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Spoiler alert: This blog is for people who watch WandaVision on Disney +. Don’t read on unless you’ve watched episodes one through nine.
‘Save Westview or save your family’
In the end he had to go this way. The marriage to Vision, the babies who arrived in episode three: Wanda could only keep these things if she was willing to keep the lie at the cost of innocent lives. Or at least his sanity and his free will.
It should come as no surprise that a program with such clear control of its message as WandaVision makes sure to carry those ideas down to the last minute, with Wanda still refusing to be pushed into more boxes. While fighting Agatha for the power of the Scarlet Witch, Wanda continues to refute the idea that someone else can define who she is and what she should be: “I don’t need you to tell me who I am.”
Still, by the end of the post credits, Wanda has the red hat, outfit (a neat reworking of the cheesecake styles from the original comics, which thankfully rejects the emphasis on cleavage and crotch) and is leafing through the magic tome The Darkhold. Agatha’s magic book is under a new direction, but one suspects that Wanda is not done with the “who is she” versus “what is she” conflict. Okay. More Wanda for us.
Timebomb City
WestView is free and Wanda finally has to cope with the pain she has caused. “When you let us sleep, we have your nightmares,” Dottie insists, chilling Wanda to the bone and making an uncomfortable mirror for the “WestView bully-controller” Dottie who had been in episode two.
We had grown to love this cast – sitcoms are great for getting you into characters quickly, because we get cuddly around anyone who makes us laugh, so the emotion hits. But even when the townspeople ask “let us die”, there is a feeling that everything is moving quickly. That the finale has to concentrate all your unfinished business in one episode. Imagine making this reveal two episodes ago, at the end of the Halloween story, and letting Wanda’s discomfort in her episode of Modern Family run that much deeper and full of heartbreak.
Tonight on WandaVision
As the townspeople scene suggests, with so much going on, it’s hard to feel like we got the most comprehensive exploration of everything the series promised in the 40-minute runtime we got. Every moment is handled wonderfully, but with ruthless efficiency that means entire concepts must be chewed, digested, and swallowed before fully tasted.
White Vision shows up, an argument ensues, then Vision drives him crazy with logic, the riddle of Theseus’s Ship, or as British comedy fans know it, “Trigger’s Broom,” and White Vision is off the board. Thank God she met Wanda first or she would never have had a moment with her husband’s pale reflection.
Likewise, we’ve known the real Agatha for an entire episode, so there’s hardly any time to explore her perspective and her crazy relationship with Wanda, before the rune setup / reward (nice move, Wanda) and the ending. of that. history. Agatha is now doomed to live Wanda’s life, trapped in the suburbs, not knowing why she sometimes feels like her life isn’t real, until … well, until we come back for her.
It’s not that the program doesn’t handle these things well, each heartbeat is clearly designed to be the best it can be, and everything that matters is figured out, it’s that there’s hardly a moment to breathe or explore between the key points. This is an efficient movie… but WandaVision is a television show.
Ultimately, the reveals from episode eight could have been better as a middle ground in a story that went on to explore all of the interesting dynamics at play. Wanda knowing that Agatha is trying to influence her and is having that battle within the confines of the sitcom, a slowly expanding rivalry between neighbors. Wanda with two Visions at stake, hiding one in an abandoned house and having a kind of “adventure”. Mindful vision of the situation, living with Wanda every day, aware that this idyll and her life could end in her hand, rather than having to show up and rush through “Wanda, I know what’s going on, but the battle end has already begun. “
The way Darcy and Jimmy get a little lost speaks to this as well. Jimmy adds escapology to his work, charmingly citing Vision’s magical “blossoming”, but his main job in this ending is making a phone call. And while Darcy’s one moment certainly had, ahem, impact, she is just as quickly thrown aside, eliminated from off-screen events, in fact. She never knew Wanda at all.
Nowhere does this become clearer than with Monica Rambeau, whose few lines with Wanda have always been heavy, saying that she would have done the same to bring her mother back this week is as spot on as ever, but both women never make it. time to understand each other or befriend each other, and Monica’s transition to superhero can’t help but feel under-explored. For his next appearance he will already be in the outfit, being amazing.
And this without taking into account Marvel’s initial claim that WandaVision would be “about six hours of content.” The total series ended up being five hours and 41 minutes long … but more than a time of that was the same seven minutes of credits repeated every week. I’m totally in favor of giving credit to those involved (even though it rarely feels like catering and drivers really make a difference in production creativity) but … another 90 minutes doesn’t feel like the quantity? of adequate time to explore all angles? this ending had to hurry?
Ralph bohner
Ah, Evan Peters. Back in the show notes for episode five, I covered that “if this isn’t the start of a Marvel multiverse, it’s certainly a joke about making one” and I have to confess: I was expecting the joke option.
Despite all the guesswork on the internet, it never made sense to me that Agatha would bring a superhuman out of another dimension to be convincingly Quicksilver. That’s a lot of effort compared to just making a normal guy look quick and reminisce about Pietro’s past. After all, not even Look like the brother that Wanda lost!
For me, the casting of Quicksilver is a hoot. Playing exactly at the correct meta level for this particular branch of the MCU. Remember Rhodey in Iron Man 1 looking at the suit and saying “Next time, baby?” Or imagine if the Avengers had been published in episodes: Tony’s joke about a “life model decoy” would have been speculated as a trap. Speculation is fun, as long as you let the show be the show.
That’s why I’m only thrilled with Ralph Bohner’s reveal (even if Monica slips away too easily after all the talk that Quicksilver is so overpowered it could solve the plot for Days of Future Past in seconds). Canonizing the Fox series as an aside would be a silly, retrograde way for Marvel to say “the multiverse is here.”
So while I am a bit sorry for the awkward way a federal witness and aerospace engineer are mentioned only to become means to ends, a way to get Jimmy to WestView and deliver a space vehicle, this is fine. Because it is WandaVision. It’s a restructuring of a gag and jobs.
And honestly, isn’t it better for Marvel to start its own MCU X-Men stories in a year or two without getting stuck with the Fox franchise as a starting point?
‘To flourish!’
Showrunner Jac Schaeffer and his team wrote the final episode with all the wit and heartbreak that could be crammed. Echoing the Doctor Who Forest of the Dead story, this story of a falsified and edited reality ends with putting the kids to bed. As the cruel sweep of the hex draws near, Vision and Wanda finally discuss what, exactly, is an argument that takes them from blood and circuitry to the next possible afterlife.
It’s impressive writing on par with the best work of the season last week, and somehow sits right alongside the Wizard of Oz tributes (Agatha’s shoes under the car that Wanda throws at her) and Terminator 2 ( White Vision emerging from the flames).
Less prestigious is the end of Hayward, who is arrested and detained. And presumably White Vision is somewhere mulling over its own existence, exactly the kind of misguidance for which the Sokovia Accords were created.
Where do we go from here?
With the show doing its thing, the next stages of the MCU are wisely relegated to in-between and post-credit scenes:
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Wanda’s children are crying from all dimensions and… well, she won’t be staying on vacation for long when that happens. The events of Spider-Man No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness attract. And it will probably be your fault.
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Monica is taking her superpowers into space with the Skrulls, joining Nick Fury, who was on vacation there at the end of Spider-Man Far From Home.
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White Vision likely won’t be making a comeback anytime soon, and it might be treated delicately in an off-screen mention, but if Marvel wanted to give DarcyVision a chance, a hilarious science genius is trying to show the military synth how to be human. be in it.
