It only took six years and most of a season of television to finally give Wanda Maximoff the origin she deserved. Let’s talk about it.
Summary
We’re at the Salem Witch Trials, though not the way history told them. Instead, we see Agatha Harkness brought before her coven of witches (led by her mother), and accused of using dark magic. She insists that she isn’t, but her mother knows better, and the coven begins an execution ritual. Agatha reverses the spell and absorbs the life-force of everyone in the coven, including her mother. Then she takes her mother’s cameo brooch and goes on her merry way.
Back in Westview, we learn that Agatha came to the town because she wanted to know who was doing all that magic. She insists that Wanda take her on a trip through her memories to explain what’s happening here, using her kids as the bargaining chip. The first set of memories shows Wanda and Pietro in their Sokovia home with their parents. Turns out that Wanda’s dad would get American sitcoms for them to watch so they could practice their English. Wanda is particularly fond of The Dick Van Dyke Show, which is playing on their television when the bomb hits their house and kills mom and dad. But contrary to the story we’ve been told, Agatha sees that Wanda already had the abilities of a witch, and never realized that she had used a spell to prevent the next bomb from going off in their home.
The next memory shows Wanda in the Hydra base as a volunteer, being exposed to Loki’s old scepter for the first time. The other participants all died of their exposure to the staff’s Infinity Stone, but Wanda’s presence lifts the stone from the scepter and she sees a shade of herself and her true power before collapsing. Agatha realizes that the stone triggered the powers that might have stayed dormant in Wanda. At the Hydra base, Wanda watches The Brady Bunch in her cell.
They then move to the Avengers compound, the first place where Wanda and Vision lived together. Wanda is watching Malcolm in the Middle to distract herself from the pain she’s feeling over Pietro’s death, and Vision comes in to keep her company. He tries to engage her about sorrow, thinking it might help her feel better, but Wanda insists that the only thing that would help her would be to see Pietro again. She talks of how her grief is subsuming, like endless waves, but Vision has a different view; he suggests that grief is also a sign that love continues on. This helps Wanda, and they continue watching Malcolm in the Middle together.
The final piece shows Wanda arriving at SWORD headquarters to collect Vision’s body, but it’s not the video we were shown before. Instead, we see Wanda ask for access at the front desk, explaining that she wants to give Vision a funeral. She is allowed back to Hayward’s office, where he reveals to Wanda the pieces of Vision’s body, and explains that he’s not capable of handing over the body of the world’s most dangerous sentient weapon to her. He also says that he can’t let her bury three billion dollars worth of vibranium, housed in Vision’s body. Wanda breaks into the room where they’re keeping him, but Hayward tells his officers to stand down. When Wanda checks in on Vision, she cannot feel his mind—so she leaves SWORD and drives to Westview, New Jersey, looking around the town. She arrives at her final destination; a parcel of land that Vision purchased for them, the deed scribbled with a note that reads “To grow old in.” Wanda’s pain emanates out from her in an explosion of power that overtakes the entire town, transforming everything around her. She creates a new Vision to occupy it with her.
Agatha finally has the full picture. She holds Billy and Tommy before her, and notes that what Wanda is doing is powerful Chaos Magic… making her the Scarlet Witch.
Buy the Book
Fugitive Telemetry
A mid-credits sequence shows Hayward using energy obtained from the Hex to bring Vision’s reconstructed body back to life.
Commentary
This was exactly what I was hoping for with Agatha’s involvement. She’s not responsible for what’s happening; she just wants to know why and how and who is doing all this delicious magic and can she maybe have it. She demands the tour; she wants to see where all this comes from. And it’s important because the question at the heart of this show was always: Is it possible for grief to do all of this?
For weeks, rumors have been circling on “what’s really behind the Hex” with everyone from Agatha to Mephisto implicated, and I get why there’s a subset of fans who want that as the answer. Because then it’s all about knowing the comics and knowing the arcs Marvel has done before, and watching it all get reskinned for television. But this is a far more powerful choice, one that the MCU occasionally neglects to its detriment—the cause of this is suffering grief from continual loss. Not a tricky person, or a demon, or a subdimensional alien, but one of the most powerful emotions a human being can experience.
Of course it’s possible for grief to do all of this. Of course it is. Anyone who has ever experienced the emotion knows this.
And this still doesn’t really make up for how the films ignored Wanda, or the way that grief was bound up in flippant jokes up until now. Thanos’s insistence that he doesn’t remember Wanda at all is one of the worst moments of Endgame, a place where she should have been allowed the space to come into her own, waylaid by the MCU’s commitment to telling the stories of men and only (white) men for its first decade. We’re not allowed to see Wanda end this fight on her own terms because Endgame was devoted primarily to seeing off Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, and nothing else mattered. But here, on television, after years of waiting, Wanda is finally permitted the full breadth of her pain.
The seeding of sitcoms throughout Wanda’s life is deftly done here as well, first as a happy activity that becomes forever linked to trauma (watching the Dick Van Dyke DVD skip on their TV after their home has been bombed), then as a coping device when further trauma occurs. It’s also great because Wanda is a character who has been given so little development that we’ve been waiting for these gaps in personality to fill in. It was impossible to tell if the sitcom conceit was her own when the show started, because we genuinely never knew enough about her to guess if this was something she cared about or even had knowledge of. (Which is not a positive thing, by the way—develop your female characters more consistently, Marvel Studios.) Now we know that these shows are a significant part of Wanda’s life, something about the character that will carry forward as Phase Four continues. Wanda the sitcom nerd.
Hayward’s stand-in status as privileged-man-who-has-no-business-being-in-charge just keeps layering its awfulness. After insisting earlier that Wanda had broken into SWORD violently, we now know that he lied about this encounter in its entirety—yet again projecting emotional instability onto women in order to discredit them. Wanda walks into their HQ with a totally reasonable request, the desire to bury someone she’s lost. Hayward not only belittles her grief (insisting that Vision doesn’t belong to her, but to them), but lies to her about what they’re doing with his body, and even goes so far as to insist that it’s a monetary issue with the billions of dollars of vibranium housed in Vision. Wanda leaves of her own accord, a little fact that he fails to mention to his team.
The sequence also highlights one of the other aspects of Endgame that was deeply unsatisfying—the lack of closure for most of the characters lost, as the film lingered on Tony’s funeral alone.
And now we know that the Hex had a specific trigger, being Wanda heading to a plot of land that Vision intended as their home together. Aside from the many questions this prompts (Where did Vision get enough money for this—is the Avengers pension packet that good? It says guarantor on the deed, did Tony do this for Vision, or maybe Pepper? Why this town in Jersey??) it’s a sensible place to begin. All of Wanda’s empty spaces cascading in upon her, the absence of anyone she loves compounded by the loss of any friends and mentors she had (Steve left, Natasha is dead), and this is what you get. An explosion of magic and sorrow and need that coalesces into the only places where Wanda ever felt safe… the sitcoms that she used to keep her sadness at bay.
But it means that this iteration of Vision is not real, at least, not in the sense of being the Vision she knew. And it probably means that Billy and Tommy aren’t real either. (Although, as I mentioned before, that doesn’t stop them from becoming real in the comics eventually, so it won’t necessarily here either.) Agatha talks about Wanda almost as though her arrival is a prophesied thing, something that she’s heard of and maybe anticipated: the coming of the Scarlet Witch. But we’re not sure what Agatha’s angle is going to be here going forward. Will Agatha try to steal that power for herself? Will she try to get rid of it? Will everyone have to team up to battle resurrected Vision? And if so, has that been the goal all along—bringing Wanda to a place where she can reenact the choice she and Vision made together in Infinity War, but this time with no do-overs available?
Thoughts and Asides:
- Here’s a thing that hasn’t been addressed yet: Does this mean that Wanda is somehow responsible for Pietro’s powers? Because contacting the Mind Stone is what triggered her ability amplification, but Pietro had no latent witch abilities as far as we know. And Wanda heard the Hydra guys mention that contact with the stone had killed their previous subjects. Which makes it seem like Wanda maybe did something to her brother to ensure his survival and it resulted in his powers?
- So X-Men Pietro is literally just some dude hanging around Westview? That’s what Agatha’s explanation seems to be (she claims to be controlling him, as necromancy on Pietro’s body wasn’t feasible from that distance), which is an interesting idea… but still doesn’t explain how he would know what MCU Pietro knows. Because Agatha doesn’t.
- Okay, but now that we know Wanda is super into sitcoms, that means we know for sure that she spent a lot of time watching Full House, which will mess with your brain a lot if you think about it too hard.
- The MCU started off pretty “science” heavy, with the introduction of magic often being couched in science. (Thor tells Jane Foster that where he comes from science and magic are the same thing.) But acknowledging that there have been witches on Earth this whole time is a very different can of worms to open up, one that offers far more possibilities going forward. After all, if witches have always been here, then it stands to reason that vampires could have been too. (Don’t forget… Blade is coming.)
- This is a great way of introducing the concept of the Scarlet Witch as a title for Wanda, much better than “this was her cute public-selected superhero name.” Though I imagine that Loki is gonna be all kinds of jealous that he’s not the one wielding the Chaos Magic when/if he ever finds out.
- Look, all I’m saying is that when a character is like “I could be good” and someone is like “No, I don’t think you can” you know that character is going to be evil forever, so the point is never tell anyone that?
And next week… well, it’ll all be over. Time to hold our breath.
Emmet Asher-Perrin is just gonna cry about an empty plot of land in Jersey for the rest of the day, it’s fine. You can bug them on Twitter, and read more of their work here and elsewhere.
Maybe my 7 year old and 10 year old are not the target audience for Wandvision, but if the writers had ever intended for Agatha to end up being an ally to Wanda, they shouldn’t have had her admit to killing Sparky. Pretty much sure that my kids are never going to see her as being on the “Good” team, no matter what happens in the future.
@2 THIS particular Agatha isn’t going to end up an ally. Not after killing the dog and killing her mother and fellow witches.
But she’s going to try and drain Wanda next week. That’s a sure bet.
“Why this town in Jersey??”
Easy commuting range to HQ in NYC?
This is a great way of introducing the concept of the Scarlet Witch as a title for Wanda, much better than “this was her cute public-selected superhero name.”
Yeah, the Scarlet Witch moniker actually being a title is something that James Robinson developed when he was writing Wanda’s monthly book from 2015-2017.
As someone who enjoyed that run, I’m happy the MCU’s (finally) taking influence from it.
@1/2 — But did she? The dog, at least — she clearly did kill her mother & the rest of the coven but that was 300 years ago in a moment of extreme stress/self-defense, but I’m not sure if we can take everything with Sparky at face value vs. it being a combination of Agatha trying to nudge things in a certain direction and Wanda subconsciously realizing that Agatha/Agnes is actually outside of her control and so trying to write her actions into the narrative — like, was “Agatha All Along” actually Agatha‘s song, or was it a song Wanda wrote to incorporate her perceptions of Agatha’s actions?
Thanos’s insistence that he doesn’t remember Wanda at all is one of the worst moments of Endgame, a place where she should have been allowed the space to come into her own, waylaid by the MCU’s commitment to telling the stories of men and only (white) men for its first decade.
In fairness to Feige, much of the blame for the MCU’s diversity problems during its first decade are because of former Marvel Entertainment President Ike Perlmutter’s influence.
Feige and Iger have both gone on the record about Perlmutter being anti-diversity (enough to the point that Iger had to override him to greenlight Panther).
So it was one factor in Feige liberating Marvel Studios from Perlmutter’s oversight in 2015. But the rub is that some accounts couch Perlmutter’s diversity opposition being rooted in Hollywood’s commercial concerns — which makes it all the more important why Panther and Captain Marvel (and Wonder Woman) proved those assumptions wrong and broke new ground..
Loki’s not a witch – as was pointedly stated in Ragnarok. He’s a god. So why can’t he have that chaos magic? As Thor told him “he’ll always be the god of mischief, but he could be so much more” and doesn’t that sound juicy now?
Great review, but a small detail. The version of Thanos, who Wanda meets in “Infinity”, got killed in the beginning of “Endgame” by Thor. Wanda fights Past-Thanos in the great end-battle, who never even meet her.
Sorry, my inner nerd wouldn’t stay quiet (;
I ended up watching this before work and it really did make me tear up. Somebody on a YT video comment thread pointed out that the deed is what becomes the calendar in the beginning. I’d captured the significance of the heart but I hadn’t put together that the calendar is probably the literal transformed deed :( Anyway, the exploration on grief and trauma and embracing your power and healing is more than I can really comment on right now. I really hope there is a payoff there, especially with Monica’s involvement. (As an aside some of this is reminding me a bit in vague terms of the Dark Phoenix storyline, which is another ‘powerful woman suppressing her power out of trauma/grief’ kind of thing, and it’s also ambiguous if Wanda gets her powers from some cosmic being/force or if she’s a mutant – I know in the comics it’s been both).
I noticed that during Agatha’s execution she had some type of red/orange magic in her, so I assume that mixed with the blue magic she siphoned, that is why she has purple magic. And if Wanda’s magic is the chaos magic, and also red, that might be what Agatha had been trying to attain herself. I don’t know if these colors are meant to have any tie in with Infinity Stone colors – things can have their own colors – but it does kind of explain why her magic signature never really matched the yellow Mind Stone theme, since that’s not REALLY where her magic comes from. I think it might explain why she can recreate Vision though, at least in part.
I was wondering if Agatha had at least some benevolent motives in the end – perhaps this was all meant to be some kind of therapy for Wanda – but I don’t think so. I think she really is just wanting to know how she did it and how she can get the power for herself (I think the Yo-Magic commercial is about her). We know she was technically acting in self defense during her execution, but it’s also possible she was being executed because she had done some horrible things. Of course we don’t REALLY know yet, but so far that’s waht it seems.
I’m trying to figure out if Hayward is an idiot dick, or a really smart dick. Was he purposefully egging Wanda on? Did he know she might do something like this? Did he even throw that missle in because he knew she’d launch it back and they could then use its power? Also, clever pun with Vision/Cataract. That said they are morons if they think they can control it…I have a feeling this will be a classic ‘Came Back Wrong’ trope. I’ve seen suggestions that they give him James Spader’s voice and that would be cool. Is Wanda going to have to kill him AGAIN? Or (I hope, because I’m a sucker) – will she be able to merge her construct into the body? On the other hand, if this show really is ultimately about processing/accepting grief, it may be more thematically appropriate for Vision to stay dead. But screw that, I just want a happy ending for her.
Also, who is broadcasting, and how, and why? I mean, Agatha seems to talk in a lot of TV based cliches, but is she just commenting on Wanda’s sitcom prediliction, and she seems to be taking advantage of it to manipulate the tropes to her advantage, but does she also have some active role in broadcasting it?
I really, really thought it would be her parents in the commercials. So who are those guys? Just random townsfolk?
I don’t know if these colors are meant to have any tie in with Infinity Stone colors – things can have their own colors – but it does kind of explain why her magic signature never really matched the yellow Mind Stone theme, since that’s not REALLY where her magic comes from. I think it might explain why she can recreate Vision though, at least in part.
It might be. But I think this could actually be another element of James Robinson’s Scarlet Witch run that show’s taking inspiration from.
IIRC, Robinson’s take was that color manifests itself differently with specific types of magical bloodlines/titles, hence Wanda being the Scarlet Witch.
The sitcom episodes chosen seem very much on-message. The Dick Van Dyke episode is one where he has has a vivid, sci-fi influenced dream, culminating in a great sight gag involving a closet full of walnuts. Meanwhile the Brady Bunch episode turns on Cindy’s love for her doll, despite her not being “real.” Great choices!
One thing I’m not clear on is if Wanda ever had Vision’s body. Darcy’s hacking showed that Heyward was tracking the decay rate of vibranium inside the Hex. Yet, this episode shows that Wanda did not take the body.
“But what is grief, if not love persevering?”
That line reduced me to tears.
Last year, I lost my wife, my partner of thirty-five years. She had fought a life-long battle against clinical depression, with symptoms not unlike those displayed by Wanda, and with a similar genesis steeped in early parental loss. I wish to all the gods that ever were that she could have seen this episode.
But I think I am going to find some comfort in those words.
“What is grief, if not love persevering.”
@12: I was wondering about that, too! To me, this episode seems to clearly indicate that she has not at any point had possession of the body. The implication, then, is that she is able to create vibranium out of sheer power alone in extreme circumstances.
@13 I’m really sorry for your loss. I hope you will continue to treasure those memories.
I still think there must be a bigger reason for Pietro being played by Evan Peters, there must be a multiverse connection somewhere with what Agatha is doing, as for Pietro not having having magical capabilities, we don’t know this, they are twins, and considering the comic routes of their parentage I think it’s not inconceivable that the parents we saw were the adoptive parents, it could explain this image of Pietro being used by Agatha particularly if someone working with her has given her that image.
So, Wanda has been this cruel all this time? Holding the townspeople in terror just so she can deal with her grief? It seems out of character, and I think that’s why a lot of people (me included) thought there must be some bigger badder character behind it all. It’s not in Wanda’s character profile. There’s still 1 more episode, but so far it’s come down to it’s just “Wanda, is powerful, and Agnes wants her power”. So Pietro was recast for no visible reason? And the kids are maybe just Chaos magic? If they drop Easter eggs for seven episodes, then do a quick close out, that’s pretty lazy writing. And Monica became Photon for no reason other than to become Photon? I think the mid credit scene said more than the whole episode.
I think the opening with Agatha shows pretty clearly that she’s feigning her terror and remorse and the whole thing is part of her plan to reverse the killing spell and steal these other witches’ lives and power. It’s unclear whether she still wants to do that with Wanda or whether the Chaos magic is something she considers too dangerous to use.
I accept the broader point about stories of white men, but I completely disagree about the moment in Endgame. Wanda is grieving and furious; Thanos is from an earlier time and genuinely has no idea who she is. But really, he seems like the kind of man who might not care anyway. The movie invites us to read the exchange from Wanda’s perspective: “I don’t even know who you are” is so part and parcel of what women have to put up with and it’s perhaps even more significantly harmful for Wanda to hear. She’s getting trolled by a man who doesn’t care about her and her feelings on top of everything else, and her response is a surge of rage and power that almost kills Thanos.
I’d go so far as to suggest that this moment may represent the one time we see Thanos genuinely desperate. He shouts for help, ordering his own forces to be bombarded in order to escape. Thor almost kills him and he critiques his technique; Cap matches his strength for a moment and he shows respect; Wanda starts tearing him apart and he goes to extremes to save himself. I don’t see that as diminishing Wanda. I see it as a comment about men like him.
The broader storyline doesn’t fully allow the point to land, of course, because Tony has to save the day. But Wanda is still here.
Some questions… Why would Hayward use a drone missile on Wanda if she was animating the Vision? And if she created a body that had a decay signature like vibranium,,.maybe she was CREATING vibranium. And why destroy someone who could do that?
(These are idiot plot questions)
@19 I’m honestly wondering if he KNEW she’d send that missile back and it was a way to get access to her power. I honestly don’t know though.
@17 – I would like to see some type of…at least reckoning of his. I don’t think, initially, Wanda really knew what she was doing, or that it had this impact, but throughout the episodes (especially in the Very Special Episode) it is being made more clear to her even if she isn’t able to accept it. I have a feeling she’ll eventually have to come to terms with it and atone in some way.
I will definitely be a bit miffed if the Evan Peters casting was just a stunt cast/misdirect though.
I would like to see some type of…at least reckoning of his. I don’t think, initially, Wanda really knew what she was doing, or that it had this impact, but throughout the episodes (especially in the Very Special Episode) it is being made more clear to her even if she isn’t able to accept it. I have a feeling she’ll eventually have to come to terms with it and atone in some way.
Yeah, atonement is going to be a necessity for Wanda’s continued role/presence in the MCU.
I don’t especially want to see ‘a guilty-ridden Wanda on the run’ again because we already got that story with Civil War and Infinity War (and even, to an extent, in Age of Ultron early on).
@20 Yes, some type of atonement should be in the cards. Hopefully they don’t just toss it aside with some dazzle, and move on. I don’t want to make a thing of it. it just seems like a lot to tie up In one last episode, along with the rest. And there’s a lot of “the rest” haha. So many wonderful Easter eggs, and lots of great theories based on them. If they GoT the finale, oh boy, they’ll never hear the end of it. I’m sure there will be movie tie-ins that will move the plot, but closure for this great series now, rather than 3 movies on, would be nice after weeks of watching. The it’s just Agatha, so haha, seems to be convenient writing, and not well thought out. That’s the opposite of what I think we’ve all come to expect, so fingers crossed for lucky number 9!
Yes, atonement needs to be in the cards, in episode nine. There’s a price to be paid for what she did (ideally, the townspeople need to be in on it) and it would be extremely unsatisfying to me if she’s just on the run or too easily forgiven.
I would assume Hayward is tracking the decay rate of vibranium in the hex because he plans to send “his” Vision in there and needs to see how badly the hex will affect him.
I mean he’s still planning to off Wanda, no?
This whole Hayward/Wanda thing is puzzling to me, now. Killing her when he didn’t have a working Vision makes no sense. Killing her now that he has a working Vision makes no sense either; she’s created vibranium, right? And what if the….charge?…from the done wears out? What then?
Is Wanda “good”? When we first met her, she “inspired” Tony to create Ultron, then she was allied with Ultron, attacked the minds of the Avengers and caused the Hulk to go on a rampage killing unnumbered people. Then she turns against Ultron out of self-defense, and later defense of Sokovians. After being an Avenger for an unspecified amount of time (and falling in love with Vision (an artificial person!)), she causes the deaths of Wakandans by levitating a bomb to where they were, saving civilians and herself, Steve and Natasha. Later she fights against Tony Stark. Then fights to protect Vision, then destroys him to try to protect half of the life in the universe (including, it turns out, herself), and when she returns she fights Thanos for vengeance. Finally the torture of hundreds or thousands of Westvillians begins. The Scarlet Witch would be a great “big bad” of Phase Four and like Loki was could eventually be redeemed.
@26
The people killed in the explosion were probably Nigerians, not wakandans, since it happened in Lagos. And the people killed by the Hulk rampanging were mostly South Africans. If the Avengers were still under government supervision she’d be going through diversity sensitivity training. Try not to screw up so much while in Africa, Wanda! It looks bad on you!
@25 The thing about Howard is that he is incompetent at his job. He is faced with situation – Wanda created Hex manipulating reality and controlling people within – his first and only move to solve this is to kill her. Don’t forget its still a major situation he is expected to solve. As for Vision, its a separate project to reanimate him, and to use Wanda to shift blame on if something goes wrong. “I did not revive that robot that went our of control and murdered a bunch of people. Its that pesky crazy witch who stole his remains and revived him.” “Who you going to believe, me a government stooge or a woman with uncontrolled powers who mind controlled whole town”?
@27 Wasn’t the killing of Wakandan envoys the reason why the king of Wakanda was at the ceremony where the adoption of the Sokovian Accords was to be celebrated? Didn’t Black Widow apologize to the king for it? I’d add to my speculation above that Agatha tries to drain Wanda like she did to her old coven but that Wanda, with her chaos magic, drains Agatha instead. In a way Agatha could “train” Wanda.
One week left, which means only one or maybe two more columns reducing this show to “girls rule, boys drool.” Egad.
The the picture that they use for Wandavision on the site is Wanda and Vision in their sitcom getup, with tvs in front of them revealing parts of their real superhero costumes. However, Wanda’s in that picture doesn’t really look like any of the versions I remember from any of the movies. However, I did get a vibe off the silhouette vision that it could be wearing this version of the costume.
There was a great dark version of the Avengers theme when they go into the part where she’s in the Avengers compound with Vision.
When Pet Sematary Vision goes on a crazy rampage, does that mean Wanda’s going to have to kill him again?
Agatha may be evil and may have been doing evil things 300 years ago, but I’m not sure what her culpability is for the deaths of the coven. They were blasting away at her, but she absorbed it instead of dying/being hurt. The way the scene played out, I got the impression they chose to keep blasting away. Her mother, certainly, chose to attack after she’d seen what was happening, which didn’t make sense if she thought her daughter was using their attacks to create a link that let her drain them. It does make sense if Agatha is like a very high capacity magic battery and her natural reaction was to absorb what was being thrown at her. In that case, if her capacity had been overwhelmed, she might have still been killed.
I’m assuming, by the way, that being surrounded by the coven was similar to Wanda being in Agatha’s basement, a closed off area where she couldn’t actively cast spells. Of course, if Agatha was still able to kill them while cut off from directly using her power, Wanda may be able to crush Agatha in a similar situation.
I’m more suspicious of Hayward at this point. I don’t know if I’m expecting him to be Ralph or a dark wizard acting on his own, but his actions make a lot more sense if you assume he’s someone like Agatha and that he already knew about Wanda’s magic. How do you bring Vision back to life? Motivate the only witch with that kind of power to do it. That didn’t work? Get said witch to magically attack something so you can link to her energy a different way.
At this point, my assumption is that Hayward is actually just goading Wanda so he can access her power, not trying to kill her. He was the one who suggested she could re-animate Vision, an idea she had apparently not previously considered. It certainly seemed that he was intentionally trying to plant the idea.
I’d be a bit disappointed by an “it was Hayward all along” twist, at this point, but it certainly seems like he wanted something like this to happen.
Both the villains in this episode were trying to harness Wanda’s power by forcing her to relive her pain.
Hayward was absolutely baiting Wanda deliberately. That seemed very clear to me. He told her outright that he believed she had the power to bring Vision “back online… sorry, back to life.” He revealed the body to her in the most traumatizing manner possible, with no warning or explanation beforehand, and he was watching her for her reaction the whole time. If he was really that oblivious/insensitive to her feelings, he wouldn’t have bothered letting her in to “say goodbye” in the first place. He was counting on her to flip out and use her power to reactivate Vision. From early on, it was clear to me that Hayward was framing this convenient narrative of Wanda as a dangerous unstable crazy lady whose grief made her violent; but it seems all the more awful that he did this after he deliberately set her up and after she didn’t even take his bait.
I do wonder if maybe Wanda did go there hoping on some level that she could revive him somehow; but when she actually saw his body and couldn’t “feel” him there, that’s when it hit home for her that he was gone.
The coven’s magic being blue and Agatha’s purple made me think that there’s a sort of “order magic” (blue) that is more generally accepted among magic-users, a dangerous “chaos magic” (red) that is what Wanda has, and Agatha was using a mix of both (purple), and the coven condemned her for use of chaos magic.
@13 I am very sorry for your loss. Having lost my dad a decade ago, I found the same line to be still quite relevant.
What I loved about this scene, is that it even affected Agatha — she clearly tears up over watching the two interact: she subtly wipes one of her eyes while Wanda has her back to her.
I’d be a bit disappointed by an “it was Hayward all along” twist, at this point, but it certainly seems like he wanted something like this to happen.
Eh, there’s still one episode left, so there may still be more to it.
@15 and @36, thank you for your kind words.
I think my reaction to Vision’s observation on grief was so visceral in part because the scriptwriters (and Ms Olson) did such a masterful job of portraying Wanda’s gradual (re)descent into depression following her confrontation with Vision just prior to the introduction of alt-Pietro.
My current theory is that Wanda had no idea her players were suffering until Vision pointed it out, in fact,in her grief-induced fugue state, she is/was consciously ignorant of her own role as puppeteer, at least until Agatha rubbed her nose in it.
Hayward is, I think, a classic example of The Peter Principal in action. Forced into a position of command when those above him were dusted/deceased, he’s spent the time since dancing as fast as he can, lurching from decision to decision hoping that nobody will notice his fundamental incompetence in the role. Hell, the trauma theater he submitted Wanda to makes no sense — SWORD has had five years to examine Vision’s corpse, why wait until Wanda’s return to disassemble him — with buzz-saws yet! (And what the hell were those blades coated with, to be able to cut through vibranium?)
As for alt-Pietro, I’m waiting for Agatha to try cutting off his powers with her hex-runes, only for him to super-speed pummel her into submission. “Magic doesn’t work on mutation, witch! Now send me home!”
Similarly, what if Monica/Spectrum’s implied abilities to perceive/absorb/redirect energy applies to mystical forces as well…
Guess we’ll find out next week.
@3 There is no such thing as an easy commute to NYC. :-) But since the Avengers are now based in a compound in “upstate” New York, it is possible that Westview is in northern New Jersey, and if the compound is somewhere around Newburgh, and both locations are near I-87, it wouldn’t be so bad a commute from one to the other.
I found this episode very satisfying. It explains things rather well, in a way that makes Wanda’s character much richer and compelling. And much of her action has been subconscious, so I doubt she meant any hurt to the people of Westview. She has something to atone for, but there are mitigating factors involved. Agatha’s intent is still somewhat cloudy, although power stealing is my guess at what she is up to. Monica’s new powers will definitely be called for in the finale, and I suspect she will be instrumental in saving Wanda from Agatha. It appears to me that Hayward is nothing more than an unprincipled jerk, and other than being an irritant, he will have very little impact on the outcome.
Oh, one other thing about Vision. Hayward’s new version is white and devoid of color. That is significant to long-time comic readers. At one point, Vision was rebooted, and the new version was not only colorless, but emotionless. So don’t expect this new Vision to have any love for Wanda (although his personality reasserting itself may be part of the end game, and the foiling of Hayward’s plans).
Hell, the trauma theater he submitted Wanda to makes no sense — SWORD has had five years to examine Vision’s corpse, why wait until Wanda’s return to disassemble him — with buzz-saws yet! (And what the hell were those blades coated with, to be able to cut through vibranium?)
It could be it was too risky to do it before Endgame. I’d imagine Tony and Banner would’ve kept tabs on Vision’s body to be sure no skullduggery was afoot. The aftermath of the Battle of Earth and the chaos from Tony’s death and the disbanding of the Avengers would’ve been a ‘now or never’ opening.
But given the timing, I think we’ll find Hayward did experiment on Vision’s body in the interim with no luck. Wanda’s resurrection feels like Hayward’s Hail Mary play, that if anyone could bring Vision back on line it was his partner.
Oh, one other thing about Vision. Hayward’s new version is white and devoid of color. That is significant to long-time comic readers. At one point, Vision was rebooted, and the new version was not only colorless, but emotionless. So don’t expect this new Vision to have any love for Wanda (although his personality reasserting itself may be part of the end game, and the foiling of Hayward’s plans).
Yeah, the big question is whether or not this is limited series is Vision’s last hurrah. We know Wanda will remain part of the narrative through at least the Doctor Strange sequel, but we don’t know about the Android Avenger. There are as many arguments in favor of keeping him around in some capacity as there are in giving him a sendoff here.
The Scarlet Witch would be a great “big bad” of Phase Four and like Loki was could eventually be redeemed.
She could, yeah…but speaking as a comics reader who lived through the Brian Bendis era of Avengers, I really hope Feige doesn’t go down that road.
Marvel overused the ‘Wanda as Crazy Big Bad/Fallen Avenger’ plotline throughout the 2000s with Avengers Dissasembled and House of M and frankly, I’ve had enough of that iteration of Wanda in any medium.
True, WandaVision is drawing inspiration from House of M, but I hope it plays out here. I’d rather long-term MCU Wanda take a page from what James Robinson (and Kurt Busiek’s Avengers) did with trying to move the character beyond the mental illness stigma.
If you can fly, I can’t imagine the commute is very bad at all.
Hayward stated they had assembled and reassembled Vision many times before they learned they could power him “from the source”. Wanda just interrupted them in their most recent attempt.
Wanda isn’t holding this town hostage to process her grief. She’s doing it to keep herself from processing her grief. I believe that Wanda is going to be the primary protagonist for the next several movies, though a sympathetic one.
I do believe this Vision form will endure, though he may not be wholly our Vision.
I worry most about this incarnation of Speed and Wiccan.
I worry most about this incarnation of Speed and Wiccan.
Yeah, I’m wondering about that, too.
It’s unofficially a given they’ll be sticking around, or will pop up again, in some form — Wiccan especially.
Even though Feige hasn’t officially confirmed it, of course, we know the post-Infinity Saga’s been seemingly laying the groundwork for the Young Avengers since Ant-Man (with Cassie’s introduction).
It makes sense in terms of MCU legacy, bringing in new IP while continuing the phase out of the old guard, and a new long-term narrative driving engine.
Bringing in Wiccan of course opens the door for Hulkling, which opens the door for explicit LGBT representation in the MCU — and Feige is definitely committed towards honoring diversity now that he doesn’t have to deal with Ike Perlmutter’s conservative bulls**** anymore.
But how we get there — especially given the, ah, very convoluted histories of Speed and Wiccan in the comics — is up in the air until at least next week’s finale.
It seems the next act of the woman in question was to magically turn an entire town full of people – whose major mistake was to live near where she and Vision wanted to – into sitcom characters. Out of grief.
Why is it so unreasonable to call her emotionally unstable?
Calling Wanda “emotionally unstable” might be reasonable–if he hadn’t been actively pushing that narrative beyond the limits of what actually happened by lying about just HOW unstable (and dangerous) she is. If Hayward had focused on what Wanda actually did in her grief, that’s one thing. Even if he did it in order to stress how dangerous she is. But if he’s pushing her to become more unstable for his own purposes and lying about her actions to others in order to justify his own goals . . . or even just because he dislikes and distrusts her . . . that’s something else. Or at least, I think it is. Wanda hasn’t been part of Hayward’s possibilities until now, since she’s been off being dusted and all; his reaction to her presence and his determination to make her seem less rational, less trustworthy, even more dangerous than she actually seems to be is the problem, I think.
I don’t know that it will be “Hayward All Along,” but he’s a lot cannier than he seemed. We were supposed to be seeing him as the stereotypical, evil bureaucrat, promoted beyond his ability, labeling anything he can’t deal with as a threat to be annihilated, etc.
Now, we know that he’s much smarter than that and VERY good at manipulating people. He probably didn’t want the situation in Westview, but he deliberately planted the idea in Wanda’s head that she could bring Vision back to life. When he was talking to Wanda, he played each moment perfectly, the little hesitations, the way he reacted. If I didn’t know better, I could believe he was supposed to be sympathetic and sincere.
Of course, we see that same “sincerity” later when he shows Monica the video clips he’s already prepared to prove Wanda broke in and that she stole Vision’s body when he still has it.
This guy is good.
As to why he thought she could do that: Reasonable deduction? Mystical knowledge? Desperation when nothing else worked? Something else entirely? I don’t know, but it’s a good idea not to underestimate him.
I don’t think Hayward is the Big Bad, or even a Medium Big Bad, but there’s another revelation to come to show his culpability in this mess.
@48, You did watch the post credits scene, right????
@45-48:
The other thing was that Wanda went there expecting to find an intact body and wanting to bury it. If she had been given the closure of a funeral, Westview may not have happened. Instead she was not only denied this, but needled and pushed by Hayward.
I guess I’m not really sure whether I think Hayward was behind planting the deed or not. But when we were first introduced to Hayward, he was the one who told Monica she was grounded and sent her to do the “FBI thing.” So the question is whether he knew then that this was where Wanda went, or whether it’s as it seems and he saw an opportunity after his first attempt to push her failed and he saw what she was now doing.
Should probably read the comments first, but it struck me that we now have a Vision without VIsion’s mind, and a Vision, without Vision’s body… those two are obviously going to join when the show ends. This Vision has his own will and agency, as proven earlier in the show, regardless of Wanda having created him. So I think Wanda’s Vision will end up walking out of the Hex in White Vision’s body, after some sort of epic faceoff.
Phew, it was a lot of episode, with a lot of great writing and acting. Elizabeth Olsen deserves accolades for what she’s putting on screen, she is a joy to watch at work. And Paul Bettany continues to be the calm voice of human respect and compassion, despite embodying an android. I will never not love his words to her, and I will comfort them in my own times of grief. Kudos to all involved with this series, it has transcended all expectations. Who knew the actor who walked out naked on the road in A Knight’s Tale would wind up as one of Marvel’s most interesting on-screen characters?
But please Marvel, a heads up on after credit scenes! I’d gotten used to there not being any in this series, only to find out this morning I’d missed the two in the last two episodes! Sheesh!
Phew, it was a lot of episode, with a lot of great writing and acting. Elizabeth Olsen deserves accolades for what she’s putting on screen, she is a joy to watch at work.
Yeah, it’s funny. When I first saw Age of Ultron, I wasn’t especially impressed with her portrayal of Wanda. While MCU Casting Director Sarah Haley Finn had (and still has) racked up a pretty good batting average, I thought Olsen was miscast
(Though in fairness to her, Whedon didn’t really give her much to do with all the characters and threads he was trying, and failing, to juggle in the Avengers sequel).
But I started changing my opinion with Civil War and especially by Infinity War. So, yeah, getting to see Olsen finally have the time and room to explore the Cinematic Wanda in this mini-series has been great.
A modest suburban land plot in New Jersey would only cost about as much as the loose change found in the sofa at Avenger’s HQ. Vision would be particularly adept at finding such change so his coming up with the cash seems very plausible. Or perhaps when Vision trims his toe nails, he sells them for the vibranium in them. Or he just asked Tony for the cash, which Tony would have handed over without question. Vison getting the money is the smallest of plot holes.
There was lot of Marvel hate in this article for the studio takings it’s sweet time to diversify their movies. It did take time, but Marvel Studios was dead broke when they began and had only some 2nd and 3rd sting heroes to play with. Super Hero movies were not by any means guaranteed hits, and they were always costly to make. Of the original 6 Avengers, only Hulk was all that well known. Thor and Cap were only slightly known, and Black Widow, Hawkeye and Iron Man were very obscure. Marvel took it slow and built up an audience for its heroes. It paid off, and now we are getting all sorts of hero stories. Black panther and Captain Marvel made all sorts of money, but they would have flopped hard if there hadn’t been a dozen great movies before them.
Cut them some slack, we’ll get a Forbush Man movie some day.
Or the Thanos who got decapitated at the start and the Thanos who eventually loses aren’t the same person. This wasn’t thought through, eh? ;)
The Thanos of Infinity War knew who Tony Stark was, so it’s possible that he may have known Wanda was. The Thanos of Endgame may have not have been as well read on the Avengers. However Iron Man had both saved the world in the first Avengers and nearly destroyed it in the second so he was well known. Wanda had been complete unknow until the second Avengers, and had played a less visible role in it. Nothing that she did before Infinity War would have made the interstellar news feed.
Thanos not knowing of the grief he caused Wanda is no less sad, but even a mad titan has limits of knowledge.
Personally I am grateful that this show is finally dealing with Vision’s double killing in Infinity War. His death was never acknowledged by anyone other than Wanda in Endgame (okay, Hawkeye sympathized).
And where is Hawkeye in all this?
And where is Hawkeye in all this?
Yeah, given the bond between them, I’d been wondering about that.
It’s possible that the event of Clint’s upcoming show are chronologically overlapping with WandaVision and thus, he’s not able to travel to Westview.
@51 Anthony, I had exactly that thought…the Vision that the Scarlet Witch created has Vision’s essence, soul if you will. The Body Hayward is sending in is the corpus without soul. The two together are the only way to truly keep The Vision as a character (apologies to Shuri, but I think she was never gonna succeed because she COULDN’T, her bravado notwithstanding). post Mind Stone yanking. FWIW, I think Strange might have been able to save Vision intact but WOULDN’T have, given the self-imposed restrictions the mystics of Kamar-Taj have. I think only Wanda has both ability (magic), the motive (obviously), and the lack of caution (she IS chaos magic…The Scarlet Witch) to even try it.
I was going to send this response to Alan Brown, @40, but you beat me to it, albeit perhaps inadvertantly.
@57 Also, past Thanos knew about tony because of Nebula. He caught her, and downloaded all of her memories to study She was there for the entire fight between the two, so he knows that tony was trying to stop him. Nebula wasn’t there at all with Wanda, hell, I don’t think Nebula even knows who Wanda was. I think its going a bit too far saying that Thanos not knowing who Wanda was is because of some anti female agenda to put the women characters down and only focus on the male characters He didn’t know who Wanda was because he literally didn’t know who Wanda was, and is still the best scene in that entire movie.
In Re Vision’s disconnected body and soul
Neither have Vision’s memories though, which I think are important.
Like I’m having trouble seeing this as the happily ever after y’all are seeing, because of how this show has traumatized me(in a good way). I mean, Agnes hasn’t eaten Tommy and Billy so, yay, but still.
I mean, Westview Vision doesn’t remember falling in love with Wanda!!! He loves her because he was created to! Stuff like that has to mess with a guy, cybernetic or not!
So, no, I don’t believe it will be as simple as melding the two together. I don’t see Vision staying with Wanda, because he can’t trust her or how he feels.
Neither have Vision’s memories though, which I think are important.
I’ve also been wondering if that means that Hayward’s Vision is, for all intents, a Vision reset to factory settings — before the Mind Stone and before Tony uploaded the remnants of J.A.R.V.I.S.
An that would be potentially be bad for everybody…because Vision’s manufacturer was, of course, Ultron.
We know there’s going to be a major Luke Skywalker-in-The Mandalorian-level cameo in the series finale. I keep wondering if it’s James Spader.
It’s about my last chance to do any long-form crit of this brilliant show, so smart, so moving, so … Marvel. I’ve been seeing it in terms of dramatic conventions.
This is a tragedy, in the literary sense. The story of a woman who denied her loss with such force that she bent reality to her will. But reality has a nemesis for us all. The tragic rule is that she must be broken, but we viewers will still be compelled to keep cheering for her hubris. Or will this be the the exception, and it’s reality that will break?
In the tragic frame, I’d hope to see Wanda’s crisis emerging from her action. Say, Vision can’t accept her mind-suppression. Or her Halloween zombies turn on her. I’m not fond of dropping new layers of Marvel lore over it all at the last minute. What, we’ve got a whole new Agatha Harkness puzzle-box to open? But okay, it’s a smart show.
And as well as a tragedy, this is a magic act. Keep the tricks and patter coming fast, misdirect the audience, make them believe they’re seeing the impossible, then pull the rug out from under them. As Wanda says, the act is all solid props, the real magic is fake. They warned us.
Now I think I’m going to lose my bet with this. My guess was that the Wandavision show was a happily-ever-after spell in television form, and it had its own way of doing things. Magic on autopilot, if you will. I mean, we’re thiking of the Darkhold. If we can have a malevolent book, then why not a living sitcom, doing its best, and adjusting itself as Wanda makes new choices?
A couple of things don’t add up for me. The boys – they’re infants, then they’re five, then they’re ten. Where did they do their growing up, if they’re not just Wanda’s imaginings? Did she borrow them from some alterverse where they actually had childhoods? Also why was Agatha so keen to get them born? Very interested in how the show will play it.
And then there’s the scene where Wanda enters Sword to see Vision’s body. HOLD ON. I thought Vision was Helen Cho’s nanotech masterpiece, the pinnacle of synthetic para-biology. What we’re shown is out of Radio Shack, and nobody seems to have heard of grounding a circuit. Or insulation.
Nah, come on. It has to be a setup. Hayward prepared this scene so that, if Wanda came, she’d go away disappointed. And maybe they’d have video footage to frame her. He’s had Vision’s real body somewhere else, and that’s the white version we’re seeing now.
There’s lots more to say, but a couple of loose observations. It’s remarkable how much of humanity’s heavy organization is the work of African-Americans. Nick Fury just about is Shield. Maria Rambeau founded Sword. Half their technology is vibranium. Makes you wonder what Dr Adam Breshear has been doing all this time.
And Monica – wow! I loved her when she first appeared in the comics. Strong African physiognomy, total energy control, moves at lightspeed – surely this is the next generation of Marvel heroes. But she kept getting submerged in team actions and never quite broke out. But now! Her first scene in the hospital was ferocious, and then she just stows her grief and shows up for work. Now I know just who she is.
I’d love to see someone make this a springboard for her. Give her the multiverse, maybe from a scientific angle, to go from world to world as a solo act. Spectrum of the Multiverse, how does that sound?
A couple of things don’t add up for me. The boys – they’re infants, then they’re five, then they’re ten. Where did they do their growing up, if they’re not just Wanda’s imaginings? Did she borrow them from some alterverse where they actually had childhoods? Also why was Agatha so keen to get them born? Very interested in how the show will play it.
Yeah, again, Billy and Teddy have one of the more…convoluted origin stories in mainstream Marvel, so I’ve been wondering how the show’s gonna tackle that — especially as it’s all but assured they’ll be sticking around if, again, Feige’s building to the Young Avengers.
I’d love to see someone make this a springboard for her. Give her the multiverse, maybe from a scientific angle, to go from world to world as a solo act. Spectrum of the Multiverse, how does that sound?
That could very well be another reason America Chavez is being added to the post-Infinity Saga. She and Monica were, after all, on Al Ewing’s Ultimates and the team did undertake Multiversal missions.
And Multiversal threats do seem the logical long-term problem/threat for the post-Endgame era. I still think the MCU will be building to an adaptation of Jonathan Hickman’s Secret Wars over the next decade.
I’d also like to point out that the Trio was wrong. When Wanda changed Monica’s clothes into something more retro styled, everyone stated that Wanda couldn’t create something from nothing, that she was just changing what existed to suit her.
And she is doing that, for sure. But Agatha made it clear, her powers do have that ability, to create something from nothing.
Also no one has explained that creepy “For the Children” chant. Was that some sort of complex spell to induce pregnancy?
@63, When you call it a tragedy I think of Euripides’ version of “Medea”. Unfortunate if you’re hoping for it to end well for husband, wife, and their kids.
One pedantic point I was wondering about is why SWORD has Vision’s body at all? I think in a previous episode’s post, a commenter asked if Wakanda would have truly handed Vision’s body over, given that he died on their soil. Hayward’s comment about him being $3 billion worth of vibranium further made me wonder about that. He was made from vibranium that Ultron got from Klaue, right? Who stole all his vibranium from Wakanda? Making Vision’s body technically Wakandan property even before he died on their soil, right?
Anyway, I’m enjoying this dive into Wanda’s character, which was indeed truly overdue. I hope they stick the landing tomorrow!
–Andy
@67, But Wakanda had no legitimate ruler after the Snap either, so I could see where there would be time to get it out of there, while they figured out the line of succession.
And furthermore, Steve & Co probably brought it back with them when they left Wakanda for New York. Steve, for certain, would never have left Vision’s body behind, especially when there are NO OTHER BODIES to mourn over.
As far as relinquishing it to SWORD, we’re going to have to assume the Avengers knew of them, even if we didn’t, so if Vision was explicit that his body was to be destroyed by the appropriate agency, well Steve would have respected those wishes as well.
Regarding Vision’s body: Wanda’s request was to take a weapon and just bury it, fully built. Considering that anyone who can use a computer in the MCU is a genius hacker, Hayward is entirely right that Vision should be dismantled (and as Aeryl pointed out, it seems to have been Vision’s will. We only have Hayward’s word on that, but Wanda doesn’t question the fact, so it’s probably true). Even if Vision couldn’t come back, it’s not hard to make a powerful weapon out of it. Imagine Quentin Beck had managed to secure the body before obtaining E.D.I.T.H. and put the AI inside it: the end of Spider-man: Far From Home would have been very different.
And then there’s the problem of the tech and the vibranium. The thing is, it was never clear that Vision was recognised legally as a person. So his being is the vibranium Klaue stole from Wakanda and got stolen by Ultron, built into Cho and Stark tech: the legal rights are far from obvious (except for the fact that Wanda certainly is not next of kin). When Vision died in Wakanda, the Wakandans did the honourable thing and let Steve keep the body. But then there’s no good solution for what should be done with it. If it’s to be buried, it should be in a high security vault. Dismantling would be safer, but then there is no way S.W.O.R.D. wouldn’t use the materials to build weapons with it. It has been a major problem with the MCU: all the power is held either by military organisations or powerful individuals, and both have been shown multiple times to be terrible at using it safely.