I really like WandaVision (Wandavision? I can't recall which is the official capitalization) but I will confess a slight impatience to see some stronger progress on its central mysteries. However, one important element to the show is more thoroughly introduced this time around in the new addition to the cast (in case you didn't see last week's episode, let's do a spoiler cut.)
Last week's Very Special Episode saw the arrival of Wanda's other dead loved one, her brother Pietro. But what was shocking about it was that this was not Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who played him in Avengers: Age of Ultron, but instead was Evan Peters, who played the character in the last three X-Men movies.
His arrival was the big cliffhanger at the end of the last episode, but this episode we actually get to see him as part of the cast.
This episode's pastiche sort of skips past the 90s and into the early 2000s, with a riff on Malcolm in the Middle - cutaways, whip-pans, and narration by Billy and Tommy directly to the camera clearly tie this to the late 90s/early 2000s style. (The 90s had plenty of family sitcoms, but I think the shows that were the most culturally dominant were the sitcoms that eschewed literal families - you had Friends or Seinfeld - or the biggest show of the decade, the Simpsons, which was and is a family sitcom, but is also animated, which might have taken things a bit too far. The others, like Family Matters, Step by Step, etc., were generally a little too similar in style to the 80s sitcoms that the previous episode spoofed, so I think it makes sense that they jumped ahead.)
Pietro is now part of the family as the cool dirtbag uncle: massively popular with the boys, but also an agent of chaos (which is why he's so popular with the boys.)
It's Halloween, and Vision tells Wanda that he's on duty with the Neighborhood Watch that night, so he won't be able to take the boys trick-or-treating. In fact, Vision is intent on exploring the town, and he discovers some disturbing truths - the farther one gets, out to the edges of the Hex, the less people are doing. Dozens of people are just standing in place or doing repetitive motions - one woman stuck in a loop is shedding a tear, clearly stuck in this position to serve as set-dressing.
Vision finds Agnes in a similar state as she approaches Ennis Rd, which seems to make the boundary of the Hex. He wakes her up and she recognizes him as a member of the Avengers - which doesn't mean anything to him - and she also asks if his presence means she's dead - after all, he is.
After putting Agnes back in her Land of the Lotus Eaters mindset, he journeys to the boundary of the Hex and breaks through. SWORD agents come to respond, but the biggest threat is that simply trying to leave seems to be tearing him apart - the field around the Hex is pulling chunks of Vision back, and he's in serious danger (even if his thoughts are with the others trapped inside.)
When the boys, their own powers manifesting, realize that their dad is in trouble, they go to Wanda, who ends the episode by expanding the Hex significantly, turning the SWORD camp into a circus and most of its agents into clowns, and leaving only a handful of people to escape its new perimeter - Hayward (who has really embraced his role as bureaucratic minor villain,) Monica, Jimmy, and perhaps one or two SWORD agents make it out. But Darcy is stuck there, and gets taken into the Hex.
Wanda spends most of the episode with Pietro. And here, we get some big questions: Pietro seems to remember his MCU life - he remembers dying to his many gunshot wounds as he did in Age of Ultron. And he also seems to be aware of the false nature of the environment. But he also seems to be ok with it, even praising it.
While I think it's playing a bit dirty if this is the case, I'm now leaning away from this actually being Peter Maximoff from the X-Men movies. Even though he's fun here, there's something off about him. Wanda clearly feels the same way, and asks him some questions, like where his accent went (he responds in kind, which, you know, fair point.)
One last note:
The commercials have subtly referenced the Infinity Stones, and this one was no exception. In this case, it's a claymation ad for some kind of yogurt, where a guy on a desert island is given a carton by a talking shark, but he can't seem to get it open, and eventually starves and turns into a skeleton - which is pretty freaky for what is supposedly meant to be an add for kids to eat some X-Treme yogurt.
The thing is, this is all a reference to the Soul Stone. The desert island is Vormir, and the yogurt is the stone. As someone who's there all alone, he has no one to sacrifice, so the guy can't get the yogurt carton open. And then he decays into a skeletal figure: Red Skull, who has been cursed to act as the stone's guardian. Hell, the shark's little slogan at the end is that it's for "Survivors," which references how only the surviving visitor actually gets to take the stone.
(This "commercials refer to the Infinity Stones" thing is not my original theory, but also seems to be less well-known. If you're not familiar: the toaster in the first episode looks like a face and has the glowing red light where the mind stone is on Vision's head. The watch is a reference to the Time Stone. The soap/bubble bath thing comes in a blue cube box, like the Tesseract, and refers to "when you want to get away," referencing the space stone. The paper towels in the previous episode show a big red spill, similar to the fluid nature of the reality stone. And then there's this one (and the yogurt is sort of orange, like the soul stone.) Expect the next commercial parody to involve some sort of purple ball, or some other reference to the power stone.)
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