Wanda’s breakdown is meant to be the worst moment of her life, an expression of the immense grief she’s experiencing in that moment.
![house of m house of m](https://d1466nnw0ex81e.cloudfront.net/n_iv/600/2888897.jpg)
It’s satisfying to see the X-Men beat up bigots, not the downtrodden. It pits a real-life minority as the oppressor of a pretend one - mutants don’t exist in the real world, but the mentally ill do. The mutant metaphor doesn’t work when characters who represent real oppressed minorities (like mentally ill, Jewish, and Romani women) become villains for them. This real-world application is what makes villains like William Stryker so interesting, using these stories to become a reflection of our world where right-wing religious extremist groups often target certain minority groups. In the grand scheme of X-Men stories, what makes mutants so relatable to so many marginalized readers is that they reflect a piece of them –the parts of ourselves that few other people can truly understand outside of specific communities. To blame her mental illness specifically on top of that? It’s an even worse look. To then have a Jewish-Romani woman who is the descendant of Holocaust survivors responsible for this fictional universe’s equivalent of superhero genocide? It’s a bad look. Wanda Maximoff’s parentage has changed a bit over the years, but in 2005 it was quite solid: her father was Magneto and her mother was Magda Eisenhardt, two Holocaust survivors. The mutant species is almost extinct for the 10 years of comics that follow, all because of this one event.
![house of m house of m](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/af/d2/04/afd204763856b12044f28929bd4111d3.jpg)
While eliminating the X-gene didn’t really kill anyone (save for a select few mutants who needed their mutation to stay alive on principle), in this fictional universe, such an act is likened to genocide. In the grand scheme of things, Wanda Maximoff is a really problematic villain figure for this story. After all, Wanda’s breakdown ultimately results in the decimation of mutantkind for years to come, so the heroes’ worries of keeping her alive are then justified by the story’s writing itself.
![house of m house of m](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ea/9b/d6/ea9bd64626ed3601ad42478adfd5bb48.jpg)
House of M takes that very real experience then says yes, her mental illness is a burden. It’s easy to feel like a burden on your family and peers who just don’t seem to understand you. For many of us who have struggled with mental illness, this moment is quite harrowing.