In land surface and hydrological models, wetland evapotranspiration (ET) is commonly prescribed as potential evapotranspiration. Despite its widespread use, this assumption has been frequently challenged by site-level observations but has rarely been evaluated using large-scale observational evidence. This study synthesizes wetland evapotranspiration using FLUXNET and AmeriFlux datasets to assess the validity of treating wetland ET as potential. Results indicate that this assumption systematically overestimates wetland evapotranspiration by up to 40% across the evaluated wetland sites. Moving beyond the potential evapotranspiration assumption typically requires detailed land surface variables, including ground heat flux and surface resistance. However, these variables are often unavailable or highly uncertain in wetlands due to pronounced land surface heterogeneity and limited measurements. To address these limitations, this study evaluates the recently developed MaxEnt-ETRHEQ-WET method for boreal wetland evapotranspiration estimation. The method estimates sensible heat (H) and latent heat fluxes (LE) without requiring land surface variables or site-specific calibration, except for an assumed vegetation height. Evaluation across FLUXNET-CH4 boreal wetland sites demonstrates that MaxEnt-ETRHEQ-WET effectively reproduces observed LE from half-hourly to monthly timescales. Although the method is still at a preliminary development stage, it shows strong potential for wetland evapotranspiration estimation and provides a promising pathway for improving wetland representation in land surface and hydrological modelling.