claiming that in this thread has no bearing on the flat statement you made that Monica is suggesting 'no one can understand what she went through' when the whole thing is a metaphor for grief. Its entirely relatable to everyone. That's... actually the point of having a story about grief. To turn it around and say no one can is _very_ bizarre.

Theoretically claiming it? Have you been reading this thread?

I don't even know how to respond to the rest of your post because I don't disagree with any of it. Yes, grief s relatable. Yes, most of the show is a metaphor for grief. So what? Why does that make it preposterous to suggest no other character in-universe could understand what it's like to end the illusion? It's true, because no one else but Wanda could have ever been in that position, because no one else can do what Wanda can do. It doesn't make her any less relatable. Monica's line is just acknowledging how difficult it must have been to end the fantasy and come back to the real world.

I don't understand why that's so controversial, but here we are.

Because you've never before presented it as 'acknowledging how difficult it must have been.' Just that 'no one could understand.' Those are two _utterly_ different concepts.

Voss wrote:

 creeping-deth87 wrote:

Voss wrote:

Yep. Whoever is (theoretically) claiming that in this thread has no bearing on the flat statement you made that Monica is suggesting 'no one can understand what she went through' when the whole thing is a metaphor for grief. Its entirely relatable to everyone. That's... actually the point of having a story about grief. To turn it around and say no one can is _very_ bizarre.

Theoretically claiming it? Have you been reading this thread?

I don't even know how to respond to the rest of your post because I don't disagree with any of it. Yes, grief s relatable. Yes, most of the show is a metaphor for grief. So what? Why does that make it preposterous to suggest no other character in-universe could understand what it's like to end the illusion? It's true, because no one else but Wanda could have ever been in that position, because no one else can do what Wanda can do. It doesn't make her any less relatable. Monica's line is just acknowledging how difficult it must have been to end the fantasy and come back to the real world.

I don't understand why that's so controversial, but here we are.

Because you've never before presented it as 'acknowledging how difficult it must have been.' Just that 'no one could understand.' Those are two _utterly_ different concepts.

It's literally right in my first post in this tangent.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:
I really think people are taking the 'they'll never know what you sacrificed' out of context. I don't think Monica was trying to say others can't know Wanda's grief, I think that line is an acknowledgement that deliberately ending the fantasy of Westview was something incredibly difficult that a lot of people, maybe even most people, would not have chosen to do if they were in her shoes.

Then I missed it. You've been harping on the other concept since, so that's what I saw and responded to. Since you doubled down on it, I had no reason to feel that wasn't your take.
They aren't interchangeable concepts so I don't know why you switched.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

It doesn’t lessen it as a crime - but it is a mitigating factor in terms of punishment.

Problem is, there isn't any sense of _any_ punishment, nor that anyone with a name actually considers it a crime.
The victims probably disagree, but they're very obviously not given a vote, even after everything is over, they're powerless nobodies, still shuffling along, passively accepting being sorted out by indifferent authorities.

The irony is, she got punished more for trying to save people's lives back in Civil War. Here, she learned way too early that she was victimizing people (episode 5 definitely, if not before) for the level of indifference on display.

Thing there is, with Wanda’s powers....who can provide the punishment, whatever it’s decided to be?

You can’t lock her up. You can’t contain her - not if she doesn’t want to.

If she really wanted get away with it, she can just Agatha you, making you believe whatever she wants.

I just binged rewatched the entire show. I recommend others do it.

In episode 5 when vision confronts her about norm she says 2 things.

1) She doesn't believe vision that that is whats happening.

2) She doesn't believe she is the one doing it.

She makes the argument "You really think I am doing all this? Getting people up, getting to them to their dentist appointments?!" She's LITERALLY in disbelief. She doesn't think she is capable of what she is being accused of.

She doesn't know how it all started. Just when she saw vision again she let herself fall into it so she could grab onto the one thing she wanted. Remember End Game "You took everything from me..."

Then add it to episode 9 "You are making her say this! Stop it." then she panics when her powers start choking people unintentionally. Then she starts crying over the pain she is causing while she starts trying to shut it down and tells them to run.


She ABSOLUTELY does not actually know what is going on until mid fight episode 9. Wanda is not aware that people are unhappy in the world she created.

She also shows signs of knowing but not wanting to accept it such as realizing Monica isn't part of the play, banishing her, and leaving the town to confront the SWORD people.

 Lance845 wrote:
She ABSOLUTELY does not actually know what is going on until mid fight episode 9. Wanda is not aware that people are unhappy in the world she created.

Well I guess that makes everything ok then. Damn shame that the people in the town will never know what she sacrificed for them.

Ahtman wrote:She also shows signs of knowing but not wanting to accept it such as realizing Monica isn't part of the play, banishing her, and leaving the town to confront the SWORD people.

She wasn't banishing Monica because she wasn't part of the play. Wanda says she has what she wants and she is fighting to protect it. They tell her she is holding people hostage. And she tells them "You have the guns." From her perspective she was literally banishing an intruder trying to take the Vision away from her or disrupt her home that she was building. It never crossed her mind, in part because she didn't want to think about it, that she might ACTUALLY be holding people hostage. Again, she was ignorant that she could even do that. When shes talking to the vision about what she is doing to the town shes flabbergasted by the notion that she even COULD be in control of all of them all the time. She doesn't even know where to start on trying to do something like that.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
She ABSOLUTELY does not actually know what is going on until mid fight episode 9. Wanda is not aware that people are unhappy in the world she created.

Well I guess that makes everything ok then. Damn shame that the people in the town will never know what she sacrificed for them.

Lets stop making that jump. The text you quoted me saying didn't say it was okay. It said what it is.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
She ABSOLUTELY does not actually know what is going on until mid fight episode 9. Wanda is not aware that people are unhappy in the world she created.

Well I guess that makes everything ok then. Damn shame that the people in the town will never know what she sacrificed for them.

Hear that, folks? Intent doesn't matter. I guess the Avengers are just as culpable as Loki for everyone that died in the Battle of New York. After all, it doesn't matter that our heroes only wanted to save people. Intent is irrelevant!

 Ahtman wrote:
She also shows signs of knowing but not wanting to accept it such as realizing Monica isn't part of the play, banishing her, and leaving the town to confront the SWORD people.

There's no question that she knows at that point. She clearly 'breaks character', forces Monica out...AND 'edits' the 'tape'. That's not a 'my gosh, what's even going on right now?' set of actions. They're conscious and calculated. They're PRESENTED as such.



If the defense is that she's mentally ill...fine! But kidnapping people and forcing them to act our HER fantasies means she is very dangerously sick and not the hero of the story. And applying even one layer of whitewash to that is just...dumb. If another defense is that this will all pay off in another movie...well, IMO that just underlines that Wandavision is ultimately not satisfying and not a very good MCU entry. Other than with Endgame and IW, a key strength of the MCU is that their works stand well on their own.

They whiffed that ending hard.

Not surprising. Did anyone think that one of Marvel's heroes would actually face punishment? Not to mention they have all of 4 female leads (Wanda, Widow, Captain Marvel, Gamora).

 gorgon wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:
She also shows signs of knowing but not wanting to accept it such as realizing Monica isn't part of the play, banishing her, and leaving the town to confront the SWORD people.

There's no question that she knows at that point. She clearly 'breaks character', forces Monica out...AND 'edits' the 'tape'. That's not a 'my gosh, what's even going on right now?' set of actions. They're conscious and calculated. They're PRESENTED as such.

No. They are presented as such by people sitting on the outside trying to figure out what is happening. The people who say she "edits" the tapes are people who assume that she is MAKING tapes to begin with. They are unreliable narrators. If she doesn't know that she is mind controlling people. If she doesn't know that it's spells. Do you really think she knows that she is broadcasting? Or that she is consciously making edits? Or could that just be another automatic function of the spells she didn't know she was casting?

If the defense is that she's mentally ill...fine! But kidnapping people and forcing them to act our HER fantasies means she is very dangerously sick and not the hero of the story. And applying even one layer of whitewash to that is just...dumb. If another defense is that this will all pay off in another movie...well, IMO that just underlines that Wandavision is ultimately not satisfying and not a very good MCU entry. Other than with Endgame and IW, a key strength of the MCU is that their works stand well on their own.

She isn't the hero in a hero villain dynamic. Shes the protagonist. This story isn't about heroes and villains. It's just a story about her.

I was wondering what this ending reminded me of, and this ties into the exact same problem that Wonder Woman 1984 has, when they basically handwave the fact that she has Steve Trevor meat-puppeting the guy he's possessing and they do stuff without his consent like sleeping together. Notably, both try to frame them losing their loved ones as a "sacrifice" when really the thing they did to bring them back was immoral and abhorrent in the first place.

She isn't the hero in a hero villain dynamic. Shes the protagonist. This story isn't about heroes and villains. It's just a story about her.

I think that's just using semantics as a way to avoid holding her up to a moral standard, and frankly that's pretty disingenous when she's been portrayed as a hero by being an active part of the Avengers for more than 2 movies now, and in a superhero genre no less, so it's not like she's a brand new character in a different setting.

You can tell different kinds of stories with the same characters.

Let put it this way. Is Bucky a hero? What punishment does Bucky deserve for his decades of assassinations? Where are his legal ramifications? Not only did he escape from his prison sentence, he never got put back into it.

I think that's just using semantics as a way to avoid holding her up to a moral standard, and frankly that's pretty disingenous when she's been portrayed as a hero by being an active part of the Avengers for more than 2 movies now, and in a superhero genre no less, so it's not like she's a brand new character in a different setting.

Batman is a "hero," he's been shown as such in many movies and is part of the Justice League.

The reality is that he's a mentally unstable rich boy who routinely breaks the law and cripples his victims.

Which is not to say I don't think Batman is a great superhero, it simply shows how some of the best "heroes" are the ones that aren't all black and white and show a little ambiguity.

 Lance845 wrote:
You can tell different kinds of stories with the same characters.

Let put it this way. Is Bucky a hero? What punishment does Bucky deserve for his decades of assassinations? Where are his legal ramifications? Not only did he escape from his prison sentence, he never got put back into it.

I don't see how Wanda equates to Bucky at all. Bucky was never a hero, he's a soldier that was more or less repurposed to become an unwilling agent of Hydra. In contrast, Wanda chose to work for Hydra of her own free will early on while Bucky was actually brainwashed into a killing machine, there was no agency on his end. Even after Bucky broke free of his brainwashing, he chose to go into self-imposed exile to search for his past, he didn't immediately join Captain America or his Avengers for protection. It's not like he went on a murder spree of all the people who were involved in brainwashing him. All he managed to do after being set up in Civil War was get deprogrammed in Wakanda and then he got dusted shortly after the Battle of Wakanda. He's basically just a guy trying to figure out what his life is after losing a huge chunk of his life for decades.

Wanda on the other hand chose to join the Avengers and publicly play the hero role with them, so she should honestly know a lot better considering she was with them long enough to fall in love with Vision.

there was no agency on his end

You're prepared to make that argument in defence of Bucky, yet aren't accepting that it's distinctly possible the same applies to Wanda?

 Azreal13 wrote:

I think that's just using semantics as a way to avoid holding her up to a moral standard, and frankly that's pretty disingenous when she's been portrayed as a hero by being an active part of the Avengers for more than 2 movies now, and in a superhero genre no less, so it's not like she's a brand new character in a different setting.

Batman is a "hero," he's been shown as such in many movies and is part of the Justice League.

The reality is that he's a mentally unstable rich boy who routinely breaks the law and cripples his victims.

Which is not to say I don't think Batman is a great superhero, it simply shows how some of the best "heroes" are the ones that aren't all black and white and show a little ambiguity.

Right, and I don't think anyone thinks Batman is a paragon of virtue (if anything it should be Superman as the "boy scout" if we're not talking about the dark versions that people love pushing like in Injustice and Synder's approach) but at the very least he's doing more than just beating the absolute tar out of criminals, he's also using his public persona of Bruce Wayne to fund charitable foundations and other things to help attempt combat some of the causes of crime in Gotham, but for narrative reasons they're never as effective as him dressing up as the Bat. Keep in mind that despite Batman being a control freak in many ways, he doesn't implant mind control chips to stop villains or criminals, nor does he direct his childhood trauma of losing his parents by targeting people that don't actually deserve retribution in some way, Bats always goes after actual bad guys. Wanda on the other hand forces a town that has nothing to do with her to do her bidding because her lover died...I mean I'm pretty sure if Tony lost Pepper in Iron Man 3 and he started instituting a mass nanotech mind control machine so that nobody would inflict harm on each other again that you would see that as a very villainous thing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Azreal13 wrote:

there was no agency on his end

You're prepared to make that argument in defence of Bucky, yet aren't accepting that it's distinctly possible the same applies to Wanda?

Because for Wanda there are ample examples of her awareness of the reality she's made and that she's complicit in it even if she doesn't want to acknowledge it. For Bucky he's pretty much not present when he's sent on a mission other than carrying out the task he's sent out for, the only time he starts showing signs of breaking his programming is when he recognizes Rogers.

Sorry dude, your arguments just seem hopelessly inconsistent. It's ok for X to do bad things because they do Y, but A is a total villain because of B.

You're happy to excuse one bad thing for completely arbitrary reason and condemn another for reasons just as arbitrary.

Okay. So to compare and contrast.

Bucky: Not a hero because he didn't join the Avengers
Wanda: Is a hero because she joined the Avengers

Bucky: Not at fault for his actions because he had no agency because he was brain washed.
Wanda: IS at fault because even though she had no agency and was unaware of her powers acting without her guidance she was not brainwashed?

Bucky: Just trying to figure out who he is and get his life back together.
Wanda: Just trying to figure out her life after she came back from dust with nothing and nobody.

It looks like the only real difference between the 2 is that Wanda decided to get a job.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Sorry dude, your arguments just seem hopelessly inconsistent. It's ok for X to do bad things because they do Y, but A is a total villain because of B.

You're happy to excuse one bad thing for completely arbitrary reason and condemn another for reasons just as arbitrary.

I don't see the confusion personally, for me it's a matter of scale and what their actions are. Batman beats up villains and criminals because they commit crimes and evil deeds. So does Captain America. As heroes they are mostly reactive. What neither of them do, however, is use personal trauma as an excuse to impose their will over others by using mind control or other ways of taking people's agency. Wanda proactively creates the Westview Hex, she wasn't tricked into it, she wasn't told to do it. She just made it. The worst part is that she does it to people who aren't involved with her in any way.

 Grimskul wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Sorry dude, your arguments just seem hopelessly inconsistent. It's ok for X to do bad things because they do Y, but A is a total villain because of B.

You're happy to excuse one bad thing for completely arbitrary reason and condemn another for reasons just as arbitrary.

I don't see the confusion personally, for me it's a matter of scale and what their actions are. Batman beats up villains and criminals because they commit crimes and evil deeds. So does Captain America. As heroes they are mostly reactive. What neither of them do, however, is use personal trauma as an excuse to impose their will over others by using mind control or other ways of taking people's agency. Wanda proactively creates the Westview Hex, she wasn't tricked into it, she wasn't told to do it. She just made it. The worst part is that she does it to people who aren't involved with her in any way.

The part where you are wrong by omission is that she doesn't CHOOSE to do it. It's not her imposing her will on them. It's her subconscious doing things for her outside of her will. She IS ultimately responsible. And in episode 9 when she is actually confronted with it she tries to tear it open and tells them all to run to freedom.

It's not that she is free from guilt. But saying she was an active proponent in inflicting this on these people is a incredible mischaracterization of the situation. It's kind of like Haywood saying she was radicalized by Hydra and teamed up with Ultron.

There is a bit more nuance to the situation then that. And the few simple facts you focus on are painting it in a light that is not accurate to the reality of it.

 Lance845 wrote:
Okay. So to compare and contrast.

Bucky: Not a hero because he didn't join the Avengers
Wanda: Is a hero because she joined the Avengers

Bucky: Not at fault for his actions because he had no agency because he was brain washed.
Wanda: IS at fault because even though she had no agency and was unaware of her powers acting without her guidance she was not brainwashed?

Bucky: Just trying to figure out who he is and get his life back together.
Wanda: Just trying to figure out her life after she came back from dust with nothing and nobody.

It looks like the only real difference between the 2 is that Wanda decided to get a job.

It's not the fact that Bucky didn't join the Avengers that he's not a hero, it's because he chose to go into hiding and not get involved in righting his wrongs (not that he had much chance to begin with) or at least work through the consequences of his actions as a brainwashed soldier. Not to mention he hasn't really done anything self-sacrificial beyond helping Rogers go after Zemo to stop him waking the other Winter Soldiers, which is only prompted partly because Zemo framed him in the first place. Him fighting against Thanos' forces in Wakanda is pretty much him doing it for Rogers/the Wakandans that helped deprogram him. Nothing he has done so far would put him in the hero books IMO.

Wanda on the other hand turned her back and tried to stop Ultron from genociding humanity after finding out his plans. Then afterwards continued to actively help Avengers in fighting surviving Hydra agents. There was no reason for her to stay with the Avengers after Ultron was gone if she just wanted to stay alive out of self-preservation, but she chose to join them and their cause anyways.

Also, I'm still confused as to how people keep saying Wanda doesn't have agency when she proactively rewinds time and changes setting in Westview in early episodes. Even if she doesn't know the exact details, the way she kicks out Monica shows that she knows she's living a fantasy life.

 Grimskul wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
Okay. So to compare and contrast.

Bucky: Not a hero because he didn't join the Avengers
Wanda: Is a hero because she joined the Avengers

Bucky: Not at fault for his actions because he had no agency because he was brain washed.
Wanda: IS at fault because even though she had no agency and was unaware of her powers acting without her guidance she was not brainwashed?

Bucky: Just trying to figure out who he is and get his life back together.
Wanda: Just trying to figure out her life after she came back from dust with nothing and nobody.

It looks like the only real difference between the 2 is that Wanda decided to get a job.

It's not the fact that Bucky didn't join the Avengers that he's not a hero, it's because he chose to go into hiding and not get involved in righting his wrongs (not that he had much chance to begin with) or at least work through the consequences of his actions as a brainwashed soldier. Not to mention he hasn't really done anything self-sacrificial beyond helping Rogers go after Zemo to stop him waking the other Winter Soldiers, which is only prompted partly because Zemo framed him in the first place. Him fighting against Thanos' forces in Wakanda is pretty much him doing it for Rogers/the Wakandans that helped deprogram him. Nothing he has done so far would put him in the hero books IMO.

Wanda on the other hand turned her back and tried to stop Ultron from genociding humanity after finding out his plans. Then afterwards continued to actively help Avengers in fighting surviving Hydra agents. There was no reason for her to stay with the Avengers after Ultron was gone if she just wanted to stay alive out of self-preservation, but she chose to join them and their cause anyways.

First, She didn't help them hunt down Hydra. She was getting training for the job she had with the only people in the world she knew. Her reason for staying with the Avengers was it was the option presented to her. Her family was dead. Her home didn't exist. She just spent who knows how long being an experimental weapon. She couldn't go to the Avengers and be like... "Well that was some gak huh? Guess Il go get a job at my local Best Buy and start renting this apartment."

She didn't have a lot of options. And the Avenger path before her put her with people who wanted to do the right thing and offered her some training in what she could do to right some wrongs.

Also, I'm still confused as to how people keep saying Wanda doesn't have agency when she proactively rewinds time and changes setting in Westview in early episodes. Even if she doesn't know the exact details, the way she kicks out Monica shows that she knows she's living a fantasy life.

IS she proactively rewinding time? Or is the spell doing that reactively based on how she feels? By episode 7 when the house is all changing all over the place and shes sitting in the chair saying.."I... I don't understand why it's all coming apart..." you think she is actively guiding any part of the spell that is the Hex? You thinking she is proactive I think is a fallacy. Yes. She DOES proactively remove Monica. But she also does it by shielding and protecting her and removing her. At no point, even after being attacked by the drone, does she actively try to cause any real harm to anyone until she knocks over "Fietro" and then the final fight.

It's not a matter of if it's a fantasy life or not for her. For her she found a way to bring back Vision and she is clinging to the Vision being there. The rest of it isn't something she is actively a part of. She is trying to not rock the boat or risk loosing him again.

Again, this doesn't absolve her of what happened. But it definitely doesn't make her an active participant in it either.

 Azreal13 wrote:

there was no agency on his end

You're prepared to make that argument in defence of Bucky, yet aren't accepting that it's distinctly possible the same applies to Wanda?

Its obvious that it isn't. Bucky is either on ice or buried under a web of commands. At no point was he wandering around making decisions.

Wanda makes decisions in real time to 'correct' how her victims are behaving. It may have been unconscious initially (but even that's in doubt since we get to see her 'create' Vision out of nothing in Agatha's trip through her memories), but by half-way through the series she's clearly making informed decisions, and lashing out at anyone questioning her narrative, even those closest to her.

Even at the end, she may feel somewhat guilty for her actions, but she's still indifferent to her victims. She could have easily not made a show of just walking through the to have a conversation, but that apparently wasn't even worth the effort. She gets in one last fear reaction from them, and really blatantly shows off that she's going to walk out of there consequence free.

At least one conversation between the various agency people about what they should do with her would have been nice, even if it ended with Monica arguing to let her go. The idea that someone actually gave a crap about the consequences of Wanda's action would've made it feel less bad.


----

the way she kicks out Monica shows that she knows she's living a fantasy life.

Not even that. She actually walks out of the Hex and tells the agencies off. Completely brushes off the idea of hostages with a weak 'but you has guns' line, and then utterly demonstrates how useless those guns are by turning them all on Hayward. At that point she's clearly perfectly aware of her boundaries and that what's inside is completely different from what's outside. And everything inside is hers. Including the 3000+ people.

Lets recap a step by step of her walking out of the hex.


She is inside her house with her family.

They go outside because of noise.

There is a drone approaching her house, kids, and husband.

Monica speaks to her. Wandas eyes start to glow red (this happens whenever she is even using her telepathy to read minds).

Then Haywood nods to a guy who nods to a guy and Monica looses control of the drone. She asks for a reconnect patch.

Haywood says "Denied. Shoot the missile"

THEN Wanda walks out of the Hex and tells them off. She doesn't shoot or attack anyone. She tells them to leave her alone. She threatens sure. But hey, from HER point of view they just drove a drone up to her door, told her she/they want to help and then shot a missile at her entire family. It's amazing she didn't do more.

Bucky is a Hero. How can you argue that the man known as Captain America's sidekick is not a hero? He is a decorated War Hero.

Also, knowing the hex is there and the boundaries have nothing to do with knowing what is going on inside. She clearly did not know every minute detail of what was happening inside. I don't think she would have had people frozen and unable to move if she did know what was going on. She is not a soulless monster, as shown by her willingness to shut it all down when confronted with the truth, as opposed to doubling down on it and keeping it up.

THEN Wanda walks out of the Hex and tells them off. She doesn't shoot or attack anyone. She tells them to leave her alone. She threatens sure. But hey, from HER point of view they just drove a drone up to her door, told her she/they want to help and then shot a missile at her entire family. It's amazing she didn't do more.

Yep. She was super self-restrained against the people outside, and just warns them off. So what? She's still mind-controlling 3000+ people _inside_, and has no intention of letting them go. She just wants the intrusions to stop and everything to stay as it is.

But the moment she walks out and has a rational (if tense) conversation, its very clear that she's in complete control of her own mind and is making decisions. Earlier might be ambiguous (I personally have doubts, even in the first episode with the stop it/choking scene, she seemed like she was making a conscious decision about whether or not to let the boss live), but once she walks out (everyone else struggles with the boundary in one way or the other) and has a conversation about it, from at least that point on she's entirely guilty of what she's choosing to do.

Dreadwinter wrote:She is not a soulless monster, as shown by her willingness to shut it all down when confronted with the truth, as opposed to doubling down on it and keeping it up.

Uh... her _actual_ reaction when confronted with the truth is to leash them all and choke them out. _Then_ she reconsiders and gives the ones around her a chance to run- but she fully intends to keep the hex up- she raises the 'gates' to allow exits, but she makes no move to get rid of it.

Voss wrote:

THEN Wanda walks out of the Hex and tells them off. She doesn't shoot or attack anyone. She tells them to leave her alone. She threatens sure. But hey, from HER point of view they just drove a drone up to her door, told her she/they want to help and then shot a missile at her entire family. It's amazing she didn't do more.

Yep. She was super self-restrained against the people outside, and just warns them off. So what? She's still mind-controlling 3000+ people _inside_, and has no intention of letting them go. She just wants the intrusions to stop and everything to stay as it is.

Dreadwinter wrote:She is not a soulless monster, as shown by her willingness to shut it all down when confronted with the truth, as opposed to doubling down on it and keeping it up.

Uh... her _actual_ reaction when confronted with the truth is to leash them all and choke them out. _Then_ she reconsiders and gives the ones around her a chance to run- but she fully intends to keep the hex up- she raises the 'gates' to allow exits, but she makes no move to get rid of it.

Again, you take her powers acting on their own agency as her agency.

SHE isn't actively mind controlling anyone and thus has no intentions about them one way or the other. Her actual reaction to them is to quickly shut down the choking. Tell them she will let them all go. Uses her powers to start to do it while crying about how much pain she caused, and telling them all to run.

She wasn't raising the gates. She was disassembling it. She only stops with the immediate confrontation that in doing it she is killing her kids and husband.