Wandavision begins as a total ontological mystery. We've seen these characters before in a totally different context - the same cinematic universe where we had the mega-blockbuster war against Thanos so recently. So the first, massive question, is why Wanda Maximoff and Vision are in a 50s sitcom.
Over the course of the series, we've gotten at least a sense of the parameters of this weird reality - that it's limited to a certain location, and that "Geraldine" is actually the cute kid from Captain Marvel all grown up and now a badass super-science agent. And most recently, we've learned that one of the figures here was always aware and unaffected by the "Hex."
Indeed, last week's ending seemed to suggest that we finally had our true villain unmasked, but while I think you can retain that interpretation, it's possible that we've had it all wrong. Let's go into a spoiler cut to discuss it further.
Last week we discovered that Agnes is actually Agatha Harkness, a witch. I'm tempted to touch on her role in the comics, but for now at least let's just look at who she is in the show.
"Agnes" has been the nosy but helpful neighbor on the Wandavision sitcom up until the point - the kind of "most over the top character" like your Kramer, your Steve Urkel, your Tobias Fünke (note that in most family sitcoms, this character is not a member of the family.) But we found out last week she's actually a witch who has been manipulating things all along, even pulling a weird meta-casting gag by having Evan Peters play Wanda's brother (which... is sort of playing dirty on Marvel's part, but I'll get over it).
Given that Agnes has taken Wanda's (miraculously aged-up) kids, it sure seems like she's "the bad guy" here.
Tonight's episode begins with a flashback, which is actually going to be the majority of the episode, but for a different perspective.
It's the 1600s in Salem, Massachusetts, and we see Agatha being dragged out to the woods and to a platform with a stake. But this is misdirection. Her captors are not a bunch of paranoid puritans ready to burn her to appease a vengeful god (fun(?) fact, so-called witches in Salem were hanged, or in one case crushed by stones, but not burned at the stake, even though that's the iconic image,) but rather a coven of witches led by Agatha's mother. The group accuses her of using dark magic* (suggesting that this coven likely has more in common with Doctor Strange's folks than any brides of Satan) and begins assaulting her with blue magic. Agatha strikes back, sending out her own waves of purple magic that seem to draw the life force off of the other witches, desiccating them and leaving them dead husks. She also does this to her mother when the elder Harkness joins in on the spell.
So, what happened here? Were the witches trying to kill her? Did Agatha kill them, and her mother, in self defense? Did she deserve execution? She claimed she wanted to do good with her magic, and asked her mother to teach her how to use it for good, but was denied. Is that possible? And were her pleas earnest or dishonest?
Did we see the tragic origin of a well-intentioned hero? Or did we see the ascension of a powerful villain? I think this ambiguity is intentional.
We return to the present and learn a bit more about Agatha's interests in Wanda - she doesn't understand how Wanda could be so powerful, and have done so much incredibly complex magic, especially given that Wanda doesn't even understand her powers as magic or spells or any of that fantasy-genre stuff. Agatha rattles off various concepts that one imagines Stephen Strange figured out in his first week at Kamar Taj, but Wanda has no familiarity - all of her magic is innate, not learned (for D&D fans amongst you - Doctor Strange and Agatha Harkness are Wizards. Wanda is a Sorcerer).
So Agatha takes Wanda on a journey through her memories. And it's here that we see things from a new perspective. We had heard about how Wanda and Pietro's parents were killed during a civil war, but now we get a close look at that. While there's gunfire in the streets, the Maximoff parents are working on getting their family out of there and to the U.S. (my dad experienced something similar as a kid, when my grandparents got the family out of Hungary following the Revolution of '56.)
Here, we see that the Maximoffs are learning English my watching videos of U.S. sitcoms. Not only is it a distraction from the violence outside, but it also means that these sitcoms represent the hope the family has for the future (credit to my roommate for noting that.) Furthermore, the reality within those sitcoms is ideal: it's filled with shenanigans, which Wanda defines as a problem that's just silly, and only rarely scary at all (the episode of the Dick Van Dyke Show they watch is one that ends with the absurd events turning out to have been a bad dream.) It's during this family TV night that the building is destroyed, and the Stark Industries shell that nearly explodes but doesn't is now rendered for us to see.
And it's also here where Agatha provides some clarification. The shell wasn't a dud. It was Wanda, who had unwittingly cast some subtle magic to prevent it from exploding. Which means that her power existed before the Mind Stone changed her.
Next, we glimpse the Hydra cell where they experimented on her. We see her trepidation, but also see that the experience she had with the Mind Stone was private - something the Hydra researchers didn't even witness - they only saw her go from standing to on the ground instantaneously. In her moment with the stone, though, she sees a form appear to her - one that looks a whole lot like the classic Scarlet Witch outfit (Sokovian fortune-teller my ass!)
Next, we see Wanda at the Avengers Compound, mourning her brother after the events of Age of Ultron. She is alone, her only comfort an episode of Malcolm in the Middle. Well, until Vision shows up. He doesn't understand the slapstick humor of the show: when Bryan Cranston's Hal has an entire roof fall on him, Vision is worried that he's horribly injured, but Wanda explains that "it's not that kind of show." And again, the idea of safety in a sitcom setting makes the appeal of her Wandavision life very clear. She has been through trauma after trauma, and she wants a reality in which all of life's sharp edges are smoothed over. This also likely shows us the beginning of Wanda's romance with Vision, which is then, of course, the final trauma that puts her over the edge.
The last flashback is another case of our seeing things with new context.
Earlier in the series, Haywood tells us how Wanda, in a rage, stormed the SWORD compound and stole Vision's body, endangering his agents and proving herself too chaotic to be trusted (on a deeper level, note how this is a man accusing a powerful woman of being unstable?) While Wanda is clearly having a rough time, the worst thing she does is slam a door open and break some glass. Her entry into the laboratory isn't some rampage - she just walks through the corridors and into Haywood's office. And Haywood, rather than tell her what's going on, callously surprises her with the dismembered corpse of the person she loves.
She wants to take the body - not to reanimate him or anything, but to bury him.
To get a little personal here: my mom died in 2017, and while her body was cremated fairly soon after her death, we waited a few weeks before we had her funeral and buried her ashes to ensure that family members (most of whom, like me, live on the west coast) could be there. In those weeks, I had dreaded that moment, fearing that the funeral would just be like losing her all over again. And yet, once we actually had the ceremony and placed her remains in the ground, I was shocked at how much better I felt - that we had honored her and marked our grief. I remember thinking to myself "oh! That's why people do this!"
Wanda wants that closure, to say goodbye to the man she loved. But Haywood, whose first seems to be arguing from a place of responsibility (Vision's the most powerful sentient weapon that has ever existed) but then lets slip that there's less noble reasons for his objection (that's $3 billion worth of Vibranium).
But Wanda just needs to see for herself. She breaks through the window in Haywood's office and goes to Vision's head, reaching out to try to see if he's still in there. But he's not. She accepts he's dead and that these remains no longer contain him.
And then she walks away without a fight. Perhaps the most resonant moment for me was her walk to her car in the parking lot. A mundane thing, a totally normal, unremarkable thing, while she's feeling consumed by grief.
Wanda has a folded piece of paper in her car, and she drives to Westview, NJ. It's a depressing-looking place - the pool is dirty and the gazebo is closed off - probably because of the post-Snap depression, though also kind of realistic given the current state of small-town America. She then pulls up to a lot and looks at the paper.
It's the deed to the property, with a heart over it that says "A place to grow old, -V". Is this a place he got for her before he died, where they might settle? Probably not, given that they were in hiding when Infinity War started. Instead, I think this was likely part of his will (something we know he had thanks to an earlier episode.) Wanda finds the empty lot with the foundations of a house (I'll confess I don't know if the intention was to build a house or, more likely, that someone had demolished the house Vision got for her in the 5-year gap during the blip.)
Wanda walks into the literal ruin of the life she was supposed to have, and that's where she loses it - her primal scream constructing the sitcom house and then overtaking the entire town.
And with the house formed around her, some of her power kind of siphons off of her, turning from red to the yellow of the Mind Stone as Vision is built anew, standing before her, perfect and alive. And the reality shifts, becoming that 1950s look, and Wanda doesn't understand what's happening, but it's everything she could have ever asked for.
Agatha now understands this, and the perfect 1950s world is exposed: in this memory, Wanda now stands on a sound-stage, the powerful studio lights blinding her. Agatha applauds the complex magic at work, but then vanishes, and Wanda chases her out through a stage door, out of Agatha's house and onto the street, where Agatha holds Billy and Tommy.
And it's here that Agatha identifies Wanda: she's a person who's supposed to be a myth. She is wielding chaos magic, creating entire realities out of nothing, and is something called the Scarlet Witch.
Yes, after all these years, Wanda's getting her superhero name (there had been rights issues). But that name seems to carry a threat with it, and while Agatha might just be looking for power, it's also possible that she wants to prevent this mythic figure from causing apocalyptic harm.
Or... maybe Agatha isn't a villain after all?
Yes, she's kidnapped children and killed a dog (who might not be a dog, given the demonstration of magical transmutation) but I am now very unsure of Agatha's intentions.
After all, she was nearly killed by her coven for using Dark Magic, but at least claimed she wanted to learn how to channel her power for good. Might she, then, be able to help Wanda channel her power in a more constructive way?
*Hey, so, is "Dark Magic" a broad term for evil-flavored magic, or is it specifically tied to the Dark Dimension, the realm of Dormammu? We already know Wanda's going to be in the next Doctor Strange movie, but the connections are beginning to pile up.
However, our post-credits scene shows us that Haywood's really committed to this antagonist role. Rather than dispose of Vision, he has reconstructed the body and, after years of experimentation, he's taken the residual magic from the drone he had sent to kill Wanda and used that to power up the resurrected body.
So we now have two Visions. One is his body, but seems devoid of his mind (and soul?) The other, whose creation we saw here, is a creation of magic, but also might genuinely contain his mind, thanks to the infinity stone magic and Wanda's power.
The upshot of all of this is that if Vision can be put into this body, it would effectively mean a true resurrection. But I don't know if that'll work thematically. We'll see.
I expect we're going to see our big climactic superhero battle next week, with Wanda and Mind-Vision fighting Body-Vision, but there is still a lot of stuff that remains to be revealed. I'm excited for it!
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