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Latest costume:
Costume Debut: April 2025
Honors: X-Ceptional Cosplay Award at Mutant & Proud
From the first moment the Scarlet Witch descended the escalator in X-men Evolution's season 2 episode "The HeX Factor," Irvin was obsessed. The chaotic witch with a hair-trigger temper was one of Irvin's favorite characters, and for many years he dreamed of cosplaying her. After achieving another long-term cosplay goal with Mystique from the same show, Irvin's friends hyped him up to do Wanda for the one-two punch of AwesomeCon and Mutant & Proud in April 2025.
The first challenge was assembly, since Wanda's outfit (like so many early-2000s looks) involves a lot of elements. The iconic scarlet trench coat was found at Shein after much online sleuthing. The myriad jewelry mostly came from online sources as well - the rings, the little ankh earrings (which pinched something awful), and the ankh pendant that Irvin turned into a choker. Armed with the right makeup and nail polish, and they were halfway there!
The wig required more effort - Irvin found one that had both black and red hair, but the back was black where it should've been red, leading Irvin to use a lot of red hairspray on it that bled all over Irvin (and his clothes, and his pillow, and anything else he came in touch with for two days afterwards).
But the most custom-made element of the costume was the bodysuit. It started as a plain red one. Irvin added the tears on the legs, and the black X's on the middle. The scarlet top had to be added to the bodysuit from fabric Irvin had in the color. The whole project nearly did his sewing machine in, but it was finally done the week of the con!
It turned out that the Evolution Scarlet Witch was as iconic to others as she was to Irvin. While not everyone at AwesomeCon recognized the specific rendition (though quite a few pegged it as a version of the Scarlet Witch anyway), there was a handful of people who were no less than thrilled to see the Evolution version of wand, spotting it from half a convention hall away. Irvin's biggest challenge was glowering in all the photos, he's much more inclined to smile when receiving praise for his costumes!
One of the big perks of cosplaying Wanda at AwesomeCon is the plethora of long and dramatic escalators which Wanda could descend down, hexing all those pesky X-Men around her. Irvin got friends and con volunteers alike to stand at the bottom of escalations and photograph/video Wanda's iconic descent, as he tried his best to replicate her epic entrance in "The HeX Factor."
Irvin wore the costume again when he went to Lady J's Mutant & Proud event (celebrating all things X-Men) for the second time. Here, there was no doubt that most people understood exactly the Wanda who was being cosplayed! And while there were enough Scarlet Witches there to do the "Spider-Man pointing" meme several times over, Irvin was honored to be one of the three winners in the costume contest, receiving an award for X-Ceptional Cosplay. Maybe it was the specificity of the cosplay, which admittedly Irvin had never seen anyone do before; or maybe it was the feeling with which he imbued her declaration, "My father with pay for what he did to me!"
Irvin did his best to recreate as many of Wanda's iconic lines from the show as he could. In the video (left), he does his best rendition of her venomous rebuttal to her brother from "The HeX Factor" - "Your father, not mine! He'll pay for what he did to me."
The Magneto present at the event was a fellow winner of the costume contest! Irvin immediately recruited him for photo ops. First and foremost, Irvin got the iconic moment from "Day of Reckoning" where Wanda hexes Magneto right in the midst of a battle against sentinels. Can't you just hear Magneto pleading, "Wanda, release my powers!"
Irvin also made sure to get pictures from the third of Wanda's signature episodes, "The Toad, The Witch, and The Wardrobe." First, he got a Quicksilver trying and failing to run away from Wanda. But then he got photos with the same Magneto, this time restraining Wanda after capturing her, just as he's about to have Mastermind change her memories forever.
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