A little cinematic treasure hunt through Elizabeth Olsen’s odd, brilliant, and occasionally questionable movie choices. No dramatic sales pitch – just a relaxed stroll through the titles where she really leaves a mark.
Elizabeth Olsen’s filmography is one of those things you think you’ve got figured out… until you actually lay out all the titles and realize, “Oh, right, she’s done everything.” From scrappy indie dramas to the loudest corners of the MCU, she’s slipped into roles with the kind of ease that makes you wonder if she keeps a spare personality in her bag.
This list isn’t about pretending there’s one “correct” ranking, it's more like an enthusiastic stroll through fifteen films where she’s genuinely magnetic. Some entries made the cut because they’re beautifully crafted; others just leave a strange, satisfying aftertaste you think about hours later. In any case, it’s a fun excuse to dive back into the worlds she’s lit up on screen.
15. Kill Your Darlings (2013)
Set in 1944 New York, this film tracks young Allen Ginsberg arriving at Columbia University and being pulled into a tight-knit, heady circle of aspiring poets (Lucien Carr, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs) drawn together by literature, ideology, and youthful rebellion. Olsen plays Edie Parker, quietly observing the mess of feelings, ambitions, and dangerous camaraderie that surround her. As the group spirals, betrayal and tragedy erupt, culminating in a murder that shatters more than just friendships. The movie isn’t tidy but pulses with longing, confusion, and the kind of moral urgency only youth can muster. Edie’s role is small but grounding: she’s a calm in the storm, the observer who still feels every hit.
14. Liberal Arts (2012)
Jesse, a 35-year-old college admissions officer bored with his city life, escapes to his old liberal arts campus, hoping to reconnect with the past. There he meets Zibby, a 19-year-old student (Olsen) whose curiosity and youthful brightness force him to question maturity, nostalgia, and what growing up really means. The film meanders gently, filled with autumn leaves, old dorms, literature debates and the awkwardness of an unlikely connection. Zibby isn’t perfect: she’s idealistic, sometimes irritating, but honest in a way that makes you forgive the narrative’s occasional soft edges. The romance is tentative, the conversations real, and the whole thing feels like an indie daydream about second chances and the pull of memory against the push of reality.
13. In Secret (2013)
In moody, rain-drenched Paris of the 1860s, this adaptation of Thérèse Raquin traps the characters in a world of shadowy houses, suffocating marriages, and passions that should remain hidden. Olsen’s Thérèse Raquin is caught between duty and desire: married to a sickly cousin, trapped under her aunt’s oppressive watch, until she’s drawn into a dangerous affair that promises escape... and delivers horror. The film doesn’t pull punches: jealousy, moral decay, and claustrophobia mount as betrayal and guilt take over. It’s raw, sometimes uneven, but there’s a desperation that lingers – a sense of suffocation from societal pressure, broken vows, and regret. Thérèse becomes human in all her flawed longing, and even when the story crashes into tragedy, her pain feels hauntingly real.
12. Kodachrome (2017)
This one hits differently: it’s a road-trip draped in nostalgia and regret rather than bright colors. The plot centers on an aging, terminally ill photographer, scrambling for one last roll of Kodachrome film to preserve memories before they fade. Olsen plays his driver/assistant, a character who starts distant but slowly becomes a companion through grief, reclamation, and unexpected connection. The journey doesn’t promise redemption, but offers silence, reflection, and a gentle reckoning with loss. The film moves slowly, letting conversations linger and characters breathe. It doesn’t sugarcoat anything but neither does it pretend sorrow isn’t part of life. Olsen's presence gives it a quiet empathy.
11. Godzilla (2014)
In a world collapsing under monster-sized threat, humans scramble for survival. Olsen plays a supporting role caught in that chaos, not the hero, but someone whose fear and grief remind us what’s at stake when cities burn and monsters stomp. The film isn’t subtle: it cycles through explosions, panic, and large-scale destruction with the gusto of a summer blockbuster. Yet amid the chaos, the human stories about loss, desperation, and survival try to creep through. Her character stands in for the civilians, the innocents, the people who wake up one day and find their world unrecognizable. It doesn’t always land emotionally, but when it does, it hits harder than the monsters do.
10. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)
Reality fractures from the start when the multiverse opens its doors, and the chaos doesn’t just stay cosmic. Olsen’s Wanda (Scarlet Witch) comes in like a storm: powerful, tormented, capable of love and destruction all at once. The movie whips through corrupted versions of worlds, magical horror, and moral panic, while Strange and a multiverse-hopping teen try to stop the madness. Wanda’s grief and rage fuel the terror, and Olsen captures that collapse with eerie clarity. Monsters, illusions, shifting realities – the film leans hard into weirdness. It doesn’t always make sense, but when it works, it hits like a jolting dream.
9. Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
A familiar team faces a fresh threat: an AI gone rogue with a god complex, and suddenly their biggest enemy is a mirror image of their own fears. Olsen’s Wanda (and Pietro, though Pietro is a separate arc) enters the mix under the thumb of trauma, loss, and raw power that’s half sympathy, half destruction. The film spirals through monster battles, betrayal, and ideological panic, and while it promises big stakes, it often gets tangled in its own ambition. Still, Wanda’s arc – grief-stricken, confused, dangerous – adds emotional weight not just to the CGI fights, but to what it means to lose control. The action sometimes overloads, the plot sometimes stumbles, but the question it raises about power and pain sticks.
8. Captain America: Civil War (2016)
What starts as political tension quickly becomes a total fracture among heroes: Trust cracks, loyalties shift, and the shadow of consequence looms large. Olsen’s character brings subtle power to that rupture: humanity under pressure, someone whose past makes every decision heavy. The interpersonal conflicts, the ideology wars, the suit-ups, it’s all blockbuster spectacle with a beating heart. As alliances splinter and friends become rivals, the film asks whether being a hero means being right, or being reckless. Through it all, Olsen’s quiet strength and conflicted eyes anchor the chaos in something that feels real, painful. It isn’t a clean breakdown, but it shows just how messy morality gets under pressure.
7. Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Half the universe trembles when a villain collects powers one by one, but the emotional core comes from people who just want to protect what’s left. Olsen’s Wanda carries intense grief from previous losses, but here she fights not just monsters, but memory, guilt, and the hope of maybe saving what was lost. The film races through battlefields, betrayals, and snap decisions, always teetering on the edge of catastrophe. It’s overwhelming, loud, larger than life. Still, through all that cosmic chaos, moments of sorrow, loss and sacrifice keep hitting you in the gut. Wanda becomes one of those tragic heroes, torn between cosmic scale threats and personal heartbreak, and that makes the finale as devastating as it is inevitable.
6. Avengers: Endgame (2019)
The world is broken, people are gone, and the weight of what was lost refuses to be shrugged off – that’s the grim canvas this movie opens on. Olsen’s character moves through grief, desperation and a desperate hope, trying to hold onto something real amid cosmic resets and time-heist logic. The film tries to juggle every storyline, every hero and every regret but often bends under the load. But there are glimmers: the reunions, the sacrifices, the moments when grief becomes strength. Both Wanda’s pain and love become emblematic of all the stakes. The finale hits harder because of that human core, because even superheroes can break. This isn’t just high-score spectacle, it’s heartbreak made epic.
5. Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)
The film opens with a woman stumbling out of the woods, dazed and terrified, and that disorientation sets the tone for the rest of the story. Elizabeth Olsen plays Martha, a young woman escaping a cult, haunted by memories too painful to face, and desperate for a fresh start with her sister. What unfolds isn’t a clean escape or a neat redemption, but a slow, uneasy unraveling. With trailer-park serenity, suspicious glances and creeping paranoia, the movie slowly peels away innocence until you’re left raw. Olsen doesn’t glamorize her trauma; she carries it quietly, sideways, with unsteady eyes. It’s unsettling, beautiful, painful, simply a performance that lingers long after the credits.
4. Wind River (2017)
Set against the frozen isolation of a Wyoming reservation, this film marries sharp mystery, brutal landscapes and human grief in one biting package. Olsen plays the sister of a murdered woman, a woman shaken, devastated, and filled with a cold fear that pulses under every scene. The movie doesn’t soften the harshness: the frozen wind, the snow, the way danger seems to creep behind each breath. As the investigation inches forward, so does the tension between law, community, love and loss. Olsen’s role becomes the emotional core, vulnerability and anger tangled together. It’s bleak and beautiful, a movie that doesn’t offer closure so much as truth.
3. The Assessment (2024)
It’s a future where having kids means passing a seven-day evaluation and under that shadow, trust, morality, and desperation collide. Olsen stars as Mia, part of a couple desperate to have a child in a world where parenthood is strictly regulated. When an assessor moves in, the mood shifts: tests get personal, boundaries break, and what feels like a welcome journey becomes a psychological trap. The film builds tension not with monsters or explosions, but with invasive questions, moral pressure, and the growing dread that someone always loses a little humanity in the name of “suitability.” Olsen navigates the ambiguity with poise and unease, showing perfectly how hope can become something quietly dangerous.
2. Eternity (2025)
Death in this film isn’t an end, it’s a crossroads. Olsen stars as Joan, a woman forced to choose where she’ll spend forever after life unexpectedly ends for her husband. The afterlife isn’t peaceful or straightforward: it’s a limbo filled with choices, regrets, and the haunting pull of memory. The movie unfolds less like a fantasy and more like a reckoning – love, loss, second chances, and the weight of eternity all tangled in soft lighting and quiet heartbreak. It’s playful at times, heartbreaking at others, and Olsen brings just the right amount of vulnerability and quiet strength to make the emotional core land. If the film asks you to choose with your heart, she’ll make sure you feel every option.
1. His Three Daughters (2023)
Family dramas rarely arrive with all honesty intact, and this one doesn’t even bother trying. Olsen plays one of three siblings dragged into a storm of secrets, denied truths, and generational pain. The film watches relationships fracture under betrayal and grief, showing how love between family members doesn’t always stop the damage. There are no neat closures here: arguments land harsh, silence hangs heavy, and every memory carries weight. Through it all, Olsen gives a performance rooted in realism: sadness, anger, longing, hope, sometimes all at once. The movie doesn’t guide you gently; it pushes you into the wreckage and asks you to wade through it.