WandaVision
It's "Eternals" eve and based on the reviews, I am a little nervous. So, it's nice to watch "WandaVision" and wrap myself in it's accolade filled trauma like a warm blanket. We are dealing with the final three episodes here and they are the best of the series for me, which is saying something.
"Breaking the Fourth Wall"
Agnes: "I promise I won't bite."
[camera aside]
Agnes: "I actually did bite a kid once."
Commercial: Nexus anti-depressants
After the Halloween night kerfuffle, Vision still hasn't come home and has left Wanda doing her best Claire Dunphy. The boys are worried but she continuously tells them she's fine, despite all evidence to the contrary. Vision is traveling back to his wife via Darcy Lewis who he cured from her Hex haze. Monica makes her way back into the hex, gaining some powers of her own in the process and tries to reason with Wanda. But Wanda is taken away by Agnes, who reveals a startling secret of her own.
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| Who's been messing up everything? |
This is the last sitcom homage episode of the season and "WandaVision" brings it home by paying tribute to the talk to the camera family sitcom, "Modern Family." As always, Elizabeth Olsen steals the show with her comedic sensibilities and her ability to pay homage to and bring something new to these classic sitcom archetypes. The harried, modern sitcom mom who is also keeping it real about life's harsh realities with her kids is one of those types and there is a whole new layer here with what is going on inside the Hex.
It's pretty clear that Wanda is losing control here. The things inside the Hex are reverting to previous decades without Wanda doing it. No matter how much she stresses she's fine, it's clear she isn't. Even the twins are picking up on their mom's manic energy.
Despite Wanda's devolving mental state, the episode is really funny. It's probably the funniest episode of "WandaVision" for me. Wanda delivers some great deadpan one liners to her kids. I feel like she maybe got some tips for Kat Dennings. Speaking of Dennings, she shows here that she is able to have chemistry with anyone and it is a real delight to see her playing off Paul Bettany. I know I pitched an "X-Files" type series with Darcy and Jimmy Woo in my last post, but I'd also like to pitch an "Odd Couple" style three camera sitcom with Vision and Darcy. I may not be giving Bettany the props he deserves but he kills it here. His reactions to Darcy and her stories are fantastic. his decision to stop being interviewed and find his wife is delightful. Fighting with the boom mic and all.
Monica is determined to get through to Wanda no matter how it impacts her body. The scene where Monica powers through the hex wall is visually stunning. The audio of you Monica from "Captain Marvel," hearing Maria's voice, is really powerful and makes the whole scene more than just here's this really cool visual. And, what's been hinted at since Monica was ejected from the Hex from the first time finally comes to pass. She's got powers, seemingly able to perceive the different light spectrums. Oh, you know Spectrum.
Finally, we get the reveal, I had been waiting for since the show started. No, not Mephisto. It's finally confirmed that Agnes is actually Agatha Harkness, a dark witch who has designs on what Wanda can do. The tone of the episode shifts in it's last few moments as Wanda searches the house for the twins. It's a fantastic cliffhanger and the show bids adieu to it's sitcom concept in the best way with the best song of 2021, "Agatha All Along." I've included it below.
Grade: A
"Previously On..."
Wanda Maximoff: "I'm so tired. It's, it's just like this wave washing over me, again and again. It knocks me down, and when I try to stand up, it just comes for me again. And I... it's just gonna drown me."
Vision: "No. No, it won't."
Wanda Maximoff: "How do you know?"
Vision: "Well, because it can't all be sorrow, can it? I've always been alone, so I don't feel the lack. It's all I've ever known. I've never experienced loss because I have never had a loved one to lose. But what is grief, if not love persevering?"
After a flashback showing Agatha draining the powers and life from her coven, she details how she was called to the Hex by Wanda's powers. Wanda is denying that her powers come from witchcraft but Agatha isn't buying it. So, she takes Wanda on a trip through her fractured psyche in order to confirm her suspicions.
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| Split in two. |
This episode, for me, is perfection. It's been pretty clear that not too far underneath the shiny sitcom surface, "WandaVision" is about trauma and how trauma shapes us and specifically how the multiple traumas she has endured has brought Wanda Maximoff to this place. This penultimate episode is literally and figuratively very cerebral as Agatha forces Wanda to relive her past traumas and confront them for potentially the first time. We rarely see mental health confronted in our popcorn entertainment. And I'm not sitting her saying that "WandaVision" is really tackling that in a deep, substantive way, but it is talking about it. And this may be the first time a person, particularly a younger person, will maybe see mental health battles depicted in a way that really reaches them and that isn't for nothing.
We see the traumas that have shaped Wanda. The enduring grief that is always at the surface of her. It shows us this, but it doesn't make excuses for her. And though Tyler Hayward is trying to demonize her, the show doesn't do that. It empathizes with Wanda but unequivocally says that what she has done to the citizens of Westview, intentionally or no, is wrong.
Each little vignette bring more to Wanda and informs her character in ways that we haven't seen before, which is one of the main strengths of this series. We see her happy with her Pietro and her parents, watching the sitcoms that she would grow to love. It's a fantastic explanation for the ever changing world she has created. Her time being experimented on adds layers of Marvel lore to her character. The conversation with Vision in her room on the Avengers compound is my single favorite moment of the show. People kind of make fun of this, but it really hits home for me and I don't think that it ever won't. The show definitively paints Hayward as the villain when we see what really happened when Wanda visited the S.W.O.R.D. facility. He emotionally manipulates a clearly damaged person and he does it gleefully.
It was the overwhelming grief of that moment coupled with going to the plot of land in Westview that was going to be her home with Vision that causes Wanda to do what she did. The episode ends with the revelation that the powers that Wanda has are chaos magic. And that Wanda is the Scarlet Witch. We also see that Hayward has constructed his own Vision who is white, because of course he is.
Grade: A+
"The Series Finale"
Vision: "Wanda, I know we can't stay like this. But before I go, I feel I must know. What am I?"
Wanda Maximoff: "You, Vision, are the piece of the Mind Stone that lives in me. You are a body of wires and blood and bone that I created. You are my sadness and my hope. And mostly you're my love.
Vision: "I have been a voice with no body. A body but not human, and now a memory made real. Who knows what I might be next?"
Vision: "We have said goodbye to each other before, so it stands to reason..."
Wanda Maximoff: "... we will say hello again."
Wanda confronts Agatha Harkness for the final time while also confronting the reality of what she has done to the citizens of Westview. At the same time, Vision goes head to head with himself. Monica and the twins keep S.W.O.R.D. at bay with some help from Darcy. While Wanda embraces her new role as the Scarlet Witch, she must also come to terms that the world she has so carefully created and curated must come to an end.
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| Soulmates. |
I'd love to say that "WandaVision" ends on this triumphant note and it is unlike any other Marvel ending ever, but I can't. In it's final episode, "WandaVision" becomes, for the first time, in it's run, your typical MCU production. The majority of the episode is a special effects laden throw down between Wanda and Agatha and the two visions. Now, that's not saying that it's terrible or that it diminishes the greatness of the previous eight episodes, but I just wish that the show wold have found a way to have the action that it needed to have but also remain truer to what it had established before. Now, don't get me wrong, it's cool. I love seeing Wanda and Agatha go toe to toe. And there are some great moments, like when Agatha releases the citizens and Wanda gets to really see the hell that she has put them through, intentional or not. I just needed more of that.
The Vision battle was really cool and I love that Vision beat White Vision using logic. It's very on brand, but again, I just felt like there could have been more. The show solidifies Hayward as the real villain of the piece by having him almost shoot and kill children, so that's great. Oh and remember when Agatha talked to Wanda about runes? Well, it's not shocking that runes were her undoing.
The rest of the episode is an epilogue to the series and it is there that the show really shines. Wanda in her full, amazing Scarlet Witch get up punishes Agatha the best way she can. By trapping her in Westview in the guise of the nosy neighbor character that she created for herself. (There are rumblings that we will get an Agatha Harkness series so let's keep our fingers crossed.)
It's the goodbyes that really get you though. I dare you not to cry when Wanda is saying good bye to her children. Willingly choosing to go through this grief process she is so familiar with one more time. The final scenes of her saying good bye to Vision are emotional, sweet and kind of heartwrenching and I hope I don't have to wait too long to see these actors together again.
A lot of things are up in the air as "WandaVision" ends. Wanda leaves Westview knowing that the citizens will not forgive her and knowing she doesn't necessarily deserve their forgiveness despite what Monica says. White Vision is off to who knows where to figure out his place. Monica is confronted by a Skrull and told that a friend of her mothers wants to meet her "up there." It feels like she is alluding to the space base we saw at the end of "Spider-Man: Far From Home." And in the second post credits scene, we see Wanda studying the Darkhold tome when she hears her boys yelling for help.
Grade: B
We will see Wanda again in "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness." But next for us, is a story of two Cap sidekicks and how they are navigating a post Captain America world in "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier."
I would love to hear how you feel about "WandaVision." Where does it rank amongst the other Disney Plus shows? Let me know in the comments.
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