Marvel Rivals players are in for a little treat to kick-off the new year. NetEase, in a delightful gesture, has gifted us a new Scarlet Witch emote, titled Phoenix Chaos—and the emote is UHD insane. The officially revealed footage was leaked, showing Wanda Maximoff engulfed in an immensely terrifying and chaotic phoenix fire and chaos magic blend. It truly looks as if she is visually casting a spell that incorporates the two most overpowering Marvel energies together.
So, not everybody is as bubbly as I am. The outright anger from the community is borderline toxic. While a number of players are sprawled over the “It’s so cool!” side, an equally larger group is throwing temper tantrums over what they consider hunky dory NetEase favoritism.
Look at this for example: “[player] saying “Sad tho scarlet witch gets some very nice skins but the character is just absolutely atrocious” is, well, a little savage in my opinion. Moving on to this: “Meanwhile 80 % of the roster hasn’t received a skin in months while this gypsy bitch got 2 legendary skins in the span of like 2 months.” That’s the most polite tone I have heard, apart from the language being disrespectful. It is pretty evident to a good portion of the player base that they think some champions are getting a ton of attention while the rest is getting the shaft.
I think I was about to get back to the emote, so I guess this counts. So, from some of the replies explaining lore, now it seems that this actually isn’t random and ties into Marvel comics history. According to recent storylines in Marvel Rivals Season 3, Scarlet Witch’s magic is igniting and enhancing the Phoenix Force, which leads to this new Phoenix Chaos emote, sort of her enhanced chaos magic fighting the Phoenix Force. This is actually related to the lore, but only if you are fine with the obscure Marvel lore. In the comics, Scarlet Witch opposed the Phoenix Force, during Avengers vs. X-Men, and helped disperse it while saying “No more Phoenix.”
Looking at the entire look, some people are comparing it with Fortnite emotes which I guess can be something good for Fortnite. Their emotes are notorious and popular. But a few people are asking, “Isn’t that her emote on Fortnite?”, and while it might look a little like it, it’s definitely its own thing.
The most interesting part is the divided opinions about the scarlet witch teammate in the game. You have players labeled “absolutely atrocious” to play while other players are like “I need it so bad” and “I’m so freaking excited” — it’s this weird gap where people either love or hate her gameplay while everyone seems to like or dislike her cosmetics.
And about cosmetics— the skin debate is real. Certain players have been pointing out that Scarlet Witch is the only one getting looks and claiming the rest of the cast hasn’t gotten anything in months. This initiated a full discourse about developer favoritism and which characters deserve attention. Someone even commented “Netease showing who’s their favorites” with a side eye emoji which pretty much sums up the sentiment.
But then you have the defenders saying “She only got 1 you complaining like she got a couple 😭 be glad it’s legendary and it dropped on release” — so it seems like people are disagreeing about the amount of skins she’s gotten recently.
The Marvel Rivals data shared in the replies also seems to support the continued strong player engagement, as the game is said to be sitting at 70K concurrent Steam players with a recent peak of 101K. Rivaling the concurrent count of popular titles Apex Legends (78K) and Overwatch 2 (50K), Marvel Rivals is at 70K and has recently surpassed 40 million players in general. These numbers are impressive especially since the all-time concurrent player count is 644K back in January 2025 which is under a year old unlike the others.
What struck me the most was the hilariously odd nature of some of the requests – one player asked, “Will she be released with Luna as a bundle?” while another player seemed worried about… Underwear? “she better have underwear on. i use that darkhold emote way too often” which I guess is a very strange concern but still valid if you spam emotes in matches.
There also seems to be a completely separate conversation regarding Jean Grey players being somewhat irritated about Scarlet Witch receiving Phoenix-esque items, while Jean is actually the Phoenix host. “They could have done something like this to Jean instead of that hideous haircut.” was what one player said, which isn’t wrong considering the controversy around her default look.
Emote scandal aside, this reveals again how much Marvel Rivals have paid attention to the game’s updates. The Phoenix Chaos Emote is rather aesthetically stunning, as we can see from the reveal. The remark about integrating the Marvel comics lore into the seasonal story is a very neat touch as far as we can see, which contrast with the community’s observation of sub-par character balance and synergy skin distribution.
While focussing on the controversies, the game is still managing to pull decent numbers, with the regular updates and esports events, that it does suggest a certain level of commitment from NetEase towards Marvel Rivals. As other hero shooters fade out, Marvel Rivals gets the spotlight. Even the fans and the critics of Scarlet Witch’s gameplay have to admit that the emote is fire. Literally.
