WandaVision, Season 1, Episodes 4-6
Also as a disclaimer, the contents of this review were written before I watched episodes 7-9.
Episode 4: We Interrupt This Program
I keep saying that this is why a story like WandaVision could never work in a movie format, and works best as a TV show. Imagine if the sitcom parody lasted only for 20 minutes in a 2 hour show... the audience would still be in 'questioning WTF is going on' mode instead of 'cautiously accepting the comedy' like how we are by the time we reach the Geraldine scene in the final parts of the third episode. Again, the balls on Marvel/Disney+ for releasing this utterly bizarre show with an unconventional concept as their flagship show for the MCU's fourth phase! And, if all these news about the viewers tuning in and crashing the streaming service every time a new episode of WandaVision pops up, it's a risk that is certainly rewarded.
Episode 4 of WandaVision brings us back to the MCU in a big way -- as we catch up to some of the more forgotten side characters in the movie franchise. Vision and the Scarlet Witch are certainly two characters that would be the biggest offenders of this syndrome -- they do have a story told throughout the four movies they've shown up in, but they get the bare minimum of a story told and it's frustrating to be fans of these characters before Vision got killed off in Infinity War. And so, seeing them get the screentime they deserve has been a marvelous treat. It seems that the show is very much interested in extending the same screentime to the MCU's other second-stringers.
We start off with the reversion of 'the Blip' that happens in Avengers: Endgame. Something that takes place mostly off-screen in Endgame and played off mostly for laughs in Spider-Man: Far From Home, we get the true identity of 'Geraldine' -- an adult version of Monica Rambeau, the little girl from Captain Marvel. The rest of the world wasn't surprised, but not paying attention to casting calls and news solicitations, I sure was! After that marvelously terrifying scene of everyone returning back in the hospital when Thanos's Snap was reversed, we learn that Monica's mother, Maria, passed away in the intervening years between the Snap and the final battle of Endgame -- and what a rollercoaster of emotions that must be? To be told that her mother's cancer has gone to remission, only to go to a nap and wake up and learn that not only is she dead and gone; the world had moved on for five years?
And as she tries to pick up where she left off in life, we get a bit of a glimpse into what's going on. Monica returns to SWORD, and talks to acting director Tyler Hayward, who's the only new character in this episode. While the two are cordial, Monica learns that she is grounded, which is why her simple 'get your foot wet' mission ended up with her investigating a missing persons case... which leads her to meet good ol' Agent Jimmy Woo! From Ant-Man and the Wasp, but I actually know this guy from the comics first, which is just absolutely fun. Again, I love that anyone paying attention to the MCU is rewarded with returning characters, but honestly the show doesn't require you to remember every single detail about Monica Rambeau or Jimmy Woo to understand what's going on.
And then, well, we get some seriously fun X-Files or Twilight Zone shit going on as none of the local cops are able to remember that there's a town called Westview at all... and then Monica's attempts to touch the weird magical barrier causes her to get sucked in -- hence, 'Geraldine'. We also get the origin of the SWORD drone from episode 2, and generally this episode goes off to explain just what went on to cause all the weirdness throughout the first three seasons, the bits of the real world that bled into Westview.
And just like how the audience is rewarded for knowing who Monica Rambeau and Jimmy Woo and Darcy Lewis are; so is the audience in a smaller scale as this episode explains everything bizarre about the first three episodes. The voice in the radio in Wanda and Dottie's meeting was Jimmy trying to contact Wanda. The beekeeper was an agent whose protective suit was transformed when he crossed through the magical border around Westview. The colour changes and the sudden cuts actually happen in real life, and both Jimmy and Darcy act baffled when they encounter it. And, more importantly, the SWORD team are slowly able to piece together a working theory about what's going on -- and identify that all the secondary characters in the WandaVision show are actual missing people from Westview, given new names and personalities. It's so spooky, and reminds me of some of the best sci-fi horror I've read in the past. I also love Jimmy and Darcy sort of speculating about what's going on, all the hexes, and even a little easter egg in their board of conspiracies question if it's a Skrull conspiracy.
And around three-fourths of our way through the episode, we finally see Wanda's conversation with "Monica" that caused her to be launched out of Westview. And it's pretty interestingly unsettling to see Wanda's mask drop just a little... and I absolutely love just how ambiguous the show is on whether Wanda has gone evil and is doing this on purpose, or if she's being mind-controlled by some other villain... or if it's just her mind gone mad with grief and denial. She does seem exquisitely lucid and menacing when she reverts back to her original Sokovian accent and blasts Monica out. Monica says 'it's all Wanda', while Wanda herself seems somewhat aware of what's going on, telling Vision that they can't go wherever they want. Also, there was also that gloriously executed cut-scare of Wanda witnessing Vision as a walking corpse with a concaved forehead for a brief shot. That was well done, and I think the effect is emphasized so much more after the audience has seen the funny, bumbling happy and alive Vision for the past three episodes.
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Episode 5 is an episode that returns back to the sitcom hijinks (parodying the... eighties? Or something?) and the WandaVision show-within-a-show has the plot involve the children, who... are growing up remarkably quickly. Again, the jokes are hilarious and the performances by Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany are golden, but knowing what we now know about the nature of Wanda's sitcom Westview, there's now the burning question of what's actually happening there, and what Wanda Maximoff is doing to the people of the place.
That said, the Vision seems to be a bit more aware of the... inconsistencies in the setting. He's always been a bit more aware, like that incident with the neighbour and his chainsaw, his suspicion about what happened to Geraldine... or, in this episode, Agnes's odd question about whether they want to 'take it from the top'... and later on uses his powers to awaken the true personality of one of his co-workers, who is utterly terrified that 'she is in [his] head'.
Oh, and, of course, the fact that the twins, Billy and Tommy, quite literally age up from baby to five years old to ten years old, adopt a dog and have the dog die within the span of minutes. The sitcom parody works surprisingly well with some pretty well-done acting on the part of Olsen, Bettany, Hahn and the child actors, and if the death of 'Sparky' seems to mean anything, it seems to be yet another indicator of how terribly Wanda Maximoff is dealing with the death of her loved ones. The children (who may or may not be real) and Agnes ask Wanda whether she should use her powers to 'fix the dead'.
Outside of Westview, SWORD is having some housekeeping problems of their own. Monica Rambeau is recovered and confirms to the audience that she only survived being tossed through town because Wanda doesn't want to kill her, but something's not quite right with her body after spending so long in 'the Hex'. Meanwhile, Tyler Hayward is basically going full-on into his role as the angry government agent, taking the place of a character like General Thunderbolt Ross in this story. He's very quick to call Wanda the 'victimizer', brings up her destructive tendencies and ignores her time served in the Avengers, and shuts down Monica, Jimmy and Darcy during a briefing -- it's pretty clear that the show is trying to paint a 'this guy is evil' sign on top of Hayward's head... but when Hayward points out that Wanda is holding a town hostage, and shows us footage of Wanda storming the SWORD base to steal Vision's body, things get a bit blurred. On the other hand, SWORD seems to be dissecting Vision to make a weapon out of his corpse; I would do the same thing Wanda did in her position.
Reclaiming her husband's body, that is. The jury's still out on whether what Wanda did to Westview was out of malice or something else, and I love that the show makes it as ambiguous as possible.
And what about Vision, is Wanda sleeping with a reanimated robot zombie every night?
Monica gets the idea of sending in a drone with 80's technology, which wouldn't be rewritten to match Wanda's new reality, and manages to communicate with her... but Hayward hijacks the drone and causes it to fire on Wanda. All this ends up doing is escalating the situation, with Wanda walking out of the Westview barrier for once and tossing the drone at their feet, and warning SWORD to stay away with her thick Sokovian accent. She then makes a mockery of the military presence by having all the soldiers point their guns at Hayward. Again, the conversation really paints a picture of Wanda being consciously aware about what she's doing to Westview.
After this confrontation (and the Sparky death scene), it's the Vision's turn to have a word with Wanda, asking her about Norm from the office. He's starting to see that Wanda is changing reality, but he wants some answers... like the fact that he has no memories before Westview. He also points out that there are no children in Westview -- something that I thought was weird in the magic show when all the adults are talking about how it's 'for the children', but never actually paid much attention to. This leads to an interesting moment where not even the fictional credits rolling can stop the Vision, and the two of them argue and fly up into the sky...
...and then the doorbell rings, and we get the arrival of Wanda's long-lost brother, Pietro "Quicksilver" Maximoff.
...played by the actor from the X-Men movies.
...I did not expect that.
Of course, knowing the nature of the show-within-the-show, it's most likely that Evan Peters is playing some Westview resident who's been 'brainwashed' with the role of Pietro, but the hilarious reaction from Darcy and Jimmy ('she recast Pietro?') was fun, and as a meta-joke it's hilarious. I don't think that this show will go as far as doing some multiversal alternate-universe character shenanigans... right?
Still, whatever the case, I did not expect a Quicksilver appearance. Let alone this Quicksilver.
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Episode 6: All-New Halloween Spooktacular
This episode is all about Halloween, and... and we get the glorious, glorious Maximoff family in comics-accurate costume. Or, well, budget costume versions of them, anyway. Wanda, Vision, Pietro, Billy and Tommy all dress up as Scarlet Witch, Vision, Quicksilver, Wiccan and Speed, and as a comic book nerd I am so happy. And for the most part, as we get around to wacky antics, we learn that "Pietro" still has his Quicksilver powers, so there's something going on here. Of course, Vision is supposed to be dead and he has no trouble phasing through walls, so...
Anyway, after the Halloween costume antics, Vision goes off to help the neighbouhood watch, seemingly going 'off-script' and almost daring Wanda to fight with him again. This leaves Wanda to take the kids trick-or-treating with Pietro as the cool uncle. And... well, things don't go swimmingly. Oh, sure, Pietro and the twins go around smashing pumpkins and causing all sorts of chaos, but then Herb starts talking to Wanda, and when she finds out that Vision isn't actually with the neighbourhood watch, Herb's question, a repeated 'is there something I can do, Wanda? Is there something you want changed?' causes Wanda to pause. She's also not 100% sure what's going on with "Pietro", who deflects all questions about their past, and she seems just as surprised as the audience when Tommy starts showing super-speed, and Billy starts showing vague magical powers.
And Vision? Hoo boy. I love the contrast between the lively town around where Wanda and the kids are, but when Vision reaches the edge of the town, it's dilapidated, and there's a woman trying to hang decorations like a glitching video game NPC, just moving in the same repeated directions over and over again. It's utterly creepy, and when Vision sees Agnes in a car, barely moving, we get a gloriously terrifying appearance from Kathryn Hahn as, temporarily freed from Wanda's spell, Agnes absolutely chews the scenery and laughs and chants about how Vision is... well, "YOU'RE DEAD! DEAD! DEAD!" like a broken record before relapsing back to her howdy-neighbour role. Good lord, Agnes's breakdown was utterly terrifying. This bit causes Vision to finally go beyond Wanda's borders, and try to see what the hell's going on outside the Hex.
Speaking of Vision finally realizing that, he's not the only one. Wanda and "Pietro" have a sit-down while Tommy and Billy are going around. Pietro has been so effortless in his energy and enthusiasm, and the scene between her and Wanda talking about their parents and their past starts off heartwarming... then Pietro starts asking Wanda about how she pulled this off, how he died like a chump in the street and woke up here, and how far she's gone since she just 'shot red wiggly-woos' out of her hands, and we get a bit of a jump-scare with Pietro with bullet-holes in his body.
In the real world outside of Westview, the conflict has basically been drawn to Hayward being a dick to everyone, shutting out Monica, Darcy and Jimmy. They don't condone what Wanda did, but they're trying to negotiate and find out what's happening instead of going in with guns and drones. The points they're bringing up -- like the fact that they don't know what's going to happen to Westview's residents should they even be successful at killing Wanda -- are pretty valid, but all we get is a pretty simple reinforcement that Hayward's the villain of the show. I guess it's just as well we get this out of the way; the Maximoff family antics are way more entertaining. Team Monica find out that Hayward has a way of looking inside Westview and is tracking Vision's Vibranium, but it's mostly just ominous set-up.
Speaking of creepiness, the Yo-Magic ad this time around doesn't seem to have anything to do with significant moments in Wanda's life. It's darkly hilarious, and I wonder if it's a hint that something is leeching off of Wanda's magic.
Again, I love the creepiness of what's going on. The juxtaposition of the hilarious antics that Pietro has with the family to the bizarre unsettling everything that's really going on in Westview is really well done. Honestly, I know the internet got into a huge tizzy about trying to figure out who the real big bad is or what the deal is with Pietro. I'm honestly very much content with riding this out, accepting each episode as part of a season and a piece within the MCU instead of going too full-in on theorycrafting or whatever. It's so much more enjoyable that way, and WandaVision has been an absolute blast, tossing us twists and interesting story hooks that, most importantly, make sense from an in-universe standpoint.
Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:
- As usual, we've got a lot of Easter Eggs in these episodes. Again, we're only doing mostly MCU and Marvel-specific Easter Eggs:
- Episode 4:
- Darcy Lewis was a supporting character in Thor and Thor: The Dark World, having been absent in the MCU since then. Jimmy Woo was in Ant-Man and the Wasp, and briefly showcases his little card trick which he finally managed to learn from Ant-Man. Monica Rambeau was last seen in Captain Marvel as a child, and we also last saw Maria there, too.
- Also, obviously, the 'Blip' (as Far From Home established its name in-universe) happens during the events of Endgame; and Vision's corpsified appearance is how his corpse looked after his death in Infinity War.
- We hear Captain Marvel's voice from her own movie calling Monica "Lt. Trouble" in the opening credits.
- 'Background cosmic radiation dated to the big bang' has been some of the explanations over the various MCU movies on what the Infinity Stones are.
- Monica Rambeau's callsign is "Photon", which is one of her many comic-book superhero alter-egos. She's also called "Captain Rambeau" a lot of times, a nod to her time as the second Captain Marvel in the comics.
- Among the theories in Jimmy's blackboard, you could make out 'Skrulls?' as one of them.
- Episode 5:
- Throughout the entire series, Billy and Tommy's clothes all allude to Wiccan and Speed's superhero colour schemes (blue/red for Billy; green/white for Tommy).
- The ad in this episode talks about a tissue brand called Lagos, 'for when you make a mess you didn't mean to', a hilariously dark joke to Wanda accidentally killing a building's full of people in the opening scenes of Captain America: Civil War in Lagos, causing the Sokovia Accords to be written.
- Thanks to Agents of SHIELD, we know that Section 36-B of the Sokovia Accords talks about how you can't bring a sentient AI back to life to prevent another Ultron.
- "Scarlet Witch" has never actually been spoken out loud in the MCU, and the SWORD agents note that Wanda doesn't actually have a codename.
- In the best casting gag in the world ever, Westview's "Pietro" in this episode is played by Evan Peters, who plays Quicksilver in the Fox movies, instead of Aaron Taylor-Johnson (who plays MCU Quicksilver in Age of Ultron), a fun nod to how Quicksilver was originally 'shared' between the two studios, but now Disney-Marvel owns the X-Men movie rights too.
- Sparky is the name of Vision's synthezoid dog from the 2015 The Vision run. In the comics, Sparky also died after eating leaves, though of a more magical sort.
- Monica mentions needing protection from 'photons', which, like the previous episode notes, is one of her superhero codenames. Her connection to Carol Danvers also gets brought up a couple of times.
- Episode 6:
- The Halloween costumes for the Maximoff family are all obviously intentionally put-together versions of Vision, Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Wiccan and Speed's classic superhero costumes. Pietro even gets comics!Quicksilver's spiky horn-hairs!
- Pietro tells Billy and Tommy to 'unleash hell, demon spawns!' in the comics, part of their (much more convoluted) origins involves being created from shards of Mephisto's soul, making them figuratively demon-spawns.
- The events in Age of Ultron, namely Quicksilver's death and Scarlet Witch using her powers creating nightmares in that movie, are brought up. Also, Pietro's line about how "it's not like your dead husband can die twice" is kind of appropriate since Vision actually did die twice in Infinity War courtesy of the Time Stone.
- Tommy and Wanda repeats the word 'kick-ass' while discussing Pietro. Both Quicksilver actors (Evan Peters and Aaron-Taylor Johnson) starred in Kick-Ass.
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